Collect Call

“Collect Call” to 10,000 Hypothetical Stars.

Kedrick Brown
MDE 2023
Jae-Hyun An
MDE 2023
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1 Pick up the phone, dial a number, and greet the future.

Though we’ve learned a lot about our universe so far, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what there is to know.

What can humanity achieve if it truly maximizes opportunity for everyone on earth? How many world changing ideas has the world missed because the people who would have invented them didn’t have access to electricity, clean water, the internet, good educations, conflict-free living areas, or societies without structural inequalities?

Our artwork illustrates the upside of a future with better human cooperation by encouraging you to make a “collect call” to a future human in one of 10,000 hypothetical star systems somewhere in our universe.

Dial any four digit number and the screen will reset to a view centered on the star system you have called. The red phone symbolizes the high priority and importance of your call for our planet Earth in the present.

If there was truly a way to communicate with someone from a future society, what would you say and what would you want to know? How do you imagine they’d respond, and what would they really think about our world in the present?

Project video
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2 3 of 10,000 possible star systems that you can dial into.
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3 Process Image: Connect Rotary Dial to Processing Code.
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4 Rotary Dial gives a tactile experience to the call.
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5 Storyboard explaining how to use the phone.