Interactive Show Preview: Who Do You Love

Come to the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday to see “Who Do You Love” by Adelle Lin, Olivia Barr, and Matt Pinner:

A deplorable reality television host rises to power by exploit people for the sake of entertainment. He uses a nightmarish cacophony of violence and catch phrases to control his audience. In The Running Man this media mogul shouts, “Who Loves You and Who Do You Love?”

Who Do You Love is an interactive sound installation that samples Donald Trump saying the word “China” in phrases from his campaign and presidency. The interface device for the installation consists of three acrylic towers, dispersed through the space. Each tower houses three buttons where players can activate the sound from different locations. Pressing a button triggers the Commander and Chief to say “china”, “i love china”, “i know china very well”, or “china all the time”.

The phrases overlap each time a button is pushed to create an ambiance of garbled memetastic catch phrases. The towers encase a teensy audio shield, teensy 3.2, xbee, and our custom oshpark pcb. the devices connect to each other using these 900mhz xbee radios and light up clear acrylic portions with led sequins when buttons are pressed anywhere in the space. The new echo of “China” is channeled into the exhibition room’s speakers or through headphones. Multiple players of Who Loves You collaborate to compel the distortion of Trump’s reflections on China into noise.

We hope this raises some discussions about your feelings around entertainment media and representative governments.

More info on Github.

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!