Olivia Pasian, JC Zhang, Harry Zhao

"“Pet Network” is an interactive experience made up of cellphones, costumes, and communication. The experience uses cellphones (and their owners) which run a p5.js program to turn the phones into an animated pet. The program outputs pitch and a beeping language and takes microphone input with the goal of finding a pitch to match one of three types. If a phone is placed down and hears a pitch that is a match, it engages in conversation, but otherwise ignores any language it doesn’t understand. Each phone pet has expression movements matching the conversation state: shaky if in motion, still if listening, and talking if in conversation. Phone owners are given a cardboard wearable for their phone to fully transform their phone into a new-and-improved version of itself. The goal of the experience is to get the phones to talk to each other, but humans without phone pets are also able to try to talk to the phones. Using whistling, screeching, humming, and singing, humans can attempt to speak the phone’s language. Our intent behind “Pet Network” is to create a metaphor for our current methods of communication. By emulating the interactions of a dog park, we wanted to demonstrate how we have become dependent on our phones for so much of our communication with each other. We wanted to investigate the reliance and ownership we have over our phones and let them take the lead in this experience by being the only way users can communicate with each other."