The "Call Centre" Installation

This paper describes an installation entitled “Call Centre”. Users interact with it using a modified telephone and a number of hardware sensors. The installation provides the user with experiences of isolation and communication. The title “Call Centre” suggests a member of the public trying to become aware and navigate through different channels of communication, with varying degrees of success. The sensor input software system is written by Ian Gibson using MAX MSP. The speech synthesis system uses a new system S2:P3 created by Chris Newell based on his STEVS prototype. Stuart Andrews is writing theatrical scripts for the voices to perform. The main sound output is created using 3 audio channels. Each audio stream (speech, breaths and ambience) is directed to a different channel and then mixed. The. S2:P3 system uses an implementation of SSML (Synthetic Speech Mark-up Language) found in Microsoft Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) [4]