Juliet Ann Martin : Please Stay on the Line

BIO Juliet Martin has a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University and a MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts. She is a digital artist, programmer, and writer. She has received recognition for her work from an variety of venues including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Gallery, siggraph 98, isea 98, The New York Times, The New York Post, Leonardo, Dai Nippon Printing Achievement Awards, European Media Art Festival 1997, Website Graphics: the Best of Global Site Design by Liesbeth de Boer, Geert J. Strengholt, and Willem Velthoven, and Wired.

Please Stay on the Line The web-based art site, Please Stay on the Line opens to a dark screen with six pay phone buttons on the left. An anonymous but annoyingly familiar recording recites the war cry of telephone communication, Please stay on the line, all our operators are currently busy. By clicking on The telephone buttons the user calls up different web pages which reveal two narrative threads. One path presents the telephone as a mystical form of technology and the other a story of a dying man who checks his pacemaker over the telephone. On one page a grid of randomly produced telephone numbers can be played by running the mouse over them. On another, a blank slate invites the user to compose the dying face of an old man through the movement of the mouse. As the mans face is assembled, the message my heart is in the palm of your hand is revealed. The title, Please Stay on the Line, begs not only that the user not hang up the phone but also that The elderly man may live.