Call & Response was a negotiation between an audio sampler and a fax machine. Visitors were asked to initiate a conversation with the facsimile using pre-recorded audio. If they listened well and spoke convincingly they would take home a piece of visual art generated in real-time. After the opening installation, the piece lived on through Familiar, a newsprint publication, as well as a permanent installation in the Ace Hotel London property.
Here is a technical description of the work: The audio-out of an MPC-1000 is connected directly to the phone line of a thermal fax machine. 2 audio samples must be played to negotiate the fax handshake. After the handshake, binary data can be sent to the fax as audio in the voice-frequency range, modulated with phase-shift keying. When an audio sample of data is played from the MPC, the fax immediately prints the black pixel values it receives. No error correction is used. The fax will continue to print until an end-of-page or end-of-transmission sample is received. There are interesting relationships between musical audio synthesis and the feat of sending binary data over a phone line.