Phone-A-Friend aims to facilitate spontaneous (and often awkward) conversations between strangers. When a user texts the number displayed on the piece, they're connected via the handset to a number selected at random from a pool of the piece's previous users.
From September 8, 2021 to Semtember 28, 2021, the piece will be on display at the Chicago Garden of the ARS Electronica festival.
After a viewer leaves the gallery, they should expect to get a phone call from Phone-A-Friend within the next few days. Afterwards, this old viewer's number is deleted from the database and replaced with the number of the viewer currently standing at the phone. The piece runs using an Arduino connected to an 3G GSM cellular module. A Twilio phone number accepts texts for activation, handles adding numbers to the database, and manages the call forwarding and connection. The Twilio number calls the Phone-A-Friend's internal GSM Module, which answers automatically, then connects it with the random number selected from the database.