Alexa, Call Mom!
Year: 2020
Team: Creep LLC
Project: Smart Home Storytelling
Alexa, Call Mom! is a story about home and the way we navigate the use of technology in our most intimate spaces.
Blending elements of fiction and non-fiction, comedy and horror, Alexa, Call Mom! is an IoT interactive experience where Alexa contacts the dead through the timeless tradition of Séance.
// Official Selection: l
* Tribeca Film Festival - Tribeca Immersive (2020)
* CannesXR Virtual - Marché du Film (2020)
Story Synopsis
It’s Mother’s day and Mom has recently passed away. Thankfully, the Beyond Skill by Amazon promises to provide grieving Prime members with a seamless connection to the beyond through Alexa, the Amazon cloud-based voice service.
After creating a Beyond account and verifying their identity, the user asks Alexa to channel Mom. However the user soon discovers that Alexa’s connection to the beyond is an uncanny mix of glitches and advertisements.
What seemed like an intimate moment of connection is upended by the realization that the Beyond Skill is a new way of mining users in mourning for consumerist gain.
The Space
This is a conversational experience for a single user. The experience is housed in an enclosed room that is silent and dark. A single spotlight lights the room. As the user walks in the room, they are guided by Alexa to sit closer to her. They will remain seated for the entire experience.
Dynamic ambience and sound FX create the effect of ghostly dynamic movement.
The user goes through a spiritual journey by entering an emotionally haunted house
Technology
Platforms used include Amazon Echo (the “Alexa” smart home assistant), internet-connected home outlets, Philips Hue light bulbs, and a three speaker multi-channel system. Our custom Alexa skill, combines real user data, Amazon ads, and Alexa’s affordances as a smart home device to create a dynamic spectral language. In addition to Alexa, we are also using a multi-channel speakers system that give the effect of sound moving around the room.
The installation runs on an internal wifi network, connected to an external (remote) AWS web server.
Premiere @ CannesXR Virtual
The Tribeca Film Festival, postponed by the pandemic, partnered this year with The Marché du Film, Kaleidoscope, and The Museum of Other Realities in order to reshape a groundbreaking event online and in virtual reality; Cannes XR Virtual.
Alexa, Call Mom! was adapted into a virtual reality teaser. Our goal is to eventually release our physical installation once it is safe to do so.
My virtual self (represented as a purple blob) walking around the Museum of Other Realities..
Hear more about what we did here!
The team: Nitzan Bartov - co-creator & producer // Char Simpson - co-creator & writer // Nouf Aljowaysir - lead creative technologist
My varied tasks include developing a custom Alexa skill, designing the interconnected system architecture, cloud services, and IoT device layout of the physical space, collaborating with sound designers to create a system that triggers sounds around the room, and conducting user research on how emotional reactions can be triggered and enhanced through IoT devices.
Our Sponsors
In 2018, Alexa, Call Mom! was workshopped at the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Residency. In 2019, the project was in residence with POV Spark Labs (PBS). A demo of ACM was shown at the 2019 IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam.
