Sometimes art pushes boundaries. We’ve covered a lot of tech art that blurs the lines between the craft of engineering and high-concept art theory. Praydio, by [Niklas Roy] and [Kati Hyyppä] leans easy on the tech, but pushes against viewers’ religious sensibilities.
Playing with the idea of talking directly to God, and with the use of altars as a focal point to do so, [Niklas] and [Kati] took the extremely literal route: embedding a CB radio into a dollar-store shrine. The result? If you’re lucky, someone will answer your prayers, although we’re not too hopeful that the intervention will be divine.
The art critic in us would say that this is a radical democratization of religious authority in that anyone who is tuned in can play the role of Jesus. Or maybe we’d say something about the perception of religious significance in the seemingly random events of our everyday life — maybe it’s not just chance that someone is tuning in at the time you’re asking for help?
Honestly, though, we think they’re just having a bit of fun. The video (below the break) shows someone asking Jesus for a coffee, and the artist on the other end laughs and fetches him one. It’s not high-tech, and it’s not even amateur radio the way we usually think of it, but something about the piece made us laugh, and then to think for a bit. Even if this art isn’t your style, check out [Niklas’] website — he’s got tons of fun projects written up, a few of which we’ve covered here before.
Apophenia might qualify.
Maybe this one works better? http://www.instructables.com/id/Spooky-Tesla-Spirit-Radio/
Lake – Tesla did ave a REAL Tesla Scope. However, all he arguably picked up was Morse Code and assumed it was Martians trying to communicate with him due to Percival Lowell’s and Schiaperelli’s concurrent Martian discoveries Little did he know about QRM from the EMF generated by the telegraph lines running through Colorado. And of course Marconi sending MC from Cape Cod on his spark-gap transmitter concurrent to the Tesla Scope intercepts.
Mocking a prophet ? Look behind you and be careful, integrists are crazy.
Funny? So now let’s have analogical laughs at the Blacks, Asians, Spanish, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, LGBTQs, etc.
Who first, and why not ?
Yeah, nobody ever picks on blacks, Asians, Spanish, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or queers! Damn them and their charmed lives!
At least here.
Why not?
Well this is targeted at religion, something people are (should be?) free to make their own choice about which is quite different to race and arguably different to sexuality.
Just to be clear I’m not condoning religious laughs or condemning racial laughs I’m just giving you the reply you so desperately wanted. What is important is being able to laugh at yourself. and others.
I posed a rhetorical question, but thank you for your reply anyway :-)
BTW, the religion as the “nondiscrimination” cause is on par with race and sex.
This art project has nothing to do with discrimination, so why bring it up?
For us to not discriminate all the others and have good laugh at them too. Why do I doubt this blog would ever post about such project ? :-)
As a lover of science, engineering and God (Jesus) I find this humorous. I have often wondered how prayer does work with an infinite God, love to learn the science behind it, Hey I bet He can use CB also :).
Best to tune it to channel 6….
THIS IS JESUS, KENT, AND YOU’VE BEEN A VERY NAUGHTY BOY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf-5RaFnh2U
those aren’t cb radios which is 27mhz. the walkie talkies they use are either frs/gmrs/pmr446. also speakers should be mounted in a box as they sound worse out on their own.
Awww.. I’m sorry to hear that it isn’t CB. I take it the artist is on the other end? Random CBers stumbling on this thing and taking the roll would be funnier.
As for the speaker.. why does it need to sound good? Actually.. I’m thinking that if it is all distorted then that is just an added effect.
As bob has concluded, the heart of Jesus is a PMR446 walkie talkie – (FRS & GMRS walkie talkies aren’t allowed in Europe). Nevertheless, there are quite a few people using walkie talkies on Madeira, so you can hear Jesus talk randomly in Portuguese from time to time.
Regarding the speaker: It sounds good as it is. You could certainly also put it inside an enclosure and increase volume and audio quality by doing so. But this is not about HIFI – and the larger speaker sounds already better than the walkie talkie’s original speaker.
I was very young and it was a long time ago, so my memory is fuzzy on this. Back in the 70’s during the height of the CB craze (lots of poorly tuned, overpowered transmitters driving around back then) a few times a signal would somehow bleed over on our church organ. I was way too young to even think of trying to understand how this could happen (but I’m pretty sure I’m not confusing it with a wireless mic setup, our small church didn’t have any kind of voice amplifier back then). I recall one during a sermon, there was a loud “That’s a big 10-4 good buddy” coming out of nowhere, startling everyone. The organist started turning it off during sermons.
so funny
I have had to “sanctify” a few organs in church. Almost none of the language is OK for service.
CB has gone almost dark. Everyone has a cellphone.
No there is still a contingent that use it. Tune into ch.6, the so-called ‘Superbowl’ channel for a taste
Also the ever present trucker channel is still extant with a vengeance as they say: Tune to channel 19. Just don;t try and interact with them unless you are actually driving an 18-wheeler and are intimately familiar with heir jargon and codes. Saying “Breaker one nine good buddy…” will certainly get you flamed!!!
Well CB-SSB has picked up a bit. And there are several modulation modes being illegally used now so you might erroneously think CB has gone dark. Some have discovered Morse Code, SSTV, RTTY, and PSK31. Since voice is not evident in those modes you might confuse it with QRM or man-made interference. And SSB itself is a voice mode but listening to it on AM you might just think it’s QRM noise. Also some of these scoff-laws go out of band up to 10 meter band and in between, I just can’t wait for someone to discover CB-FHSS. Imagine the anonymity and enhanced communications FHSS offers.
The problem with cellphones is that there APPEARS to be no common voice sharing app to allow truckers to communicate anonymously in a group like on CB. However, there are CB channels on Zello dot com that need to be checked out. Zello is a unique walkie-talkie like app that replaces the old NEXTEL-PTT model. All you need is a smartphone and this free app. It’s being used worldwide especially by freedom-fighters etc.
Here is a SMARTPHONE to CB Radio app I found on Internet that uses ZELLO. It appears free and straightforward. Pass it around to your trucker friends (and others): http://tinyurl.com/SMARTPHONE-TO-CB-APP
This reminds me of “Born in East L.A.” with Cheech Marin. There was a scene where Cheech’s character’s cousin stayed over at his house, and Cheech tried to call him, but the answering machine picked up…and it was BEHIND A PICTURE OF JESUS. “Jesus wants servesas!” ;)
so what ya gonna do when God actually DOES reply? :P that’s the theological question i find most interesting.
God/Allah/FSM can be telling you to do something but the ever arrogant humans will just pretend nothing happened?
As an atheist and former CBer during the glorious 70s I feel deeply offended by that!:)
Then there are those persons who believe they have conversation with their god; no technologist needed
This is the first time i see a post on Hackaday that insult some people’s beliefs. I’m disapointed. This type of work is not art. Art must elevate people, blame the cult. This type of work is not an expression of democracy. Democracy is ended when you disturb other people. And, to be clear, atheism is a religion too. Can’t demonstrate inexistence of spiritualy. Maybe exist, but you don’t have the proper apparatus to detect it. How can be sure? My hope is that Hachaday will keep up and not go down with this type of insulting and propagandistic articles. And to be correct, i’m ortodox christian. Apologise for my poor english. By the way, this is not a hack, even for a noob like me.
First off, any work that expresses ones own feelings through some form of medium is just one of many forms of art. Secondly, atheism isn’t a form of religion, it is an idea. Atheism is the idea that a god does not exist because no physical proof has been presented that a god does or does not exist. I will agree that this isn’t a hack, but this website can divert into other topics in technology as well. A diverse selection of articles to read all about technology is not a bad thing, as long as they are well researched and not full of fluff. Take care and Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.
Religious stuff – skip this section if easily offended or you are an atheist…
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Cute article… But to go all religiously pedantic on you: The actual Judaeo-Christian deity never actually “directly” spoke to anyone except the “perfect-humans” Adam and Jesus. It can be arguably assumed from biblical circumstantial evidence deity-to-human verbal audible interactions was done proxy by God’s first-born Michael (arguably the pre-human Jesus) who allegedly accepted the fateful mission to Earth to temporarily become Jesus (or Yeshua) of Nazareth in 1st century.CE.
OK I know I’m being dreadfully esoteric here! But some of you wannabe and real theologians are understanding, I know. So who’s been masquerading all this time with gullible human victims saying “God spoke to me last night”? You can get a clue right here from Saul of Tarsus in his 2nd letter to the accurate-knowledge-lacking Corinthians: 2 Cor 11:14. (ref: biblegateway dot com)
Next question: Jesus was obviously worshiping and praying to a higher deity than himself. Who was that? Is this a religious paradigm shift in thinking for you? It shouldn’t be as it’s not a new teaching at all.
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HaD Related Stuff
OK let’s shift gears to more HaD-ish stuff: The US Navy is using a device which they are calling simply a sound projector boat hailer. However, it can do much more than that. Woody Norris (the inventor) invented this thing that uses two ultrasonic beams to heterodyne inside your skull to cause AUDIO from an remote undetermined source many feet away. He is calling it a hypersonic sound projector, The US Navy and Walmart picked up on it’s potential right away.
Walmart plans on using it for focused per-person-advertising. The USN is using it allegedly just for boat hailing. I guess you can point this thing at a distant human and start speaking into the microphone and nobody hears NOTHING except the targeted human off in the distance. Now I know you HaD “out-of-box-thinkers” know where this is headed don’t you?
Some really sneaky people in the alphabet-soup-world PROBABLY came up with the idea I’ll euphemistically call the VoG like some nebulous DARPA acronym: Hmmm… many Charismatic Christians and others like Muslims believe in direct aural communications with their respective deities. OK how could a sneaky agency exploit that idea using Woody’s gadget? I’ll let you fill in the rest…
BTW you can buy one yourself for about $250 USD – http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-NIB-HyperSonic-Sound-HSS-H450-B-Long-Distance-Ultrasonic-Directional-Speaker-/391246933285 or HaD geniuses could build one of our own?
God usually talks to me through my toaster, but this is good too.
God to Dave: :If thou evereth encounter a talkin toaster… do this!”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnL21kSvlm0
Aww, that toaster looks sad. My waffle iron would probably take over if I did that to my toaster.
Just don’t put waffles in your talking toaster: http://foamy.wikia.com/wiki/Amityville_Toaster :-P
Citizens Band radio and God, two subjects that can still get the crazies to come out of the woodwork regardless of the general tone of the site that posted the topics!
DV82XL – “…get the crazies to come out of the woodwork…” – https://youtu.be/v17lMr0j2D8 8-P