Scan ANY barcoded item and the animatronic toilet will tell a random story about it.  Every story is unique, with content derived from Twitter, an electronic dictionary, and local lookup tables.  Visitors to the installation are also barcoded with a sticker so that they become objects as well.  This installation makes use of the following technologies:

1. * synthesized speaking
   

2. * synthesized singing (uses my TTSTSVS quick phoneme to note mapping algorithm)
   

3. * Twitter search
   

4. * parts-of-speech dictionary
   

5. * binary search of a UPC database (over 1 million items)
   

6. * software written in Ruby Cocoa
   

View paper documentation

Video (2:56)

June 2009