November Archive Highlight - “Your Contribution is Noted”

Currently, I’m spending most of my research bandwidth on Forcing Climate Change Research through my brain and considering different pitches and tech applications; however, one of the permanently open tabs in my brain is payment systems, and since this month marks a season of gratitude (and the beginning of getting my shit together for taxes), I thought I’d take a moment to look at an unintended, unexpected little playground for creative expression, and to ponder ever so briefly on what that may invite us to do as creators.

But first, art

User Submitted Art #4 (Drawn throughout a Telelibrary session)

User #886

Sometimes, after their session, specifically inspired Users will send me a piece of art that they crafted in response to their time in the Telelibrary. Fun fact; as repeat Users may have noticed, I keep every physical piece of art sent on the wall behind the Telelibrary desk (sound off in the comments if you’d like a docented tour in a future archive highlight!), and use the digital documents sent in the various versions of the credits emails send at the close of each call. Aside from just being delightful and touching to me personally, I have an interest in the ways these creative expressions function as documentation of a particular, unrepeatable Telelibrary experience.

But these high-profile, high-impact masterpieces aren’t the only place to find little treasures and mementos. Like lichen growing in the cracks of steep, unforgiving cliff face, Users find a way to play in the most unlikely spaces—which brings us to the Venmo.

First, a caveat; Venmo isn’t your friend, they are borrowing money from you in the absence of infrastructure for free, unmediated financial transfer tools, and the notes feature exists in a weird and very ill-informed bid to turn the app where you avoid handing a waiter 5 credit cards into a social network.

This odd stew of incentives is best explored in one of my favorite data-artworks ever, “Public By Default:” in 2017, creator Hang Do Thi Duc noticed that transactions on Venmo are made publicly viewable by default, and scraped the shockingly (at the time, and even now and after her work went viral, only slightly less) accessible information on these transactions to quickly profile 5 different Users sharing “their most intimate financial, narcotic, and romantic details with the world.”

But—so long as you turn your transactions private by default (don’t roll your eyes, I know some of you still haven’t, since I log onto Venmo every show day and see your punny transactions), the notes section can be a harmless and even creatively stimulating place to put some flair on your financial transactions. For instance, here’s every emoji that was attached to a Telelibrary payment through Venmo from 2022-Today, November 30th, 2023:

⏰ ⏳ ☄ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☎️ ☠️ ☠ ♥️ ♥️ ⚡ ⚡ ⛪ ⛷ ⛽ 🇪 🇬🇷 🇮 🇷 ✨ ✨ ✨ ❣️ ❤ ❤ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌑 🌭 🌭 🌭 🌭 🌸 🌿 🍁 🍂 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍙 🍯 🍸 🍸 🎁 🎃 🎄 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎞 🎟 🎥 🏔 🏳 🏴 🏻 🏾 🐕 🐕 🐟 🐟 🐟 🐩 👃 👏 👚 👻 💃 💋 💋 💓 💕 💖 💖 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 💗 💛 💛 💫 💫 💬 📕 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 📗 📘 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 📞 🔥 🕑 🕓 🕓 🕘 🕯 🕯 🕷 🕸 🖊 🖤 🖤 🗽 🤖 🤯 🤯 🤳 🥐 🥯 🦒 🦝 🦢 🧠 🧠 🧠 🧡 🧡 🪡 🪦 😂 😆 😊 😊 😊 😊 😊 😪 😭 🙉 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🚃 🚫 🚫 🚫

Fun*. No surprises, phone and book emojis rule here. But there some strings in particular that call to mind the illustration above, and put even the best Egyptian Hieroglyphics to shame:

🌭🏴‍☠️⚡️💋

🍁🍂⛪️🐕

🍯🦝🚫🎄
🥯 🔥🧝‍♂️✨

Many Users who express themselves in words instead will use a similar format, making poetry out of partial recaps:

“Anticipation, unicorns, and cuckoo pants galore”
“a porcupine is a small computer”
“Revealing the supercolor and providing a little time capsule”
“Autonomous experiential service”
“The most G-rated gay bar backroom in the history of the world”

And of course, mixed media has its place here

✨ rebellion, witchcraft & wedding tips from beyond the grave ✨

🦒+[there is no emoji for the soul]

These little koans are very reminiscent of the custom Subject lines I write for every credits email, which are generally some variant of “Thank you for ______ing in the Telelibrary today.” Once I’ve sent the formal sign-off text, writing this subject line is my immediate next step; in moments of no inspiration I simply look to my notes for terms or concepts we summarized or discussed, but after 1700+ calls, I can often just trust my gut for what topics “had heat” in a given call, and compose something briefly. If I look to even just the past 5 or so sessions, we can get some examples of the resultant form:

“Thank you for directing your Intentions and Oranges at Changing the Telelibrary today”
“Thank you for setting the tone to be more recognizable and/or attractive in the Telelibrary today”
“Thank you for using high-speed internet for destabilizing currencies in the Telelibrary today”
“Thank you for smelling the brightness between obsession and love with the Telelibrary today”
“Thank you for calibrating levels of toast, domesticity, and the byproducts of capitalism today”

(for the record, my personal rubric for success is mostly concision, followed by the accidental production of a functional sentence with a double-meaning. Failing that, I like it when it seems like I’ve knocked off some Rupi Kuar poem)

Of course, not everyone has the time, impulse, or interest to craft a 21st-century Sestina, and another perfectly valid function of the Notes section is as a place for gratitude, feedback, personal messages and entirely earnest reports of what a session meant to someone. Users shout-out favorite selections, identify themselves by User ID#, or bemoan their inability to pay more. If you’ve read/survived the first draft of my “Pay Up” essay, you know that all of these messages, doodles, and responses across the spectrum are meaningful to me, and I feel that they add a very tangible value to my exchange with an audience member. My guess is that they add value for audiences too, since they are so common - indeed, out of 346 transactions studied in these records, only 31 just used the word “Telelibrary” or no other identifier. That’s only 8.67% choosing plain identification.

So what does this tell us as designers?

In short, even in a piece that provides multiple in-game opportunities and tools for leaving a reflection AND customized post-show materials, audiences are hungry for more chances to react, communicate, create and play. With a little effort and planning, you could certainly build a more interesting “comments box” than Venmo has - imagine what a hoard of artworks, curiosity, and expression you’d amass if you did.

~





*also, this was an insane artifact to generate, since Venmo only lets you pull transactions records one month at a time, and splitting and alphabetizing emojis turns out to take a lot of legwork. I don’t always value my time appropriately, but my god do I know how to burn it.