A black telephone sits alone. It does not dial out. It does not ring for you.

When you lift the receiver, you enter a conversation already in progress — one you were not invited to hear.

EAVESDROPPING is an interactive telephone installation by Whitney E. George about privacy, overhearing, and the strange pleasure of listening in. If the listener remains quiet, the conversation continues; if they speak, laugh, breathe too loudly, or otherwise reveal their presence, the voices on the line begin to notice. Intimate, uncanny, funny, and quietly accusatory, the work asks what it means to listen without being seen—and what changes when the listener realizes the phone may be listening back.

Join Whitney E. George for the opening Olio of EAVESDROPPING, a new interactive telephone installation about privacy, overhearing, and the strange pleasure of listening in. This first lecture, The Erotics of Listening, considers the telephone as an object of secrecy, desire, suspense, and performance, with examples drawn from film, opera, noir, and media history. The installation will be activated for visitors, with a house-party gathering to follow.

The closing Olio for EAVESDROPPING turns from the pleasures of overhearing toward the moral problem of listening. The Ethics of Listening explores surveillance, trespass, confession, implication, and what changes when the listener realizes they are not neutral. The evening will serve as a closing event for the installation, with a house-party gathering to follow.