dressed as the John Mayer song "Your
Body Is a Wonderland," a costume ran-
domly assigned to him by a computer
algorithm that he designed. He had just
returned from a two-year trip abroad,
during which his algorithm dictated
where he lived, taking him to Dubai,
Taipei, and rural Slovenia. At the party,
Baskin ~ Hawkins a tarot reading,
and they hit it o:fl: "We were both very
interested in phone stuff," Baskin re-
called recently.
Hawkins told her about Call in the
Night, a short-lived project he had
started a few years earlier. "You signed
up with your phone number, and once
a week; between 2 and 5 A.M.,you would
get this phone call that wakes you from
sleep and connects you with a random
stranger,"he explained.. Baskin was in-
trigued. She works from a garage stu-
dio--she specializes in "joke objects,"
such as bananas imprinted with the
Nike Jogo--and liked the idea of spon-
taneous conversations during the day.
Soon after, Hawkins moved to New
York, and they used the app to stay in
touch. Friends joined, and then friends
of friends. Last year, they released the
app publidy, under the name DialUp,
with subgroups for people who wanted
to talk to strangers about breakfast, pol-
itics, or the full moon.
Then covm-19,and widespreadquar-
antllring, came along. "My girlfriend was
telling me about her family in China,
who'd been doing this for months, and
all the stories of people who are just to-
tally bored and stuck at home," Haw-
kins, who now lives in Los Angeles, said.
On March 1st, he and Baskin launched
a new DialUp application, called Quar-
antineChat, that connects sheltering
strangers at arbitrary points of the day.
There's no swiping right; the app de-
cides who talks to whom, and when.
"Something that's missing from your life
when you're in isolation is that you don't
have these random CCJM:ISatioos,"Baskin
said. "You don't have that serendipity."
Usage spiked in Iran, then spread to
Hong Kong, Portugal, and London.
While self-quarantining, Hawkins
has been busy fixing technical bugs, to
keep up with demand, and Baskin has
been making virus-inspired art objects,
such as cling-on faux stained glass for
nervous airline passengers to stick to
their plane windows ("So when you're
"I'd say my number-one issue is getting off the island,
and then, after that, probably health care."on the plane it feels more like a place of
prayer"). Baskin said, "I've been trying
to create projects that are sort of funny
and dystopian." She also created a res-
pirator mask with the user's mouth and
nose printed on it, to help people unlock
their phones using facial recognition.
Both have been making mends on <l!.iar-
antineChat. Baskin was connected to a
fumily in L.A. that was rationing pasta
sauce. Hawkins had talked to a Colom-
bian woman studying in Paris, whose
roommate had tested positive. "They'd
just thrown a party the night before, and
so everyone who was at the party had to
go into self-quarantine," he said.
Early Wt: week, a housebound New
Yorker joined the app. The next after-
noon, the phone rang. "Welcome to
QuarantineChat," a recorded voice: said.
"We're about to put you on hold and
connect you to someone else anywhere
in the world. Your prompt today is to
go look out the wind.ow and describe
what you see to your partner." Some
plinkymusic played, and then a woman
answered. She introduced herself as
Susan. a fifty-nine-year-old mother of
three, who was hunkering down at her
house in Missouri. '1 have asthma, so
I've been paying very close attention,"
she said. "I was very far ahead of this.
My kids thought I was nuts. They don'tthink rm nuts anymore!" She described
what was out the window: bird feeders,
a lake. "And we have some moles who
have taken over my yard. They make a
raised line in the grass, so you can see
exactly where thc:fve been, and they are
so annoying."
Susan had X2nax and a plan to re-
organize her closets. "I had decided that
this was going to be my year, you lmow
what I'm saying? rm going to be sixty
this year, which is freaking me out. And
I thought, f m going to hit sixty being
one hot chick. I was going to get my
cataracts fixed, my shoulder replaced.
Of course, I'm cancelling everything."
Her husband is a cardiovascular perfu-
sionist at a hospital three and a half
hows away. (Theywonicd that the hos-
pital would be short on masks, so Susan
lent him one from her gardening su~
plies.) Their plan w:as for him to stay
at an apartment near work if he got
exposed. "When he leaves tomorrow;
I might not see him for a long time,"
Susan said, glumly. '1 made his favorite
black-bean burgers and his cupcakes
and stuff, to remember me. But it's a
lonely thought. I will literally be alone.
Just me, in this big, rambling house. So
I will probably look forward to these
calls more as time goes on."
-Micl;ael Schulman