Phones

Winter 2024 - Summer 2025

Communication is still a theme I want to explore. The last thing I made with that theme was Mouth and Ear. But, when I tried to apply that 'chunky symbolism' approach again here, I ended up running out of steam.
The concept here started from an experience with Sebastián Bruno's The Dynamic, where the viewer is invited to listen to an interview by picking up a landline phone. This resulted in a short obsession with the image of the landline telephone.
I'd recently visited a good friend in a local mental health centre, where every corner was rounded over and most furniture was made of imitation leather. This inspired the idea for the leather phone handset, which was the only one I ended up putting electronics into. The plastic handset was initially just 3D printed as a size mockup, but ended up forming part of a series alongside the metal one. The tactile contrast between the leather and metal handsets inspired me to do some kind of performance with them, but this just didn't happen.
At this point (around April) I felt more pull towards exploring the communication that happens on the internet and the way we view computers. This topic is not necessarily the most obvious follow-up from the phones, but there is a common thread in how technology impacts our communication and social structures. It also feels like a much more necessary topic, as complex computing becomes more everyday without being adequately understood.