In June, Megaphonebooth Kiasma-nurmi, a coin-operated megaphone station, is available for public use in the Kiasma lawn in central Helsinki. For one euro per minute anyone can speak into the handset and have their voice instantly amplified and projected into the local environment.

Megaphonebooth Kiasma-nurmi is the latest product of Unsworn Telecom – a series of poetic telecommunications services by Malmö-based interaction design and innovation studio Unsworn Industries.

“The Megaphonebooth presents unexpected opportunities but also raises questions about responsibility, control, and democracy”, says Erik Sandelin of Unsworn Industries. “It offers a platform from which people can speak their mind, loud and uncensored. Yet, when compared to the loudness, plentitude and persistence of other messages in our everyday, urban lives, the mighty megaphone seems peculiarly powerless. The Megaphonebooth is a functional yet slightly tragic tool that brings focus to an unbalance while feebly attempting to correct it.”

Photos of the Megaphonebooth in potential but rejected locations were exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, earlier this spring.

“We tried to get permission to install the Megaphonebooth in many locations in Helsinki but our proposals were turned down one after the other. Although the sound is not any louder than that of an unplugged, shouting man, the city authorities were afraid of possible ‘sound pollution’”, explains Unsworn Industries’ Magnus Torstensson. “This decibel discussion merely scratches the surface of larger issues of public action spaces and personal responsibility: What happens when you insert your €1 coin? What rights do you acquire? What responsiblity is transferred from you to the machine (and its creators)? What additional freedoms do you expect to enjoy?”

Drop by the Kiasma lawn Tuesday 15 June at 18:00 for a Megaphonebooth picnic! Erik and Magnus from Unsworn Industries will be around. Pixelache will provide some picnic basics, but bring your own drinks, thoughts, and coins!

Megaphonebooth Kiasma-nurmi is conceived and designed by Unsworn Industries. It is produced in collaboration with Pixelache and is supported by Nordic Culture Point. The work is a part of Kiasma’s collections exhibition It’s a Set-up. For more information please contact Unsworn Industries.

A megaphonebooth is a public, coin-operated megaphone. Insert one euro, speak into the attached handset. Your voice is instantly amplified and projected into the local environment.

Megaphonebooth Kiasma-nurmi will be available for public use from May 2010

It’s a set-up

Photos of potential - some of them rejected by the city authorities - Megaphonebooth Helsinki locations are currently displayed at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary art as part of the It’s a Set-Up exhibition.

Big thanks to photographer Laura Vuoma for shooting all the Megaphonebooth locations and to Pixelache for their valiant efforts in dealing with difficult Helsinki authorities.

“Hello hello Uudenmaankatu. I am a Swedish scientist and I’m testing this new Megaphonebooth…”

Unsworn Telecom headed east to pick up the mighty Megaphonebooth at the metal workshop.

Unsworn Telecom’s latest sublime telephone service is ready for deployment! After intense prototyping sessions in Helsinki and Lisboa we handed over the blueprints to our favourite steel-worker Jörgen Bladh at Kylprodukter i Kivik. A couple of weeks later this solid steel beauty emerged.

The Megaphonebooth is now headed for Finland. You will soon hear more from it…

Thanks Albin Brönmark and Ystads Allehanda for the crisp photos.

As part of the UM Festival, Unsworn Telecom hosted a workshop where we scouted and tested locations for a future Megaphonebooth Lisboa.

While we have already found a great spot for Megaphone Helsinki and have begun implementing it, Megaphonebooth Lisboa is still in its early phase. Together with workshop participants from Portugal, Germany and Brazil we spent a full day in the streets of Lisboa testing where a Megaphonebooth would and wouldn’t work.

We’d like to thank enthusastic and peripatetic workshoppers Saulo, Paul, Torsten, Frederik and Rui and UM Festival and Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, for facilitating and hosting this adventure.

Unsworn Telecom went to Helsinki to scout and test locations for a new, loud initiative: Megaphonebooth Helsinki.

Megaphonebooth Helsinki is a coin-operated megaphone to be located in a public space somewhere in Helsinki. To use the megaphone you just have to insert one euro per minute, speak into the attached handset and have your voice instantly amplified and projected into the local soundscape.

Why on earth?

A Megaphonebooth presents unexpected opportunities but also raises questions about responsibility, control, and democracy. Who are allowed control of public space and to what price? What citizen expressions and actions are sanctioned and encouraged by city authorities? In what world would Megaphonebooths be part of the everyday urban infrastructure? What does it mean to buy a megaphone minute? What rights can you actually acquire?

A small hammer

The Megaphonebooth offers a platform from which people could speak their mind, loud and uncensored. Yet, when compared to the loudness, plentitude and persistence of other messages (commercial, cultural and political) that we are exposed to in our everyday lives, the mighty megaphone seems peculiarly powerless. The Megaphonebooth is a deliberately tragic solution meant to bring focus to an unbalance while feebly attempting to correct it.

Scouting and shouting

Finding a good spot for the Megaphonebooth is essential. The location shouldn’t be too obvious, nor too odd. Not too practical for political polemics, nor too romantic and secluded. Thankfully, we got Pixelache organisers Nathalie Aubret and Juha Huuskonen and many other helpful locals to suggest interesting spots for us to try along with important background information.

With our tourist map cramped with circles, x-marks-the-spots and notes, we dug out some cardboard from the Pixelache dumpster and taped together a rough, somewhat portable, mock-up of a Megaphonebooth. Stuffing it with our handy travel-megaphone we had a working full-scale prototype in no-time.

For a full day we stuck to our prototyping itinerary, walking all over Helsinki, setting up and trying out the prototype every now and then.

In the end we managed to thoroughly test:

• The Kauppatori (market) Pier facing the sea
• The Esplanade
• The Railway Station Square
• Kamppi
• Hakaniemi Square
• Kiasma
• The Parliament
• The Mannerheim Statue
• The Long Bridge
• The Curve in Kalio
• Sörnainen Metro Station

Of all these, Kamppi is our favourite spot. It provides ample opportunity to engage in quixotic quarrels with commercialism represented by the Kamppi mall. The Finnish bureau of patents is also conveniently within earshot for those with a penchant for copyright conundrums. There is also plenty of space for a voluntary and involuntary audience.

Did we miss a spot?

Where do you think Megaphone Helsinki should be located?

Four Ophones are at your sonic service for a week at Spångatan in central Malmö.

Ophones in the streets of Malmö

During Malmöfestivalen, August 14-21, Unsworn Telecom offers festival-goers of all ages and preferences an unruly infrastructure for musical communication and co-creation.

After two days in the street, we’ve already heard teenagers regurgitating their childhood hardships, mad hatters improvising rampageous kletzmer masterpieces, neighbours threatening to cut-the-cables-if-the-racket-doesn’t-stop-immediately, subtle bicycle-bell interferences, and a friend lovingly turning his rent bill into a crumpled lump in the process of composing a paper-crackling poem.

Ophoniste Grand Prix 2009

Last Friday of the Festival, August 21 at 9pm, new ophone-virtuosos will battle it out with local rockstars, noisemakers and loopaholics at a sparkling, juried event hosted by Unsworn Telecom suits: Ophoniste Grand Prix 2009.

Ophones and Ophonestations?

Ophonestation Malmö is a group of public loop-machines: ophones. Each ophone is made up of a speaker with an attached telephone receiver. By depressing a button on the receiver, ophonists can record sounds which are repeated forever, until another sound is recorded into the same ophone.

The Ophonestation is a space for collaborative and playful sonic experiments that blurs the border of passers-by, composers, musicians and audience. Ophonists from Tokyo to Brösarp have for the last five years created everything from minimal mumbling-poetry to massive chants and rump-shaking beat infernos.

Telemegaphone Dale will reopen August 3 as a permanent landmark and grandiose communications channel of Fjaler in western Norway.

Fjaler municipality acquires Telemegaphone Dale

Telemegaphone Dale was open for two months during fall 2008. People from all over the world - including Dale - called and found their own uses of the service. Word of the Telemegaphone spread like bushfire throughout the blogosphere and generated a lot of buzz in both old and new media (see the film above). When we returned to Dale in October we learned many stories about life with the Telemegaphone, both disturbing and amazing. Check the movie below for a quick summary of the Telemegaphone test period of 2008.

Most Dale-ites were proud of their Telemegaphone. They missed it and the municipality has now finally decided they want to keep Telemegaphone Dale as a permanent landmark and an experimental everyday communications channel.

The project has spurred interest, controversy and debate all over the world. It brings up contested issues of democracy, communication and control. There is also something painfully beautiful in the service offered and the many ingenious ways that people use it.

Grand reopening in Dale

August 3 is the planned date for a grand and much-awaited reopening of Telemegaphone Dale. New York-based omni-instrumentalist Bora Yoon will perform a new Telemegaphone concerto live from Chicago, created especally for this occasion.

More Telecom

Unsworn Telecom is a division of Unsworn Industries dedicated to creating products and services for beautiful and suprising telecommunications. We’re happy to announce that we have just been awarded a generous grant from Nordic Culture Point to expand our range of unexpected infrastructures.

All these good news call for a mango-lassi in the Malmö sun…

For five weeks this summer people from all over the world could call up Telemegaphone Dale and project the sound of their voice across the small village of Dale in the beautiful Dalsfjord Valley in western Norway.

A few weeks after turning off the installation we went back to Dale to meet with the local villagers and authorities to learn what life with Telemegaphone Dale has been like, and discuss if and how the project could continue.

After Erik and I left Dale, early the morning after the opening ceremony, we’ve had a massive response from the rest of the world, but we have learnt very little about how life with the Telemegaphone has been like in Dale. What have they thought about the experience? What have they heard? How have they themselves used it?

Hanging out in Dale

The Dale Bakery is a major hub for social life in Dale. People go there to meet friends and family, catch up on the latest gossip, and (of course) enjoy some tasty pastries. We spent most of Saturday there, drinking coffee, eating cinnamon rolls and talking to people about their experiences with the Telemegaphone.

People in Dale are very open and forthcoming and soon we had learnt what parts of the Telemegaphone test-run that had been great and what parts that had sucked. We list a few of these reactions below.

Not before long we had also recieved and accepted invitations to (1) tag along to a story telling event in neighbouring Flekke, (2) have a beer at the local bar and (3) come see Bergen band Babe Rawlins in concert. Naturally we couldn’t resist any of this.

The morning after we led a hike up to the Telemegaphone on unsteady, and a bit hung-overy, flatland legs. A handful of locals and some of the resident artists at Nordic Artist’s Centre joined the expedition providing us with ample opportunity to probe their minds as to what they thought of the project.

Monday afternoon we met with the municipality to present the project, share the findings from our research, and discuss possible future scenarios. We were happy to learn that Fjaler municipality (to which Dale belongs) is very positive to the project. The Telemegaphone idea fits nicely with Fjaler’s vision of itself as the small place in the centre of the world and an open and welcoming community. Together we have begun looking into how to take the project further.

Reactions

A lot of people enjoyed the Telemegaphone greatly and had many funny and touching stories to tell.

Here are few quotes from Dale (in orange) and the rest of the world (in blue):

What do you think?

What are your thoughts and experiences of Telemegaphone Dale? Tell your story in a comment to this post or join the discussion on Facebook

Unsworn Telecom organised a public hike up to mount Bergskletten to discuss telemegaphonic issues and to officially close down Telemegaphone Dale for the winter.

Hiking (at gå på tur) is a popular Norwegian past-time and Dale has plenty of breathtaking hike-trails. After negotiating a ceasefire with the local deer-hunters we set off for a picturesque and misty climb up to Bergskletten to get Telemegaphone Dale ready for winter hibernation and inspect the signatures of the Telemegaphone hiking book.

We also valued the opportunity to discuss life with Telemegaphone Dale with the hikers - a small but brave group of local Dale folks as well as international artists residing at the Nordic Artists’ Centre in Dale. Before putting the installation to a long seasonal sleep we made a few last phonecalls, wishing Dale a happy winter and expressed our hopes for future mountaintop telcommunications collaborations.

Finnish photographer Laura Vuoma shot these scenic masterpieces:

Telemegaphone Dale is no longer available. The test-run is over and the annual Dale deer hunt has begun. We’re hopeful that we can turn the installation back on soon. In the meantime we have begun scouting for other nice locations for future telemegaphones.

During it’s brief existence Telemegaphone Dale has attracted a lot of interest and many people from all over the world have enjoyed its unexpected, poetic services. We have received many inquiries and suggestions as to where we could put the next bunch of telemegaphones.

This far we have had suggestions for as exotic and disparate places as Beijing National Stadium (the Bird’s Nest), Birmingham, Southern Jutland, the jungles of northern Colombia, Downtown Bogotá, Times Square New York, Kivik, the Moon, Lofoten, and M’Goun (the second tallest peak of the Atlas mountains)

All of these are intriguing potential locations in their own right and we wish we could get to do them all.

Where would you like the next Telemegaphone to be?

The interest in Telemegaphone Dale has been simply overwhelming.

The early birds get the news

The Norwegian local papers were first to report and caught Unsworn Telecom already when we were assembling the Telemegaphone in the NKD workshop. Less local Norwegian and Swedish papers as well as Internet editions of various publications from around the world soon followed suit.

Blogs drum up attention

Old media aside, it was the mighty drums of the blogosphere that brought the Telemegaphone to the world’s attention. John Thackara (the design guru’s design guru according to design guru Bruce Sterling) was one of the first to pound out the news, calling Telemegaphone Dale “a sublime piece of communications landscape art, or something along those lines”. Soon, a thousand other blogs picked up the thread. Many posts have spurred vivid discussions, the most common themes being:

• “This is great!”
• “This is horrible! Why haven’t the people of Dale chopped it down?”
• “This is not real - you’re just playing us.”
• “I just called and…”
• “I’m gonna call and…”

This post over at the affable Oddstrument Collection sports 184(!) comments at the time of writing, covering just about all of the above themes. Although we enjoyed the conspiratory qualities of the real/not-real debate we decided to put up an FAQ-page to provide at least some straight answers.

International radio

Radio people seem to love the Telemegaphone. Is it because they are sound nerds or because they sympathise with our take on the classic one-to-many communcation? The last couple of weeks we have been interviewed by enthusiastic broadcasters from Canada, Norway, South Africa, USA, Great Britain, and New Zeeland.

The Telemegaphone was also featured in a photo-captioning-contest over at CBC where people were asked to write a caption to the telescoped photo of the Telemegaphone to the right. Our favourite: Oh dear! Yeti dropped his Personal Listening Device.

Memorable radio moments include the BBC World having to publicly apologise — live both on air and Telemegaphone — to the whole village after calling Dale “a small, sleepy town” during an interview with curator Elísabet Gunnarsdóttir:

Norwegian radio added jaunty musical illustrations to their Telemegaphone interview with Magnus and Elísabet:

Erik enjoyed a long, pleasant conversation with Peter Anthony Holder of CJAD’s Holder Tonight talkshow:

CBC Spark is a highly recommended show on the intersections of culture and technology. Here’s their special show on phones - Telemegaphone action starts at 15:30.

Finally, Eric Miyeni from SAfm in South Africa warmed our hearts when he, after an interview with Magnus, exclaimed: “Wow, this is such a great display of faith in people! This is why I love the project.”

More media

Did we mention the French science magazine for kids? The talk by the Norwegian secretary of state? The concert by Chicago-based band Grun-Tu-Molani? The Swedish dance clubs? The many creative and hilarious uses of the Telemegaphone deserve their own post. Soon.

What’s missing?

Voices from Dale, of course! The BBC interview (above) features some words from Torkil, a Dale local, but otherwise it’s mostly the rest of the world speaking. That’s why Unsworn Telecom will head back to Dale in a few weeks to talk to people there about life with the Telemegaphone. There are many more telemegaphonic stories waiting to be told.

What can you report?

Do you have any interesting stories to share?

Listen to Bora Yoon’s performance - live from Brooklyn via telephone at the Telemegaphone Dale opening ceremony.

Crank up your volume since we’re three kilometres away from the Telemegaphone!

You can read more about the opening here.

In her opening speech nkd-director Elísabet Gunnarsdottír celebrated the controversial aspects of Telemegaphone Dale and questioned preconceptions of periphery and creativity.

Elísabet’s speech:

I would like to wish you all welcome to this little happening which makes up the grand opening of Telemegaphone Dale.

There is an unorthodox undertone in almost everything connected to the Telemegaphone Dale project and this is how we like it to be.

Dalsåsen has for a long time ­long before the artists center came to be ­ been haunted by “skjulte hemligheter” ­ hidden treasures and bizarre, mystical messages. This is one of the reasons why telemegaphone dale was chosen as the opening event in nkds program to celebrate a decade of creative activity.

It was over 30 years ago that Oddleiv and Thora Fagerheim created the foundation that was later to become Nordisk Kunstnarsentere Dalsåsen or nkd - nordic artists’ centre in dale. At the time their vision received little understanding. Even then the idea of creating a Nordic cultural institution in a remote little village on the west coast of Norway was disliked by many and was certainly not popular with the decision makers of the day.

They said Dale was a remote place – but remote from what?

A great philosopher once said that he always considered the centre of the world to be where he was – that it moved with him – that this was true for everybody.

Another considered the “ends of the world” to be limited only by the bounds of his own skin. Still today we hear voices saying that this region needs to be urbanized – why is this? – to become a smaller copy of a metropolis maybe? – for what reason? – there are countless different ways to accomplish things, and inspiration is all around us ­ right here.

Just imagine what could be done if each and every one of us shed some of the barriers and preconceived ideas we have allowed to build up in our heads – if by turning old ideas upside down and inside out we find ourselves witness to an alternative.

I think that the fate of this centre is in some ways to generate controversy in all its creative forms ­ to provoke, encourage and stimulate reaction and individual response. Our task is to play host to innovative and creative people, to uncover valuable ideas early on, and to help make them happen.

Telemegaphone Dale is an excellent example of this.

I agree with Elísabet’s above points and hope the Telemegaphone will animate discussions on isolation and communication important to rural Scandinavia. Future Unsworn Telecom products will - by offering slots of space, time and sonic amplification for sale - further explore the theme of the commodification of public space and the Right of Public Access (Allemansrätten).

Telemegaphone Dale was inaugurated by the serene sounds of Bora Yoon.

Legs still sore after the amazingly exhausting mounting expedition and subsequent daily mountaintop debugging sessions we were happy to finally slip into our finest suits, cut that ribbon and officially reveal the Telemegaphone Dale’s phone number.

A small crowd of Dale inhabitants had gathered in the garden of the Nordic Artists’ Centre, located on top of Dalsåsen hill between the village down by the fjord and the Bergskletten peak looming to the southwest. The Telemegaphone were visually present as a tiny sihouette in the distance and magnified in a telescope.

Bora Yoon tele-performance

After a poignant opening speech by nkd-director Elísabet Gunnarsdottír the Telemegaphone Dale received a call by Brooklyn-based musician and sound artist Bora Yoon who performed a 5-minute Telemegaphone Concerto, prepared for the occasion. As Bora’s beautiful voice softly filled the valley people stood quiet, watery-eyed and listened. It’s was really quite touching.

A woman said the sounds reminded her kuling (old-style cow calling) and Norwegian traditional singing.

Åsa Ståhl recorded Bora Yoon’s performance onsite at Dalsåsen, 3 kilometers from the Telemegaphone. Crank up your volume, download it, or listen here:

Dale got the number first

We handed out the phone number, written on small business cards, to the people from Dale - half an hour before the rest of the world would have access to it.

People eagerly forwared the number to friends and relatives, and shortly afterward a deep, male voice sang a slow, sad tune. Everyone looked at each other to see who was the caller. Everyone shrugged. The Telemegaphone was no longer in our control.

Half an hour later we clicked the upload button, published the phone number online, and waited for the world to enter.

Telemegaphone Dale is now in place on top of Bergskletten mountain. It was a tremendous collective carrying effort.

Special hats off for the team of horn-carriers who volunteered to help us carry a ton of stuff up the steep mountain in the blazing sun: Les Joynes, Bjørn Kowalski Hansen, Svein Ove Løseth, Maria Petschatnikov, Natalia Petschatnikov, Helga Steppan, Åsa Ståhl (who also shot the quad-action film above), and photographer David Zadig, we owe you big time and will remember this collective effort for ever!

Svein Ove is our new hero. Here’s a video of him climbing a 7-metres ladder, on the top of the Bergskletten fjell, mounting a 15 kg wind generator with one hand.

Sweaty gallery

These images speak for themselves:

A short version of The Making of Telemegaphone Dale.

The story of the Telemegaphone started already in the summer of 2007. I (Erik) was residing at the Nordic Artists’ Center in Dale, working on Pophorns and developing ideas for a new square in Dale. Unsworn was at the time discussing a series of concepts for poetic and unexpected phone services, then called Parafunctional Payphones, of with the Telemegaphone was the most interesting one. The village of Dale with its paradoxical mix of welcoming stunning scenery and geographically isolated location, yet internationally connected and with a welcoming atmospere, seemed like the perfect location to install the first Telemegaphone.

Tele-responsibility

We were also curious as to how our ideals of open, non-anxious action spaces - explored in projects such as the Four Ophones - would fare when. Does this kind of shared responsibility work also at a distance? Do you care about the people you have never met in a village you have never been to?

Bourgeois looks

The physical design of the Telemegaphone progressed from the typical alert-horns of warning and war towards a tasteful blend of public service, art-deco communications and reliable bourgeoisie. The Telemegaphone should look like a forgotten invention from the dawn of telephony, a confident product whose raison d’être is no longer questioned. The hexagonal, stainless steel horns with their decoratively curved support legs

Energy issues

There are no power outlets on top of Norwegian fjells so we had to come up with an alternative energy solution for this Telemegaphone. We disqualified solar power early on as this is one the rainiest regions in Europe. (Feel the rain in Pete Beste’s excellent Black Metal documentary shot in and around Dale.) A small 400W wind generator seemed like the perfect solution for a stormy mountaintop.

Pick up the phone

We’re extremely happy to have recruited Nicklas Marélius to join the team as Chief of Technical Wizardry. With a talent for getting-things-done Nicklas deviously managed to exposed the hidden serial port communications of modern Sony Ericsson USB-phones - a feat eagerly awaited by many. Now we can control the phone using a combination of the trusty Arduino microcontroller and a magic USB host chip. Nicklas even supplied the Telemegaphone with SMS remote control and reporting capabilities!

Off to Norway

Where we are now, we have already learned a lot. Cardboard is still king; Windmills are not toys (not even small ones); No two phones are the same. Now the hard parts begin: transporting the whole shebang up the mountain, and getting it to work. Still that’s nothing compared to the social and political issues connected to the Telemegaphone. Til topps!