Please Leave a Message: Creating Space with Writing

Engineering the phones

Glasgow Women's Library
16th January - 22nd March
https://womenslibrary.org.uk/event/please-leave-a-message-creative-space-with-writing/

As part of this exhibition, my friend Ellie Harrison and me worked on the phones. People can read the telephone book provided to find numbers to call on the phones. When the numbers are called, a spoken audio recording of the written piece is spoken back through the telephone speaker.

We created three phones in total, two of which were rotary and the other being push button. We used a few different libraries (linked below) and hardware such as Arduino Nanos and DFPlayers to make it work.

A pancake rotary phone on a table. A hand calling a number on the pancake phone. A hand pressing buttons on the push button phone. A photo of the pancake phone beside an armchair and phone books.

📷 Photos by Gwendolin Kircali

Thank you for these resources:

Writing Arduino Group January 2025