Project uses old telephony mechanism to connect people online

This art project, entitled “Tantalum Memorial – Residue”, by England-based Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, and Matsuko Yokokoji, is a telephony-based memorial to the people who have died as a result of the tantalum wars in the Congo.The installation is built from the remnants of an old electro-mechanical 1938 Strowger telephone exchange found in an old factory. The switches on the piece are reanimated by tracking phone calls from a social telephony network designed by the artists “in collaboration with the Congolese radio program Nostalgie Ya Mboka in London. The TT network calls Congolese listeners, plays them a phone message and invites them to record a comment and pass it on to a friend by entering their phone number.” Pretty interesting piece that we hope there will be a video of soon to watch it in action.

Tantalum Memorial, via Textually