Tel-A-Ear

I teamed up with my sister to create a public art installation in my community during the Summer of 2022. My sister and I would always pass an abandoned payphone while going to our local corner store, shown below.

We created an interactive, ongoing project to ask our community a question and have them respond to the question anonymously. Our goal was to provide a positive place to vent, so we fashioned the abandoned payphone into an ear which would collect the responses to a question that was printed on both sides of the payphone. I designed a weatherproof container with a hinge and a knob shaped like an ear to safely hold paper that the community could write their responses on. I also added a container for a marker with a chain mechanism that uses a coil to pull the marker into the container and prevent stealing. I made the marker easily replaceable by using a pipe clamp to attach the marker to the chain, so I can always replace dry markers.