Play It By Ear is an interactive sound sculpture inviting a neighbourhood to talk to itself.
13 short-distance telephones connect people across Butler Memorial Park in Edmonton/Amiskwaciwâskahikan.
Coming in Autumn 2023!
How do we connect with people far away? How do we “tune-in” to someone else’s world? How can we learn to hear and understand each other better?
We designed Play It By Ear at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, in a time marked by social distancing and self-isolation when methods of bridging the distance between people suddenly felt more important than ever. We chose everyday telephones as a symbol of connection (Why Telephones? Read more here).
When we began our process of developing a new public artwork for Butler Memorial Park, we were thinking about movement, separation, difference, and the in-between, which ultimately led us towards objects of connection. What do we share? Where is our common ground? How can we learn to hear each other more clearly?
Play It By Ear is a sound-based installation of 13 short-distance telephones connecting people across Butler Memorial Park. Brightly coloured telephone pillars will be placed throughout the park, each pair connected by looping ‘land lines’ curling underfoot. The thirteenth phone will ‘rotary dial’ all the other phones in the park.
Play It By Ear uses the symbol of traditional household telephones to speak to our innate human desire for connection. Park visitors can pick up any telephone to be connected to one of several possibilities:
- a phone will ring elsewhere in the park and a someone will pick up
- if nobody picks up, a recorded message will begin to play
- you will be invited to leave a voicemail (a story, a thought, an idea or observation)
The phones invite playful possibilities for encounter through an invisible network of connections that mirrors the community of West Jasper Place.
Telephones are an analogy for the maintenance of long-distance relationships, a way of connecting across vast geographic distance. Technology has extended our reach beyond our wildest dreams, but sometimes leaves us wanting for a more analog connection. On the other hand, public parks have always been a place for us to share space together – despite all our other differences.
We decided to use traditional rotary-style telephones (rebuilt from weather-resistant materials) because when we first visited Butler Memorial Park, we realized how many people use it as an outdoor living room. The benches are like couches and the pathways are like hallways. We wanted to create a positive and playful addition to this domestic park by using telephones as points of connection between people who might not talk otherwise.
We were thinking about play for all ages. Many seniors visit Butler Memorial Park on a daily basis. How do seniors play? One of the ways is through banter and conversation. Many seniors use telephones as playful devices for keeping in touch with family, calling their friends, hearing the latest gossip, or learning the news.
The importance of the telephone was affirmed during the pandemic, when people couldn’t see each other face-to-face. We imagine friends calling each other across the park as if they were using walkie-talkies. We imagine kids talking to seniors. We imagine stories, recorded by neighbours and left as voicemails for others to listen to.
The park speaks to itself, in its own voice.
Play It By Ear is a way of connecting radically different people for a moment of fun, silliness, nostalgia, conversations, and encounters.
We wanted to make sure there was space for participation. As part of the project, we are inviting members of the community to call our phone line and share stories of home, or submit a photo of a place that feels like home.
877-516-2990
The photos will be collected, and the most interesting images will become flat-pack dioramas in a round window where the rotary dial of the telephones would normally be. These windows will be rear-lit at night, and people can peer down into them – like little windows into your world. These scenes are meant to reference home and highlight the domestic feeling of the park.
Similarly, the voicemails will be collected and edited into new recordings you will be able to hear on the telephones in the park. Pick up a phone and (if nobody picks up) you may hear the voice of your neighbour.
Who do you still call on the telephone? Can “retro” technology make public space feel more like home? How do you keep in touch with people near and far?
Is it possible to turn strangers into neighbours through moments of casual conversation?
We’ll play it by ear…
This project was commissioned by the Edmonton Arts Council and The City of Edmonton for Butler Memorial Park in West Jasper Place.
Play It By Ear is located on Treaty 6 Territory, home to Indigenous peoples including the Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibway/ Saulteaux/Anishinaabe, Inuit, and many others. We listen to these landlines with curiosity, gratitude, and a desire for better connections between all Treaty people.
Play It By Ear 