Rotary Clocks

Years ago I turned an old rotary phone into a music player. I still use it, it’s a unique, and pleasant way of listening to music. I showed it to my neighbour once, and a few months ago she contacted me if I could make a custom phone for the Unread Book Club. This club was organising an exhibition around the books from the public library in Amsterdam that had never been lent out. There is a list of these books, the so called Zero List. I put this list into a phone. You can dial a number and then listen to the title, the author, and the date it was entered into the digital database. It’s still on display for a few more weeks, if you want to try it out. This assignment inspired me to make two more phones. Clock phones.

Speaking clocks

When I was young, in the Netherlands you could dial a number to listen to what time it was: If you dialed 002, a voice would tell you that at the next tone it is 11 hours, 34 minutes and 50 seconds … beep. I still remembered this number, being bored was an important part of my childhood.

The alternative Pix Clock Phone

Together with quite a few people I’ve been working on the Pix clock. A website that shows the correct time by showing pictures of clocks. I tried to make this clock as accessible as possible by writing alternative text descriptions for all pictures in this clock, more than 2000 of them. This is a very nice exercise, it forces me to take a closer look at each image. I remember images better now.

These alternative texts are read out to people who use a screen reader, and who visit the website. I don’t use a screen reader myself, but I wanted to enjoy these descriptions as well. So I put all these texts into a beautiful red rotary phone. Now when I dial 002 on this phone, I get to hear the description of an image that shows the correct time. It makes me ridiculously happy.

The alternative Literary Clock Phone

Another project I have been working on for years now is the brilliant Literary Clock, a project by Jaap Meijers. It shows the time on an old Kindle by showing a quote from a book that has the correct time stamp in it. The dataset was started by the Guardian, I think Jaap added quite a few books, and in the last few years I added lots and lots of quotes from all the books that I read to my own version of this clock. I have a few of these e-reader clocks at home, and they’re wonderful to look at. And now I also have a beautiful blue rotary phone with these quotes in it. So, when I dial 002 on this blue phone, a voice will read out a quote that has the correct time stamp in it.

And yes, the clock also works when you dial 117, 161, or 123, which were used in other countries. And if you dial 112 or another three digit emergency number it will tell you that if you have a real emergency you should try a different phone. You can also dial 067, which is the unicode number for the question mark to listen to an explanation about what you’re listening to.