Ophones in the streets of Malmö

During Malmöfestivalen, August 14-21, Unsworn Telecom offers festival-goers of all ages and preferences an unruly infrastructure for musical communication and co-creation.

After two days in the street, we’ve already heard teenagers regurgitating their childhood hardships, mad hatters improvising rampageous klezmer masterpieces, neighbours threatening to cut-the-cables-if-the-racket-doesn’t-stop-immediately, subtle bicycle-bell interferences, and a friend lovingly turning his rent bill into a crumpled lump in the process of composing a paper-crackling poem.

Ophoniste Grand Prix 2009

The last Friday of the Festival, August 21 at 9pm, new ophone-virtuosos will battle it out with local rockstars, noisemakers and loopaholics at a sparkling, juried event hosted by Unsworn Telecom suits: Ophoniste Grand Prix 2009.

Ophones and Ophonestations?

Ophonestation Malmö is a group of public loop-machines:ophones. Each ophone is made up of a speaker with an attached telephone receiver. By depressing a button on the receiver, ophonists can record sounds which are repeated forever, until another sound is recorded into the same ophone.

The Ophonestation is a space for collaborative and playful sonic experiments that blurs the border of passers-by, composers, musicians and audience. Ophonists from Tokyo to Brösarp have for the last five years created everything from minimal mumbling-poetry to massive chants and rump-shaking beat infernos.