Cell Phone Megaphone

2005-
PCB, plastic, electronics,
cellular telephone, paper.
Dimensions variable

The cell phone megaphone is a low-tech, DIY version of the anonymous speech project One Free Minute.

Building the cell phhone megaphone (CPM) circuit allows you to turn your cellphone -a device designed for private, individual-to-individual conversations- into a device for anonymous public announcements, sound interventions and disruptions.

Like One Free Minute, the idea behind the CPM is to investigate how communication in public space has been, and can be, altered by technology. Whereas cellular phone technology has increasingly created mobile private spaces in the public realm, metering human interaction in billed by the minute increments, the CPM seeks to return the public soundscape to the voices of its callers.

Files

In the interest of sharing, hacking and uncontrolled variations and derivatives, the shcematics and PCB production files for CPM are rleased under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike License:

Files: Version 1 (hand assembled) 2005

• A crude hand-drawn schematic for Version 0
• A hand-drawn schematic for Version 1

Files: Version 2 (with custom PCB) 2009

• Eagle CAD generated schematic for Version 2
• Zipped package of Eagle and Gerber files for version 2

If you make a variant of this circuit, send it to me and I'll try to post it here.

Exhibition History:

• Version 1 was shown as part of the Triennial of American Design at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York.