Late last year, I helped run the University of Sydney annual graduation exhibition for the Architecture faculty. One of the things I was responsible for was helping set up an "artistic" installation. Architects have strange concepts of what is and isn't art, and apparently an isolated network of eight rotary phones qualifies.
The concept was simple: throw eight hipster phones around with a few numbers and see what happens. You could call each other around the building. I'm sorry, were you expecting more? Nope. That's art for you.
It did, however, give me an opportunity to learn the basics of traditional phone systems - from things like pulses, tones, VOIPs, PABX, switchboards, right down to the physical labour of installing more than 200 meters of phone cable across a building.
On the night itself, I'm happy to say that the installation (in both the technical and artistic sense) was a success. I've never heard such creative instant role playing or even inappropriate words said to would-be employers.
... I wonder how long I can keep that phone network running before people realise it's not a legitimate part of their system?