The Gold Phone: A Bridge Between Past and Present, though Voicemail

The Gold Phone is an iconic analogue payphone that has been digitised to act as a medium for reflecting, inspiring, and capturing conversations in the form of spoken word voicemails. Like a poem, a voicemail is a globally recognised medium, simple and raw, capturing a moment in time.

We all remember those voicemails we saved for our loved ones, those voicemails we never knew if they were opened. During COVID, my mum, who works in the youth justice space, told me that barristers and solicitors were receiving a huge volume of calls from youth detention centres as they increased the allowed time for call outs. The heartbreaking thing for me was that many of the kids had no one to call, so they called their legal representatives for human connection.

In a world where information is abundant, judgment instantaneous, and human connection at an all-time low, could we use a payphone to connect people in unlikely ways and form meaningful messages with people from all walks of life?

The Gold Phone works by the participant picking up the phone and pressing "follow on." The unit dials a number and a recording is played. You are then asked to leave a message, which is recorded on a backend system. There is a beautiful, reflective pace to this process.

On the backend, we can listen to the voicemails and upload any message. We can then clip the voicemails to create an audio series. The Gold Phone can also be called, and someone can pick it up and cha

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Mixed Medium Artwork

The Gold Phone is made of orange acrylic, metal, analogue engineering, and is hacked with modern tech.

The Approach

Ever since I was a child, I loved pulling things apart. When this project came to mind, I went on a marketplace and found this payphone. I purchased it from an old collector who said, "Look after it; it’s a special one." He told me the keys had been lost, so it could not be opened.

I took it home and looked at it for a few weeks. It was sturdy, and I reflected on all the calls that would have taken place on it. I felt weird picking up the phone and hearing nothing—it was lifeless.

I spoke to some technical friends, who told me it was an ambitious project. First of all, I had to get it open.

So, I got a drill out and things got real. I thought it would be simple to drill the locks out.

This thing was so well built.

It was like surgery.

I got the locks out, but it still would not open.

I then found this incredible mechanism inside that, when pushed back by the lock, released four locks and the lid came off.

My first moment looking inside, I was like, "Fuck!" It was the most incredible engineering—coin mechanisms, counters, separate user and tech functions.

I delicately removed some components and tried to understand how it all worked.

It sat on my desk for weeks—I would just stare at the components and think about it.

I reached out to some friends, in particular, a long-time school friend and fellow Italian, Stephen Pozzi. Stephen and I discussed ways to bring this phone back to life. We had a few sessions dreaming up options for a microcontroller, Arduino, and different shields.

Another friend, Brad Andersen, shared the idea of using a GSM dialler used in alarm systems—he gifted me one.

I came home one night, excited to try it out. It didn’t work—it was 3G, which is being phased out, and still needed additional hardware.

Then the idea came—why don’t I use a new modern digital phone and operate on that?

It was 8:55, and I rushed off to Officeworks. I found a TP-Link 4G router that would spit out a telephone output and purchased a digital phone.

I got home and was buzzing, but the phone was not yet.

I set up the router and got it connected to 4G.

I connected the digital phone to the router—it worked perfectly.

I then got to work reverse engineering the digital phone and attaching it to the Gold Phone.

I opened the digital phone—it was plastic, light, and had two circuit boards and was pretty lifeless compared to the Gold Phone.

I started by pulling the handset apart and finding the microphone and speaker outputs—I was unsure if they would have enough power to connect to the old one. I just soldered it. I picked up the Gold Phone—it had a dial tone! It was so cool to hear sound coming through!

I wanted to use the memory function on the digital phone to automatically call a VOIP number. I was unsure if, when the unit was power-cycled, it would forget—I tested it and it didn’t. Great success.

My last hurdle was getting the buttons to work. I pulled the cover off the digital phone’s buttons—there were no physical switches. They were conductive pressure pads that needed to all be pressed to make a circuit. I could not work it out—I was tired and gave up.

A few weeks later, I got to work on marrying the analogue and digital phones at the farm. I had a great afternoon with a new multimeter, trying to find the pattern of outputs from the digital keypad. I found it!

I connected it up to the analogue keypad. I could press buttons on the Gold Phone now, and it controlled the digital phone! Stephen arrived at the farm, and we got to work with finalising the hang-up button—we then made the first call.

We picked up the orange handset and pressed “follow on.” It dialled and rang! It was surreal!

We then got to work cutting and trimming the digital phone to fit inside the Gold Phone. It was like delicately shaving a brain to fit.

We passed the power for the Gold Phone through the original cable and closed it all back up—it worked perfectly!

The Gold Phone is now a living analogue and digital phone that marries the old and new. It takes the ancient medium of conversation and allows people to record and connect in an intimate and asynchronous medium of voicemails.

You can find out more here (https://www.act.place/the-gold-phone)