An idea I want to build

Phonos: sit on the grass and hear another park, live.

A network of live audioscapes connecting public spaces across the globe — where the sounds of distant parks merge, and conversations arise that tie strangers together across borders.

An axonometric drawing of a gold dome set flush into a patch of grass, with a man standing beside it and a woman sitting on the ground next to it — Concept drawing · a single Phonos, set into the ground — carrying a park on the other side of the world

What it is

A gold dome set flush into the ground, about the size of something you would sit beside. It carries the live sound of another public place somewhere else in the world — traffic, birds, footsteps, a market, rain on a roof. Not a recording, and not a broadcast. That place, as it sounds right now.

There is nothing to operate and no screen to look at. You notice it, you go over, you sit down, and you are somewhere else.

Not a recording. The other place, as it sounds right now.

The network

Every Phonos can connect to every other Phonos.

A park in one city, a museum forecourt in another, a courtyard in a third. Any two can be paired, and the pairing changes.

The schedule is public — online, and on a panel at the installation itself — so you can see where you are listening to, and come back when it is somewhere you want to hear.

Phonos can also be added to the existing global Portals network, which already has the sites and the connections in place.

An axonometric drawing of three separate places in three different countries — a park, a museum forecourt and a walled courtyard — each with a gold dome set into the ground, linked by curving gold lines — Concept drawing · an example pairing, three countries at once

At the scale of a park

One place can hold several, each listening somewhere different.

Scattered across a lawn, the domes become a way to wander the world on foot: sit at one and you are in Mexico City, move to the next and you are in Borneo.

An axonometric drawing of a single park lawn with six gold domes set into the grass, each one listening to a different country, and people sitting, lying and walking between them — Concept drawing · one lawn, six domes, six countries

How it behaves

Ambient by default. Conversational when someone wants it.

Listening: Most of the time a Phonos is simply on, carrying the ambient sound of the other place to anyone passing.
Talking: When two people notice each other across it, listening becomes a conversation — without either of them having to operate anything.
Knowing: A public display shows where this Phonos is connected now, and where it will be connected next.
Consent: The installation tells people they are entering a live audio environment, before they are in it.

What it has to do

The hard part is the hardware.

An exploded axonometric drawing of the dome: the gold shell, a gasket ring, a ring of drivers, a mounting collar, and a buried equipment vault on a gravel bed with conduit running out to one side — Concept drawing · shell, driver ring, buried vault

Work indoors or outdoors.
Stay on 24 hours a day, for years, unattended.
Be controlled remotely.
Convey ambient sound clearly.
Show, publicly and simply, where it is connected.
Tell people they are entering a live audio environment.
Ideally, convey voice clearly enough for conversation.
Ideally, keep capture and playback contained, so the sound belongs to the spot rather than the whole block.

Solid: required · Dotted: desirable

Where it belongs

Places where people already stop.

Parks, museums, libraries and courtyards — somewhere a person is already willing to sit down for a minute. These are the kinds of places I would want to start with, not commitments.

A design museum · New York A centre for digital culture · Mexico City A library · Mosul A contemporary art space · Paris An arts and heritage school · Kabul A national park · Borneo

What I need

Someone who can build the dome.

This is an idea, not a product. Nothing here is built yet. The concept is simple; the engineering is not — an outdoor speaker and microphone that survives years in the ground, sounds good enough to carry a distant park, and keeps its audio roughly where you put it.

If you make audio hardware, run a park or a museum or a public space, work on public installations, or fund work like this — and you want to help make it real — get in touch.

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