Call This Number! Odd Instrument Telephone Speaker

Call +4790369389 to have your voice blasted into the luscious lands of Norway!

Telemegaphone Dale is a 23-foot-tall wind-powered loudspeaker sculpture that picks up incoming calls and projects them into the nearby surroundings. This Telemegaphone, created by the Swedish designers at Unsworn Industries, is located on a mountain overlooking the village of Dalsfjord in Western Norway. Apparently, a “massive” amount of people have been calling. The sculpture is only “available” when the wind is blowing and the line isn’t busy.

Nice!

“When you dial the Telemegaphone’s phone number the sound of your voice is projected out across the fjord, the valley and the village of Dale below. No answer? Telemegaphone Dale is wind powered and self-reliant. Recently however, the weather has been exceptionally calm in Dale and there has been a massive amount of people calling.”

Update (9/7/08):

One woman remarked, “This is great. I will sit on my porch with a cup of tea and listen to the world.”

The video below is of the opening ceremony - a call from Brooklyn, NY by sound artist Bora Yoon who played his 5-minute “Telemegaphone Concerto.” The performance was recorded from 2 miles away from the Telemegaphone so turn up your volume!

I will be posting actual comments and feedback, the good and bad , from the villagers of Dale soon… please subscribe to my rss feed to stay updated.

Telemegaphone Dale

If you do/say/play anything remarkable, say it in the comments!

195 Responses to “Call This Number! Odd Instrument Telephone Speaker”

  1. Jabulon says:

    im from norway, never heard of this. but hope its real. dont think so, as such a project would get alot of media attention over here. could be tho. or it could be a scam to get cash

  2. Jeff says:

    im about to play “sweet transvestite” from rocky horror over it mwahahaha

  3. Weneolan says:

    A little more difficult to Photoshop this, I should think:

    http://www.vimeo.com/1514296

  4. buginafug says:

    I would love to see you get blasted by a Thunderbolt siren.

  5. Phoenix says:

    Rung up and played “Hey Jude” on my trumpet. Then said, “Hey y’all, from Mebane, North Carolina!”

    What fun, I wish there was a site so you could hear what they in norway hear.

  6. Sarah says:

    Im calling from canada but it didnt go through… do i need a country code or something? my rellies are in norway (:

  7. blah blah says:

    omg hellz yeah!!!!!

    but now i really wana rick roll a country…..

  8. Just me says:

    I played them What A Wonderful Day by Louis Armstrong.

  9. Lalo Márquez says:

    Wow! That’s a odd one. Thank you for sharing, I’ll write about the telemegaphone in my blog. Best regards.

  10. Northern hospitality says:

    I`m Norwegian and did a quick “google.no” search.
    I think the audience must make an effort in order to listen, it`s not like you`d wake anybody up..
    !!Newsflash!!—-> you don`t “rickroll” an entire country just because the speaker`s not located on American soil!!
    ,probably just some random tourist walking across some remote hill (and if so, what an awesomely random and unexpected experience.)

  11. Rashley says:

    So, here`s a video from the locals, responding to the very hilarious “rick-rolling”.

    [link removed by admin]

    but I`d suggest that you DO NOT click the link.

  12. kock boggler says:

    I rang then pressed my recall button and hung up… it’s permantnetly ringing me back now, shows over.

  13. Albert says:

    Oh my gosh. According to Sid, I just spent $1175

  14. fastpoke says:

    rules 1&2 ehjay
    I hope terrible things happen to you

  15. Ramtha says:

    -sigh- my phone was “not” permitted to make that phone call. What the hell is that noise?

    I was going to play them this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY

    LAME!

  16. Tobias says:

    Oh, that’s hillarious, haha.

    I’m Norwegian, and just found out where I’m going next weekend.

    I love those Norwegian sentences you’ve got there, even though they’re as auto-translated as they get
    Particularly those swearwords. The norwegian translations sound like cursing 200 years ago, hehe. Still kinda nice though.

  17. dtimoney says:

    useful!

  18. Anna says:

    Can someone please find the validity of this thing?

  19. Champ says:

    I Bababooeyed ‘em!

  20. ichats says:

    Thinking of calling them into a 1 hour conference call on really boring middle manager discussions…..

  21. DavidT says:

    I think I might play Rise of the Valkyrie mixed with an army walking. they will think it’s 1939 again lol. Only joking, thats a bit crude. But seriously i think we should get james earl jones to be either the voice of god or darth vader at about 4 in the morning!

  22. bambi says:

    i know a song that’ll get on your nerves…

  23. Anonymous says:

    we need a web cam on this thing with working sound from where the tower is…

  24. didley says:

    LOL i know everyone sais we aren’t in a recession but seriously look around.

  25. Anon says:

    Ladies and Gentlemen, I have just RickRolled the hell out of Norway.

  26. juggalo4life says:

    i played some insane clown posse and twiztid at full blast for about 20 minutes

  27. Ash says:

    according to

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misconceptions

    (which of course i’m not sure is that reliable)

    duck’s quacks do echo, but can sometimes not be heard under certain circumstances.

  28. smore658 says:

    this is a scam…it is not real…you are all idiots to believe this…

  29. bambi says:

    yes, but is it not more fun to just imagine that it does work than ruin people’s fun? bet you thought for a second about what you would do!

  30. Anonymous says:

    Except that it IS real, WIRED did an article on it, as well as many other sites. Just type ‘telemegaphone’ into Google search.

  31. Amanda says:

    I’m thinking about calling and reading selections from the Edda, and then asking for help on pronunciation!

  32. regular john says:

    Played Queens of the Stone Age - Medicine in full throttle @ them

  33. kyle says:

    so….why is it only up to september 20th? what happens after that? done for good?

  34. tyler says:

    @kyle, I think after Sept 20th, telemegaphone Dale will be done for good. That’s how installations work, they go up for a short while for people to enjoy, then they are disassembled and a new piece begins.

  35. Cathrine says:

    Yeah we do speake English here, very good English as well.

  36. Chris says:

    Now that it’s been established that English is understood in Norway, I think I’ll call up the telemegaphone from the speakerphone in the US House of Representatives. Those inanities might sound better when booming across the fjord!

  37. Theodore Gifford says:

    Wouldn’t “I Can Hear You” be a more appropriate TMBG song for this?

  38. Kjell says:

    Dude, English is compulsory in Norwegian schools. We speak, read and write it better than most other people who have English as a primary language due to better schools…

  39. anon says:

    http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bt.no%2Flokalt%2Fsf%2Farticle603711.ece&sl=no&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    translated ^_^

  40. juggalettefreek says:

    @ juggalo4life, i wish i would have seen this before october 31st i would have totally blasted some ICP to norway. spread the juggalo love.

  41. Forest says:

    Good stuff, looking forward to sticking around.

  42. E. says:

    I’m a norwegian. Please don’t use automatic translators. This translation makes no sense.

  43. Coulston says:

    This is an absolutely offensive concept. I only hope that its a joke. Why in the hell would you want to pollute the beautiful natural environment in Norway with the outside world - we are fucking up the natural world enough as it is. What we all need is a telemegaphone in our homes and offices piping in the natural sounds from the fjords.

  44. Aj says:

    I wonder if the locals find it annoying..

    I like being out in nature for the quiet, not the sounds of random morons calling up ranting about stuff.

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