Have you ever wondered what becomes of old phones when they’re replaced by newer technology? Sure, most end up in the proverbial scrap heap and become land fill. But some, perhaps the lucky ones, are given a new lease on life…
When client Delena emailed some of these photos to our office last week, I thought, “Grazing sheep made of old rotary telephones, how novel!” Then I wondered who, when, where…why? Well, I gathered a little information. But first, meet the rest of the herd…
Art, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. But it must first be a glimmer in the imagination of an artist. Apparently featured at the Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt, French artist Jean Luc Cornec’s Telephone Sheep were constructed of older model rotary telephones and their accompanying cords wrapped around sheep-formed understructures. The phone on the cradle strikingly resembles a head in this context with the melted and bent handsets creating hooves, and twisted handset cords resembling wool.
Pretty creative, especially displayed as though they’re grazing in a little “pasture”. The little herd even has its own black sheep (heh).
I wasn’t able to pin down exactly when the phonesheep were first exhibited, but these Flickr photo streams show they were photographed at least as early as 2002 (by Danny Howard) and were still being photographed in 2008.