Time Travel via Phone Box Is Possible Thanks to NYC’s New Museum

Many museums say they're taking you 'travelling in time', but New York's adventurous New Museum has found an unusual way to displace you by 20 years. Their new project titled Recalling 1993 is transforming 5000 of the city's pay phones into time machines where people can escape reality and make calls 20 years into NYC's past.

Until May 26, city dwellers and visitors can easily pick up any pay phone, dial 1-855-FOR-1993 and hear a recording about what was happening 20 years ago in that specific location. The installation was proposed by ad agency Droga5 and was inspired by the museum's exhibition NYC 1993 Experimental Jet, Set, Trash and No Star, which encapsulates the year in art. They describe it as "a pivotal year that began to shape the New York we know today".

The stories on these geolocated time machines are told by New Yorkers to New Yorkers, including WNYC's Brian Lehrer, the Village Voice's Michael Musto, renowned chef Mario Batali, iconic trash TV presenter Robin Byrd and many others. You can hear a few select samples at the Recalling 1993 website.

It's always great to see initiatives that take museum-goers beyond the building and into the streets. But this project's single masterstroke must be the way it revives the near-obsolete pay phone for one last hurrah. We'd be so bemused to pick up the receiver of one these days, it seems right there'd be a voice from the past waiting inside to connect.

Via Inhabitat.