Born before the year 2000? You may remember a time when phone booths, internet cafes and MSN Messenger were the norm. But a new museum in Melbourne is treating those old-timey communication tools as relics.

The National Communication Museum (NCM) opened in Hawthorn on Saturday September 21. Its mission is to explore the relationship between humanity and technology, and what’s in store for the future.

“The rate of technological advancement and change increases almost by the day, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence,” says NCM artistic director and co-CEO Emily Siddons. “It’s never been more important to have a dedicated museum that questions our relationship with technologies, and the role they play in our lives.”

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Housed in a former 1930s telephone exchange building, the museum has two levels of interactive exhibits. In its permanent exhibition is a fully interactive cyber cafe from the ’90s; its computers can be used to surf the web, play retro games and chat on MSN Messenger.

There’s also Lone Phone, a single payphone in a neon-lit space with an accompanying soundscape. Put the phone to your ear, punch in some numbers, and a mysterious voice might tell you a secret.

Then there’s an enormous telephone switchboard, which visitors can interact with via rotary phones. Plus, a Morse code telegraph key and the burger phone from the movie Juno.

The museum itself took four years to open, a time which, as NCM’s other co-CEO Anna Prenc points out, has covered an interesting period for digital communication. “Communication technologies are not just tools, but profound agents of societal evolution,” she says in a statement. “In the time it’s taken for NCM to open, Chat GPT was developed, launched and now has over 185 million users worldwide.”

The museum’s first art installation is called Our Seasons by Jarra Karalinar Steel, an artist of Boonwurrung, Wemba Wemba and Trawlwoolway descent. The striking, multicoloured sculptures cascade down the walls of the museum’s entrance, introducing visitors to Kulin ways of knowing, learning, and communicating.

“It utilises this creature I created a couple of years ago, which is called Walert Murrup, a part of my future-folklore work,” says Steel, speaking at the museum’s opening. “The Walert Murrup carry knowledge and identity and healing and law with them.”

As visitors ascend the stairs to the first floor of the museum, they’ll encounter another striking installation, Hyperthread, created by artist Rel Pham. The walkway of digital screens explores the hidden infrastructures that make our digital communications feel seamless.

“The main inspiration is to explore human conversation,” says Pham. “We have titanic infrastructure that creates online spaces, and we can send messages at breakneck speeds. What was really interesting to me were these ideas of what people are allowed to do online, or what they’re allowed to say.”

In a smaller exhibition room, visitors can listen to the speaking clock – the telephone-
accessed audio clock that was once a mainstay of telecommunications in Australia before it
was decommissioned in 2019. You’ll hear the familiar voice of radio broadcaster Gordon Gow, while a humanoid robot, Diamandini, moves around creating her own sounds in response.

Diamandini was outshone at the museum’s opening day by the world’s first robot citizen Sophia. Visitors were encouraged to take selfies with her and ask about her favourite exhibits. If you missed it, hopefully Sophia will pop by again in the future.

Siddons says the celebrity encounter was designed to prompt audiences to consider the role AI plays in all our lives, “and how we will develop ethical human-robot relationships for our future”.

National Communication Museum
375 Burwood Road, Hawthorn

Hours:
Wed to Sun 10am–5pm

ncm.org.au