This Building is a Machine for Conversation

In 2020, I was tasked with transforming a former telephone exchange into a living, breathing museum. Up until this point I had worked in major museums, but how would I approach creating one from scratch?

The museum had been conceived to respond to an inherited telecommunications collection. On a surface level, I found that the story of telecommunications was not all that compelling. Upon closer examination, I realised that communication, in its broadest sense, lies at the core of human existence. And that all of the technologies in the collection were developed in response to our fundamental human need to connect.

It quickly became apparent to me that this was going to be a technology museum, but not your usual science museum. Instead, it was going to be a museum that melded the technological side (what is it and how does it work) with the human side (who created/used/received it and why). It was at this nexus of humanity and technology that I started to lay the foundations for the vision of a new museum.

I wanted this museum to explore our relationship with technologies and the role they play in our lives by questioning our human and non-human relationships and asking whether the technologies of our future, reflect the biases of those who created them in the first place. Ethical exploration of the development of new technologies has never been more urgent, especially given the rapid pace at which they are developing.

Building a museum in lockdown

The journey to create the NCM began in lockdown in very strange times. I quickly assembled a multi-disciplinary team and we began to tease apart a brief for a new museum. Separated physically with only virtual collaboration tools at our disposal, the original mind map for the museum resembled less a museum and more something from John Nash’s brain in the film ‘A Beautiful Mind’.

With the enforced distance, we spent a long time reflecting on the role of a museum today and questioning how museums could exist in an era where contexts are rapidly and continuously shifting, and emerging technologies are radically disrupting the way in which audiences engage with content. We asked whether a museum could be conceived as a collaborative facility for ideas and exchange, that is also able to adapt to rapidly changing contexts and emerging technologies. How could we recontextualise the past to engage with critical ideas about the present and future?

Embracing failure and imperfection

The inherited NCM collection was an assortment of forgotten relics of technological ambition mingled with moments of grandeur and folly. What I loved most when viewing the collection were the perspectives of the people who acquired the objects that shone through. It was not a collection with an academic or anthropological lens, but a deeply personal collection that reflected the intimate perspectives of the technicians in the field, with their personal photo albums, logbooks, tools and instruments.

Many museums choose to highlight significant achievements and success stories from days past, but the NCM collection reflected failed technologies like the computerphone that we seemed to have by the pallet-load.

The failed technologies quickly became more interesting than the successful ones. Were they ahead of their time? Did they lie dormant and re-emerge sometime later in a different guise? Like the Virtual Boy VR headset. How did this speak to cycles of innovation and obsolescence and how could we re-imagine them? From abandoned prototypes to once-revolutionary gadgets gathering dust, each artefact told a story of innovation, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of connection.

When considered together, the macro view of the collection is what I find most compelling. Together, these objects are mundane and ubiquitous tools of communication, but it was our universal embrace of these technologies that gave them their ubiquity. Because of this, we have a unique opportunity to speak to our collective experiences and shared narratives.

From the virtual to the real

The NCM inhabits a historical 1939 telephone exchange in Hawthorn, Melbourne, parts of which are still operational. Positioning a new museum within a working building ties the museum to a tangible past. On our first visit, post-pandemic, it felt as if much of the site had been abandoned, but the remnants of human traces that once made this exchange a hive of activity were still very much present. The main distribution frame that once connected thousands of voices was still in situ and commanded a presence. Workers' tools remained scattered around, coffee tins hung off the ladders for easy cigarette disposal, and the etchings into the walls provided clues of the characters that may have once inhabited this place.

This historical snapshot reflected perhaps a simpler time, when two voices were manually connected with intent. Not so today - now it seems we are trying to find (as Erling Kagge would put it) silence in the age of the noise.

Seeing and experiencing heritage technologies reminds us that the introduction of new technologies and the process of automation has been part of our existence for a long time. So too has the pervasive fear of the unknown. It wasn’t that long ago that people feared the introduction of the printing press – with people protesting, destroying the machines and chasing merchants out of town. Is this the same brand of fear we are currently seeing with the mass adoption of AI tools? Is this really the most significant existential threat to humankind we have encountered from technology?

Before a working exchange existed on our museum site, it was and still is, Wurundjeri land. When we think about the technology industry, there are many loaded words that describe outdated and Eurocentric models. Terms such as ‘innovation’, ‘technology’ and ‘progress’ that imply old fashioned notions of nation building and fail to recognise that communication technologies have been in existence in Australia for thousands of years.

It is fitting that the Walert Murrup or Possum Spirits will launch the NCM experience, welcoming you into the museum and signifying Kulin ways of communicating, learning and knowing. This incredible installation by Jarra Karalinar Steel will remind us of ancient knowledge systems and how the Walert Murrup have been the travellers carrying the Elders knowledge of language, cultural histories, and lore.

The NCM is an ongoing conversation

Exploring challenging ideas doesn’t have to be boring and overly didactic. We spent a lot of time talking with communities about technology during lockdown. Some told us that the rate of technological change and the manner in which new technologies were infiltrating their lives made them feel like they had a loss of agency. Overwhelmingly, people wanted to understand how society was changing and why.In response to this, our Experience Developer, Zoe Meagher, crafted a poetic experience statement that guided the development of the opening exhibitions:

By cracking open the everyday, the Exchange invites visitors to both understand what already surrounds them and imagine future possibilities.

We set about cracking open the every day and examining our relationships with current and emerging technologies to uncover how they were changing our socio political landscape. But how would we actually engage visitors in topics that were at times quite confronting? We conceived the museum as a machine for conversation. Using the tools of communication technologies themselves, content is unlocked through gestures, actions, words, and choices. Bespoke chat interfaces engage audiences with the omnipresent and disembodied voice of the museum, empowering them to navigate their own experience and choose what interests them. Here is a sneak peak of one of our early prototypes.

NCM will straddle culture and technology, fostering risk-taking and talent development in emerging technologies. A dynamic and changing program will launch with an exhibition exploring a personal mode of engagement with the instruments of Surveillance. We invite makers into the museum, to expand our facility and play with the potential of our connected future.

Ultimately, we are a technology museum, so there will be robots, there will be AI interactives, and yes, there will be a lot of telephones. But there will also be a mid-century sitting room with the lovingly restored original Speaking Clock from the 1950s in dialogue with a contemporary robot visitor named Diamandini. She’s part of an international robotic research project. We can’t wait to see you join in the conversation when we open in September.