We’ve been seeing a lot of art in, on, or related to phone booths recently. It makes sense — with cell phones, the structures are on the fast track to being completely obsolete, and being a rather large and awkward, they might as well be used to an artistic end. With that in mind, we’ve put together a brief survey of some of our favorite works of phone booth art from around the world. Some are functional, some are purely artistic, but all of them are interesting odes to an outdated but iconic mode of public communication. Click through to check out some weird and beautiful phone booths, and let us know if we missed any cool ones in your town in the comments.
The Japanese art collective known as Kingyobu (‘goldfish club’), made up largely of students from Kyoto University of Art and Design, has been installing these goldfish phone booth aquariums called Gold Tele, throughout Osaka, Japan as part of the city’s Canvas Project art festival. [via Laughing Squid]
But of course, Banksy’s famous murdered phone booth, Soho, London, 2006. [Photo via Artlet]
From Call Parade, an incredible and ambitious public art project in which 100 artists transformed 100 phone booths in São Paulo into original works of art. See more here. [Photo credit: Mariane Borgomani]
Renald, a street artist from Petrozavodsk, Russia, turns phone booths in his home town into sharks. [via English Russia]
A possibly non-functional phone booth from the 2010 U.S. National Ice Carving Championship in Fairbanks. [photo via]
A floating phone booth on Lake Victoria in Uganda. [photo via]
Benjamin Shine’s Box Lounger, part of the BT Artbox project in London. [photo via]
More from the BT Artbox project in London. [photos via]
Part of Paige Smith’s geode project in L.A. [photo via]
One of several “fun booths” in Toronto. [photo via]