While historians, technicians and anthropologists typically read the markings on telephone poles for information on the class, max load, height, species, preservative used, X&Y coordinates, installation date, and date of last inspection, the discovery of small items attached to certain posts has led the Bureau of Objects to see them differently.
analysis from The Department of Re-Archaeology
Initial research by Steve Milton of the Department of Re-Archaeology suggests the objects attached to these poles may be talismans placed by an undetermined society to protect the poles, ensure fertility and strengthen their function as conduits for other spiritual forces. However, conflicting research from Matilda Rupertson, suggests the objects are tokens signifying noteworthy poles, placed by a community of telephone pole admirers - perhaps an unsanctioned offshoot of the well-known Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society.
Reading from the Department of Myths & Ballads
The Department of Myths & Ballads sees the telephone poles as chance-derived visual poems. While the department’s members generally agree that these poems should be read from bottom to top, they disagree on their interpretations of both the grammar and subject matter of these poems. Marcel Yorik believes that the objects, letters and numbers are relics of past conversations that once passed over these telephone lines. The pole is the blank page and the objects and labels are the words (figure 1). For Maxine Saunders, the material circumstance of the pole is the primary medium and critical for the poem’s interpretation. Her reading focuses on the overall shape, size and proximity of the applied elements as moments in the life of the tree that now exists as a telephone pole (figure 3). Ever the contrarian, Joan Thievesdale sees the poles as simply fractured rifts in the continuous string of objects that make up the surrounding landscape (figure 2).
