Part steampunk, part Michel Gondry papercraft, we immediately fell for this fold-it-yourself gramophone. It's called the Jónófón after its creator, Jón Hólmgeirsson, a design student at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Taking a cue from a Scandinavian company we won’t name here, the Jónófón is assembled from a series of flat cutouts -- thin plywood for the base and thick paper for the horn, with a needle and a power source.
How does it sound? A bit raw, as you might expect, but the texture of the paper “colors” the music, according to Hólmgeirsson. We’ll have to wait to try it out; he hasn’t announced a release date.
Hólmgeirsson didn't know how a turntable worked until he started researching it for this project. "I’m trying to communicate how the player works," he says. "And to be able to communicate that, I had to understand it first. So simple was the way to go." In the age of the MP3, his contraption strips down the process of building a music player and simplifies the technology.
By building it yourself -- it takes 20 to 30 minutes, says Hólmgeirsson -- you see up close how it works and how little you really need to play music.
All it takes is a paper horn and some good vibrations.
