Terracotta Switchboard was inspired by telephone operator interfaces of the early 1900’s. The telephone operator of days past occupied, what I perceive, as a formerly essential but now automated role in society. The operator possessed a position of agency in a liminal space between calls. In Terracotta Switchboard, I give a similar role of agency to participants/performers, by allowing them to pull sounds out of the ether via electromagnetic induction. Each ceramic form has copper woven through it, playing a recording I have previously made. Only when the performer/participant brings a microphone into the ceramic form, can the sound from that recording be heard.