If I was still making music I would
have done this myself sooner or later 'cause I always thought about
the possibility of creating something musical with today's most
widespread and intimate piece of technology of the Western world:
the cellular phone. Apparently somebody did it before me and
considering that somebody is 29 years old computer whiz Golan Levin,
32 years old sound designer Scott Gibbons from Lilith and sound
artist Gregory Shakar, they did it much better than I ever could
have done or thought. Anyway the day I never thought would come, the
day major phone network providers and manufactures sponsor a
Staalplaat record, has arrived: 200 people in the audience, 3 sound
designers, 9 additional technicians, 200+ phones, 200 discrete
channels of patched audio and a computer system that could trigger
the sounds of these portable phones and play new custom-composed
ring tones distributed via SMS (one of the many features that the
shitty American wireless networks don't provide) before the concert.
An audio-video matrix system allowed the creators of this amazing
project to individually trigger (call!) these cell phones 8000 times
in 30 minutes and at the same time light up the person whose handy
is ringing in the audience and project a dot of light on two wide
screens, while everything is also reflected by a 36foot/12meters
wide mirror diagonally spanning from the stage to the ceiling above
the people... A surreal third millennium scenario in which people
can explore the sonic possibilities offered by the musical
instruments, sort of an un-complete synthesizer, that one in ten
people in the world have been half-unconsciously carrying around for
the past decade in an ensemble context. Musically we are talking
about a carefully choreographed cacophony of cell phone ring tones
and dial tones producing everything from polyphonic drones sounding
like a cello or a church organ hovering above the audience's ambient
noise (coughing, laughing, talking, moving...) to sparkly mellow
spatial chords sounding like frogs, birds, crickets or other bugs in
the wilderness; from actual and logical electronic music improvised
compositions with melodies to the loud cacophony of 60 (the maximum)
hand-held devices ringing contemporaneously that you would only
wanna be running away from if you were in the same room. Everything
in between the two ends of the sonic spectrum is uncharted territory
for new creations. The concert consists of three "movements": in the
first one the audience's 200 un-amplified phones ring in various
configurations; in the second one Scott Gibbons plays a solo on a
small number of amplified phones (he prefers Siemens ;-); while in
the third section the staff's phones dialogue with the audience's
phone like a soloist would with an orchestra. The whole thing was
recorded and shot on the 2nd of September 2001 at the big and
beautiful Brucknerhaus Auditorium in Linz, Austria (as part of the
TAKEOVER: the 2001 Ars Electronica Festival) and then again with a
99-piece audience from May 28th to June 6th at the Arteplage Mobile
de Jura in Murten and Biel, Switzerland (jeeez, I can't believe I am
Swiss and I missed it!!!). Of course such performance could only
take place in Europe, where the GSM network (G for global), as
opposed to the lousy CDMA digital network of the States), allows for
much greater flexibility and creativity. As an owner of a cell phone
I belive you must buy this CD to become aware of the unexplored
potential of this modern appliance and to start pushing the envelope
yourself, for this could easily become a new musical sub-genre in
the coming years (maybe we'll have Dj's and Cj's -
cellphone-jockeys!)... The CD comes in a nice digipack with a thick
booklet stuffed with information and also has a CD-ROM section with
loads of hi quality pictures, four mp3 files, a video of the
concert, video interviews with its creators, links to various
interesting websites and to the websites of the people involved in
this outstanding project and a lot of written technical and
philosophical material about the concept. One of the most
forward-thinking records of this year! Definitely highly recommended
buy!!! For more info check out http://www.telesymphony.com/ and if
that doesn't work point your browser to
http://www.flong.com/telesymphony. |