Telesymphony: Music for Cellphones

Written by Brien Rullman Saturday, 07 September 2002 00:00

"Dialtones: A Telesymphony" is a composition written for 200 (+/-) cell phones. We gave twoperformances of the piece at the ARS Festival in Linz (Austria) this last September, and there are additional performances tentatively scheduled for the near future as well. For the ARS performances, we had a rather large support team assembled, and many collaborators from a technical aspect. All total, it's hard to say for certain, but I think perhaps 20 people were vital to the project's success.

Golan Levin was the project leader. Each person contributed a lot, but Golan is the person who really made it all happen. He wrote the software which served as an interface between the performers (Golan, Greg & myself) and the cell phones, which were held by the audience. By the way - I understand there have been some other concerts this year involving cell phones, but ours is the only one that used the audience's cell phones. It wasn't an easy feat!

Greg Shakar & I developed the ringtones and much of the composition. Of course our roles weren't so strictly defined, and there was a lot of work behind the scenes in which we were all trying to help out wherever we could. There was a lot of database management that Greg & I were doing for example, and Yasmin spent a couple months developing the middleware. Much of our work on this project was not the least bit glamorous!

Brien Rullman: How did it start and who came up with the general idea and concepts? Did the project change or evolve throughout the project or did you have specific goals and stick to it?

Golan came up with the general concept and focused everyone's input into the final product. But each of us had a strong voice, and people familiar with any one of us would recognize our individual input in the finished work.

The piece didn't really change over time so much as it developed. At the beginning, there was simply the idea to create a piece of music using cell phones. From there, it became more embellished and specific. The more we learned about the technology, we were able to find opportunities to play with specific features and glitches.

BR: What was your approach and process to the music?

Most importantly, we knew from the very beginning that we didn't want to modify the phones in any way. The primary challenge that we gave ourselves was to create a piece of music FOR cell phones. There's a current trend to make music with modified devices - Gameboys, Speak & Spells, PDA's, etc - we didn't want to fall into that category. Also, we felt it important that the audiences' own cell phones be used, which meant that we couldn't prepare the phones in any way other than to upload our own ringtones to them. So the composition really fell into two processes: writing the specific ringtones, and then composing the sequential ringing of the phones.

First we had to create the ringtones, which was something of a challenge. There are very restrictive limits to the range, duration and dynamics of a ringtone, because of the very simple code in which the the data is written. We couldn't just create a bunch of rings that we liked. We needed some basic sounds that were useful for composing. We needed rhythms, melodies, diversity, and of course a few funny little sounds.

We also had to approach the piece spatially, because in essence we had 200 discreet channels of audio! So we had the ringtones distributed in such a way that we could create spatial patterns - both sonically and visually. The computer interface was a grid, which represented the audience. These were projected on screens on either side of the stage. And above the stage was a mirror, big enough to reflect the entire audience. When a phone was dialed from the computer, a spotlight focused on the person whose phone was ringing. So everyone in the audience could not only hear, but also see - in this mirror - the spatial element of the composition.

BR: As for working with the phones themselves, what were your limitations and freedoms?

There was a large degree of randomness that we had to account for in the piece. Because of network delays, our initial tests found that it took anywhere from 4 to 15 seconds for a phone to actually ring after the number was dialed. So, any kind of precision was impossible; we had to have a wide fudge factor! Also, we were only able to program ringtones on some of the phones. A fair number had ringtones that were unknown to us. On these, we didn't know if they would give a simple beep or play the theme from the Simpsons.

Also, we were composing the music at the same time that we were working through all of the software and hardware issues. It wasn't until a few days before the concert that we were actually able to hit a button and ring a bunch of phones! So we had no idea what the music was actually going to sound like until... well, actually, until the night of the performance.

BR: Did you discover any new applications for this work, such as functions or frequencies of the phones that you were not aware of?

In addition to the phones in the audience, we had 7 phones on a little platform on stage which I played manually. We used their hands-free output to route the audio to a small PA. The nuances of the different oscillators became much more noticeable when they were amplified like this! I noticed that the Siemens had a nice dark buzzy sound to them for example, while the Nokias were much more clipped and hollow sounding. Also, we got some lower frequencies coming out of the hands-free output, which was really nice since all of the phones in the audience were pitched so high.

BR: In presenting the work were you successful in its transmission? What was some feedback that you recieved? Any press or reviews?

Yeah, this project was very media-friendly! There were write-ups in the NY Times, Art Byte... lots of radio and TV play. Something about the concept generated a lot of excitement. This was somewhat damning though, as it meant that we had to be really creative to go beyond people's initial excitement of the concept. We didn't want the piece to be a novelty act; our intention from the beginning was to create the best piece of music that we could, working within this framework. And from the feedback we received, yeah, I think we were successful in that. I certainly think it could have been more interesting musically, if we had for example used some studio wizardry to add more diversity to the sound. But in excluding that possibility, there was a deeper integrity to the piece.

BR: How was the Ars Electronica festival? Was your piece typical?

There is nothing typical about the ARS Festival! This year there was a piece where brainwaves from a fish's brain were used to direct a pen on paper to generate art. In this same spot the year before, was an exhibit of internet porn queen Natacha Merritt. The common themes of the festival are art and technology, but beyond that - expect anything from dance, music, design... installations, interactive works, performance...

The website for the project is www.telesymphony.com.

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