People sitting in a darkened theater stare at a large reflective surface, while cell phones ring randomly throughout the room. The typical moviegoing experience at Times Square? No, it's a musical piece called Dialtones, which I recently learned about on dratfink's page. This "telesymphony," performed in connection with the Ars Electronica festival and funded by Swisscom Mobile, etc, is a half-good idea that just doesn't know when to quit. Check out the exhausting spec sheet--it's a social sculpture, it uses corporate switching systems as a found medium, it employs a lot of clever programming and hardware, it's electronic music, it's live performance, it's an audience participation piece, it has flashing lights, it has graphics, it has Mylar!
This kind of MIT Media Lab product (at least one of the performers went there) just pounds you with technology. It's essentially a loss leader for the tech industry, crafted by geeks whose art sense derives from rock concert multimedia shows. Audience members are asked to register their phone numbers when they arrive for the concert, special ringtones are downloaded to their cells, and then a musical ensemble "plays" the phones in an auditorium by punching buttons on a graphic display. So far, so good, I guess, but do we really need spotlights hitting the audience members when their cells ring? Keychain lights distributed to everyone that glow red two seconds before the tones go off? To see all this activity in a reflective mirror? The visual element is as gimcrack-filled as a Spielberg movie. The piece assumes an audience with near-infinite time, patience, and trust. You have to be willing to queue for a seat assignment, surrender your private number (to whom exactly?), and accept the downloaded "custom ringtone," all for the sake of one concert (to remove the tone, you're presumably on your own). Thirty minutes of antiphonal chirps, climaxing in the inevitable "crescendo of sound," might be pretty interesting to sit and listen to in the dark, if you weren't also being forced to "participate." The authors dispense grant-panel-friendly nonsense when they say this participation is "active," though. Your creative input consists solely of choosing a ringtone (doesn't the phone company also call this "creativity"?) and deciding what exotic handwaving motion to make when the spotlight hits you. The spec sheet doesn't mention another option you have that would definitely affect the "texture" of the piece: turning off your phone.
An audio recording of Dialtones can be heard on Kenny G.'s radio program on WFMU-FM. (It starts about 30 minutes into this stream.) It's pretty much what you might expect: electronic insect noises a la Richard Maxfield's "Night Music" mixed with Ray Manzarek-like psychedelic organ-noodling. Things perk up a bit in the middle with Scott Gibbons' solo section and some loud skronks made with a vibrating phone on a contact mike. I'm sure the piece is more dynamic in person, where you get all the spatial effects.
As coincidence would have it, Kenneth Goldsmith/Kenny G.'s review of Dialtones appeared in the New York Press this week, a day or two before I posted my update. In the review, he takes the "cellphones are ubiquitous, now they're music" tack, and praises Levin for a piece that "sounds great." Having only heard the audio, I wouldn't go so far, and my reservations about the logistics and politics of the piece still linger. Golan Levin talks a good game, and no one can dispute the cleverness of the piece's technology, but hell, the guy only just got his MIT degree. Perhaps it's a bit early to be mentioning him in the same breath with Cage, Ligeti, and Terry Riley?
Here's an absolutely great paragraph from Kenny's review:
You can file this one alongside Wendy Mae Chambers’ car horn rendition of "New York, New York," Donald Knaack’s performances on oil cans and phone books, John Cage’s compositions of amplified cacti, Lauren Lesko’s contact-miked sounds of her vagina, Matmos’ dance music made from the sounds of plastic surgery and Jaap Blonk’s new techno music all made with samples of his mouth sounds. Dialtones raises the bar on these examples by coordinating elaborate technical and telephonic pyrotechnics; it’s a small miracle that Levin was able to pull this off. And far from stopping at the wonders of sheer geekdom, it also sounds great, making this one of those rare instances of computer-based music where the music is actually more interesting than the machines that made it.
Again, I don't agree that the piece is that good. The main point missing from Kenny's analysis is that, goddamit, cell phone rings are an obnoxious form of noise pollution. (Oddly, this comes across much more clearly on his own, composed-in-the-studio goof [at the beginning of the same stream I linked to above], where he superimposes Brian Turner's collection of silly ringtones [pop songs and the like] over the Electric Light Orchestra's kitsch classic "Telephone Lines.") A question that ought to be considered is: is the point of Levin's piece to "recuperate" this urban blight as music, or is it just another hipster embrace of the latest street fad? (I'd say more the latter.)
There is more of this thread (including replies from Golan Levin and Kenny G), on my main weblog page, here.
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People sitting in a darkened theater stare at a large reflective surface, while cell phones ring randomly throughout the room. The typical moviegoing experience at Times Square? No, it's a musical piece called Dialtones, which I recently learned about on dratfink's page. This "telesymphony," performed in connection with the Ars Electronica festival and funded by Swisscom Mobile, etc, is a half-good idea that just doesn't know when to quit. Check out the exhausting spec sheet--it's a social sculpture, it uses corporate switching systems as a found medium, it employs a lot of clever programming and hardware, it's electronic music, it's live performance, it's an audience participation piece, it has flashing lights, it has graphics, it has Mylar!
This kind of MIT Media Lab product (at least one of the performers went there) just pounds you with technology. It's essentially a loss leader for the tech industry, crafted by geeks whose art sense derives from rock concert multimedia shows. Audience members are asked to register their phone numbers when they arrive for the concert, special ringtones are downloaded to their cells, and then a musical ensemble "plays" the phones in an auditorium by punching buttons on a graphic display. So far, so good, I guess, but do we really need spotlights hitting the audience members when their cells ring? Keychain lights distributed to everyone that glow red two seconds before the tones go off? To see all this activity in a reflective mirror? The visual element is as gimcrack-filled as a Spielberg movie.
The piece assumes an audience with near-infinite time, patience, and trust. You have to be willing to queue for a seat assignment, surrender your private number (to whom exactly?), and accept the downloaded "custom ringtone," all for the sake of one concert (to remove the tone, you're presumably on your own). Thirty minutes of antiphonal chirps, climaxing in the inevitable "crescendo of sound," might be pretty interesting to sit and listen to in the dark, if you weren't also being forced to "participate." The authors dispense grant-panel-friendly nonsense when they say this participation is "active," though. Your creative input consists solely of choosing a ringtone (doesn't the phone company also call this "creativity"?) and deciding what exotic handwaving motion to make when the spotlight hits you. The spec sheet doesn't mention another option you have that would definitely affect the "texture" of the piece: turning off your phone.
- tom moody 10-10-2002 7:47 pm
An audio recording of Dialtones can be heard on Kenny G.'s radio program on WFMU-FM. (It starts about 30 minutes into this stream.) It's pretty much what you might expect: electronic insect noises a la Richard Maxfield's "Night Music" mixed with Ray Manzarek-like psychedelic organ-noodling. Things perk up a bit in the middle with Scott Gibbons' solo section and some loud skronks made with a vibrating phone on a contact mike. I'm sure the piece is more dynamic in person, where you get all the spatial effects.
- tom moody 12-04-2002 7:51 pm
As coincidence would have it, Kenneth Goldsmith/Kenny G.'s review of Dialtones appeared in the New York Press this week, a day or two before I posted my update. In the review, he takes the "cellphones are ubiquitous, now they're music" tack, and praises Levin for a piece that "sounds great." Having only heard the audio, I wouldn't go so far, and my reservations about the logistics and politics of the piece still linger. Golan Levin talks a good game, and no one can dispute the cleverness of the piece's technology, but hell, the guy only just got his MIT degree. Perhaps it's a bit early to be mentioning him in the same breath with Cage, Ligeti, and Terry Riley?
Here's an absolutely great paragraph from Kenny's review:
Again, I don't agree that the piece is that good. The main point missing from Kenny's analysis is that, goddamit, cell phone rings are an obnoxious form of noise pollution. (Oddly, this comes across much more clearly on his own, composed-in-the-studio goof [at the beginning of the same stream I linked to above], where he superimposes Brian Turner's collection of silly ringtones [pop songs and the like] over the Electric Light Orchestra's kitsch classic "Telephone Lines.") A question that ought to be considered is: is the point of Levin's piece to "recuperate" this urban blight as music, or is it just another hipster embrace of the latest street fad? (I'd say more the latter.)
- tom moody 12-07-2002 8:59 pm
There is more of this thread (including replies from Golan Levin and Kenny G), on my main weblog page, here.
- tom moody 1-11-2003 10:03 pm