JG Ballard has always had a musical sensibility, despite his claims to possess a ‘tin ear’. He’s quoted in The Face as saying ‘there’s no music in my work. The most beautiful music in the world is the sound of machine guns’. In an interview with the French magazine Paris Review in 1984, Ballard says he didn’t even own a single record or player, though he didn’t mind listening to Serge Gainsbourg if his girlfriend put it on. Then again, his short story ‘Sound Sweep’ (1960) discusses the ultrasonic possibilities for music, and he was quoted in 2001 as saying that music by Brian Eno alongside architecture by Frank Gehry would best describe the ‘leisure world’ depicted in his Vermilion Sands stories. In an interview with the New Musical Express in 1985, he claimed that the music genre in the arts is the carrier of the ‘real news’.

And some of Ballard’s favourite films are created by directors who work in a fruitful and continuous tandem with composers. David Lynch, whose Blue Velvet (1986) was the best film of the ’80s according to Ballard, usually collaborates with composer Angelo Badalamenti. Alfred Hitchcock, who Ballard has written about in many contexts, had a long-standing partnership with Bernard Herrmann. Fittingly, the film adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash was made by one of the most important director/composer teams of the last 40 years: Canadians David Cronenberg and Howard Shore.

Ballard declared that Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) was ‘the first film of the 21st century’, and in a review of the director’s latest, A History of Violence (2005), he wrote that ‘all Cronenberg’s films make us edge back into our seats, gripped by the story unfolding on the screen but aware that something unpleasant is going on in the seats around us’. True enough, though this author tends to believe that it’s the complex relationship between Cronenberg and Shore that creates this effect.

Shore understands about space, silence, dynamics and layering in the context of film music and its ability to manipulate the viewer’s perception of the images, and he says he uses his visceral reactions to the director’s rough cut in order to start creating a score, allowing it to fuel his ideas. Before Crash, Shore and Cronenberg had made six films together, starting with The Brood (1979). Shore says Cronenberg has always granted him considerable freedom, often remarking that Cronenberg was his favourite director to work with — not bad from someone who has scored over a hundred films. Shore says he ‘thought of movies as BEING film scores’ — that for him, film and music are intertwined, not unlike film and sound editor Walter Murch, who says we ’see/hear film’. Shore claims that the act of writing music for film actually allowed his music to eventuate in the first place, and that films perform his music for him in a way.

Crash features a reverb-drenched score that mixes electronic, modified and acoustic instruments, classical arrangements and experimental electronic manipulation. The score successfully creates an atmosphere that allows the violence and sexuality to seep out, rather than representing it in some way. It is unlike any other score Shore has created before or since, and saw him return to a smaller ensemble. He had created full-blown orchestral scores for Dead Ringers (1988) and Naked Lunch (1991) but the budget wouldn’t allow for such indulgence in this film. As in the more experimental scores in the earlier films, this led to a much more interesting musical product. The repetitive melodic patterns, the limited tonal and thematic range, and the reluctance to change key creates a claustrophobic environment for the film enhanced by an unusual instrumental combination.

Around a quarter of the score was written, then recorded, then manipulated electronically in the studio. As the film progresses, the music becomes stranger, perhaps representing the psychological unravelling of James Ballard, the main character. In the car-wash scene, Shore creates a sort of ‘music concrete’ by sampling Foley recordings gathered by the sound designer (music concrete can be best described as electronic music produced from editing together fragments of natural and industrial sounds) — not unlike Wilder’s tape-recorder manipulations or Laing’s observations of the acoustic properties of water pipes in Ballard’s High-Rise (1974).

The car-wash piece begins with detailed recordings of the convertible as it reconfigures: the sound of the window enclosing the occupants in the hermetic booth of the car, giving way to the mixture of shimmering water sounds and thick wads of cloth against metal. The sound of the pulsating machines builds to an intensity measured by the sexual activity inside the car. Elsewhere, the music is rarely louder than other film sounds — dialogue, breathing, car engines and traffic noise dominate the sonic landscape.

The throaty sound of Vaughan’s huge car is perhaps the most prominent sound in the film, a delightful contrast to the delicate, interweaving music score. Shore’s contribution almost acts as a sublime muzak, never intruding on the fabric of the film yet evoking qualities from it. Shore and Ballard have both expressed a dislike of background music, yet muzak plays an important part in Ballard’s vision of a bland future. Similarly, the intelligent balance of music and sound in Crash creates an interesting equilibrium between the idea of music creating an environment for action — magnifying the images and meanings — and the non-music often featured in Ballard’s work, like Super-Cannes (2000).

I wonder what genre of film Shore would classify Crash. In some ways, he has included elements of the ‘love story’, as the lush strings featured in the film’s conclusion suggest. In another film, this music could be heard as romantic, but here it adds a type of lyricism to the possibility of death, to the ugly distortions of form. The only other place this writing style appears is in a jump cut to James’s bedroom after the car wash and its score of sound effects — a similarly distorted ‘romantic’ scene.

The score uses six electric guitars, three harps, three woodwinds, prepared piano, strings and a percussionist. The guitars are the only instruments run through effects, creating what Shore calls a ‘harp sound’. This subtle use of electronic effect is mirrored in Ballard’s comments about technology in Crash: that the car is a part of technology that we are most involved with, providing a kind of marriage of human imagination and technology. These terms could apply to the modern electric guitar, but also to describe Shore’s take on his score for the film. The ingenious mixture of electronic instruments (guitars) with acoustic instruments (winds, piano, strings, percussion) is left raw but at times subtly altered — in the studio or through preparation. Whether it’s manipulated guitars or classic string arrangements, each idea is carefully considered, tapered and applied. The luscious antique sound of harps — strings plucked over images of slow-moving, heavy traffic — provides a connection between old and new technologies. The sensuality of the flute in the sex scene between James and Catherine belies the crudeness and somehow formal nature of Catherine’s sexual monologue about Vaughan.

The different colours provided by these instruments reflect the relationship between the cold machine and the warm body. The electric hum of a guitar amp, the slow decay of a delay effect, the eerie breath of flutes — music has long held a power to effect the body, and the construction of instruments may arguably represent one of the earliest uses of technology for art. This score polarises that most ancient of instruments (the harp and flute) against the more contemporary (electric guitars, computer manipulation), perhaps reflecting Ballard’s pairing of basic human needs (sex) with contemporary culture (cars).

The prepared piano is an excellent addition, carefully embedded in the score. It delightfully mirrors the adapted body of Gabrielle, with her additions and adjustments to what is considered a ‘normal’ body, as well as James’s ‘prepared leg’, examined in silence after his accident. The prepared piano is the musical parallel to the modified body — a classic structure adapted. When Vaughan rams Ballard’s car in the scrapyard, the prepared piano brings out the sound of metal on metal — via metal objects placed in the piano.

Unlike many film soundtracks, much of the best music from the film is included on the CD release. The CD frees the pieces from the heavy sound effects of the film, and tantalising titles such as ‘Mechanism of Occupant Ejection’ and ‘Chromium Bower’ add to the new experience of listening without seeing, and also cause us to wonder if this music would indeed be so interesting without having seen the film. This is perhaps answered by the occasion of a live performance of the score in Australia in 1998, when the music was presented as an assemblage of the cues from the film, configured to a continuous 40-minute piece. The musicians were positioned in a spatial pattern to reconstruct the spacing used for the recording of the score, which was originally produced in 7.1 (SDDS). The film was not screened for the presentation; the focus was on the music and its live spatialisation.

Film director Bernardo Bertolucci apparently told Cronenberg that Crash is a religious masterpiece.

Maybe it was Shore singing Ballard’s psychopathological hymn after all.

PHOTO CREDITS
Howard Shore -conductor: Photo by Daniel Smith/New Line Cinema.
Prepared piano image from Mego
All other photos © fineline films

BIBLIOGRAPHY
All web sites accessed April 2006
http://www.rickmcgrath.com/jgballard/jgbsecondwave.html
http://www.spikemagazine.com/1197ball.php
http://www.salon.com/sept97/wsb970902.html
http://finelinefeatures.com/crash/
Brockman, Mikita (ed) Car Crash Culture, 2001, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Brophy, Philip (ed). Howard Shore in Conversation; Composing with a very wide palette, Cinesonic, the world of sound in film, 1999, Sydney: AFTRS
V. Vale, Ryan, M (Ed.) JG Ballard Quotes: Does the Future have a future? 2004, San Francisco: RE/search Publications

This piece is also published at;
http://www.ballardian.com/critical-mass-cronenberg-shore

Since sound was first added onto commercial celluloid in 1926 (5), it has achieved varying degrees of success in its integration within the media. Sound in cinema is of course much more than a collection of songs or variations on a theme in a score; it is the way we hear dialogue, if we hear the sounds in the background or not, how loud they are, where they sit in the mix and when and where music comes. It also encompasses sound technologies such as the various types of Dolby, Cinemascope, SDDS, surround sound and 5.1 (6). All this influences the way we interpret images and action on the screen, how they affect us, and how we respond to them.

De Heer is well aware of the potential strength of sound and in the 10 films he has made since 1984 there is strong evidence of his willingness to use sound as a defining creative tool, more so in each film he makes. He is very involved in the post-production sound process, and claims that working on a low budget facilitates this as his crew is more compact. In fact, de Heer has claimed he would love to make an even smaller-scale film where he could do all the sound himself (7).

As a writer-director, de Heer has bravely tackled some serious sonic challenges that originate in the scripting stage. Incident at Raven’s Gate (1988) features a policeman with a hearing aid and the sonic effects of the supernatural. Dingo (1991) stars one of the all-time great jazz legends, Miles Davis, in his only film role. The audience is constantly exposed to the breathing of a woman with severe cerebral palsy throughout Dance Me To My Song (1998), as they are to the sounds of the jungle throughout The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2001). In The Tracker (2002), songs enhance the tale, and in The Quiet Room (1996) the story is told by a child who refuses to speak. Alexandra’s Project (2003) has a large proportion of the sound coming from the speaker of a television set. Each film offers a different sonic inventiveness evident in both the scripting and production stages.

In Bad Boy Bubby (1994) sound plays a role that is almost directive. In this film, music rarely appears without it serving a clearly defined purpose in the script. The metallic industrial background sounds that drone through the first 30 minutes of the film act as a bed for the sporadic, contorted dialogue, an effect similar to that achieved for the duration of Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1978). Once he is freed from the dark box which has been his home for over 30 years, there is a wonderful series of defining meetings with sound and music for Bubby (Nicholas Hope), from his initial encounter with a Salvation Army choir to his ultimate lead-singer role in a pub band, where his crazy sounds and repeating of lines from the film turn him into a wacky pop star (8). This is the perfect culmination of his habit of repeating what is said to him verbatim – his very problem becomes the thing that attracts the audience (inside and outside the film). In this film there is very little “background music”: almost all the music featured is tied to a character or moment (the church organ, pipe band, singing Salvation Army devotee, violinist or the rock band). The fact that there is no music until Bubby gets out of his home adds to the weight of these snippets, as if de Heer defines the real world through them.

Sound designer James Currie developed a binaural headset for Bad Boy Bubby, worn by Hope throughout the film. This device allows the stereo focus of the sound to change according to the movements of the actor’s head, and for his own voice and breathing to be recorded in the most intimate way. Small details often offer the best results – my favourite of these is when Bubby enters the pizza shop and a strip from the fly curtain streams over his head, the buzzing sound featuring prominently – that is really how it feels to enter a pizza shop. Combined with a microphone on the camera, this system gives the post-production sound team many exciting options to use in the final sound edit; these are fully exploited in the film, as a viewing with headphones on a stereo VHS will demonstrate most clearly. The system allowed the sound team to create a rich tapestry of sound that would have cost thousands of dollars in post-production studio time to create otherwise.

A similar binaural recording device was used on Dance Me To My Song to record the breathing of Julia (Heather Rose) which provides a disturbing sound bed to this film. In addition, a second “foam head” binaural recorder was used on the camera, creating further possibilities of sound direction and perspective. De Heer claims he did not use this device in Alexandra’s Project because the emotional engagement produced by the device would favour the perspective of Steve (Gary Sweet) (9) – something de Heer worked hard to avoid in the film as a whole – as Alexandra (Helen Buday) speaks from the television set for the majority of the film making the binaural effect redundant.

In The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, de Heer’s troubled foray into the larger-budget international film world, the ongoing sounds of the jungle maintain an intensity and tension throughout the film that has a more powerful effect on the viewer than Graham Tardif’s rather over-dramatic orchestral score. Sound designer James Currie also gives special attention to different locations in the film – the ambient sounds define spaces such as the riverside, a large hall, a small hut or the open jungle at night, enhancing the way viewers differentiate between these places – and to the colour and texture in the voice of the Old Man (Richard Dreyfuss) as he reads his trashy love novels, reinforcing this film’s emphasis on the pleasure in the simple things of life.

Like David Cronenberg with Howard Shore, Joel and Ethan Coen with Carter Burwell or Fellini with Nino Rota, de Heer has used the same composer, Graham Tardif, for the majority of his films (one notable exception being a film about music: Dingo). It is interesting to follow the development of the de Heer/ Tardif relationship, leading to extraordinarily powerful results in their most recent collaboration, Alexandra’s Project. In conjunction with no less than three sound designers (James Currie, Andrew Plain and Nada Mikas), Tardif’s minimal electronic score in Alexandra’s Project implies the undercurrent of invisible electro-magnetic signals in an urban landscape, making an ordinary street seem like a harbinger of impending doom. This creates a tension that sets the scene for the entire film, echoing the atmosphere of other suburban thrillers such as Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1996). The score is electronic, a minimal collection of colours and depths; it leaves room for ambient sounds to play a significant part, as often occurs in de Heer’s other films – such as the wonderful moment in Dingo on a traffic island in the middle of Paris, where the trumpet solo of John “Dingo” Anderson (Colin Friels) mingles with night-time traffic and he searches for a sound he hears in a subway labyrinth. All atmospheric sounds in Alexandra’s Project are exaggerated: the keys turning in locks, steps in the carpet and mechanised blinds leading to the ultimate household appliance, the vibrator. A similar emphasis is present in the mise en scène, with close-ups of household objects such as the toaster and light switches. The powerful, central role of video in this film significantly changes the way the viewer hears the audio – like Steve, we are listening to Alexandra pre-recorded on video, allowing the film to be understood as “a critique on the way we watch so-called erotic entertainment” (10). The presence of the television screen is conveyed beautifully with actual boxy television sound, and the sequences were filmed with the video running on the television, allowing Steve to respond to it in real time and creating a complex sonic situation. Steve’s interaction with the television set allows him control over the pace of the film up until Alexandra’s broadcast becomes “live”, giving her the control she so lacked in their relationship. At one stage, Steve takes refuge from the television screen behind an overturned couch, but continues his discussion with Alexandra and is drawn out again by her vocalised threats. Until then he was able to stop and start the video, crunching the buttons on the remote control. The eerie vocal loop “cheers dad” accompanying the last remaining images of Steve’s children on tape is a piece of sound art in itself. Again breathing features in the soundscape – especially in the piercing scene where Alexandra’s tense breathing is the only audio provided, making us complicit with her actions; as she nears the camera and the volume increases we feel more and more uncomfortable.

The most meaningful collaboration of de Heer and Tardif is perhaps in The Tracker, with Tardif as composer and de Heer as lyricist for songs performed by indigenous performer Archie Roach. This not only adds an extra layer of narrative to the film, but also personalises the de Heer/Tardif working relationship and gives it a new voice. After much experimentation, de Heer claimed the songs needed to be performed by an indigenous performer in order to “attach” themselves to the film (11). The songs comment on the action, putting a sympathetic white man’s words into a black man’s mouth for a tale of revenge, and thus emphasising the most potent themes in the film whilst retaining the concept that this is a tale of a group of individuals. Again the silences carry the greatest emotional tension in this film, allowing the outback to speak for itself, similar to the way Jon “Dingo” Anderson’s trumpet speaks for the outback in Dingo. This, in addition to the use of paintings by Peter Coad, makes this film an important combination of artistic media – perhaps a direct result of the film being an arts festival commission (by the 2002 Adelaide Festival of the Arts under the artistic direction of Peter Sellars). Roach later performed the songs live with the film in Melbourne and Adelaide, almost in the spirit of the silent movies – demonstrating how much narrative and emotional power the songs themselves hold.

In The Quiet Room, the atmosphere is more that of a radio play, where a narrative is used to create a world and direct our attention to different parts of it. Here the binaural set is used again, this time to record the narration of the child protagonist (Chloe Ferguson) and differentiate it from her onscreen speaking voice. As the images move slowly around the screen, the child’s narration is always up front and close, and her parents (Celine O’Leary and Paul Blackwell) can be heard arguing in different parts of the house, creating a strange “eavesdropping” effect – a technique mastered in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974). The speechless child is filmed alone in her room for the majority of the movie – not unlike the suffering PS (Nicholas Gledhill) in an earlier Australian film, Careful, He Might Hear You (Carl Schultz, 1983) – giving the audience a second experience of overhearing (12). In The Quiet Room, the volume of voices changes dramatically – as in Dingo where the arrival of the aircraft bearing Billy Cross (Miles Davis) is almost deafening in comparison to dialogue later in the film. The arguments of the parents in The Quiet Room vary from anguished discussion to aggressive yelling, the latter contrasting beautifully with their dulcet tones when speaking to their daughter. These volume adjustments create a canvas which sound designer Peter Smith uses to shape the moods of the different scenes. And as in most of de Heer’s films, it is what is left out, more than what is included, that holds the power. Taking on a subject such as withdrawal from producing audible communication indicates de Heer’s attention to the importance of sound in our daily lives and how vital it can be to the understanding and malfunctioning of our relationships.

Incident at Raven’s Gate also has a special aural focus: the policeman Taylor (Max Cullen) has a hearing aid and listens to sounds as he searches a house, and makes good use of it for a bit of his own eavesdropping. But when it is taken away from him, he swims in a silent world. Sound is used as the first sign that something is “wrong” in this film – when the car cassette tape players start to play up we know something weird is going on. As in Bad Boy Bubby, music is also used to define the characters, as when the opera the murderous policeman Felix (Vincent Gill) loves so much – and sings alone in the most tragic of moments – is contrasted with the ’80s rock of the main character, Eddie (Steve Vidler). As in the films to follow, sound pushes the action forward and is used to accentuate events and manipulate our reactions to them.

The fact that de Heer prefers to shoot in sequence could be an important factor in the way his films are put together sonically. Whenever possible he gets his actors to act “with the music” – as Colin Friels does when he is cleaning his trumpet to the music in Dingo, or as Gary Sweet must perform in front of the video running on the television in Alexandra’s Project. His preference for using the same crew may also aid the smooth realisation of his sonic concepts; de Heer cites the collaboration with a composer as the most challenging of all required in the making of a film, and acknowledges that ongoing collaborations create a trust between the artists which allows for a free exchange of ideas.

Ideas for the sound begin in the writing of the script, de Heer claims, whether they be explicitly written in or take the form of instinctive imaginings of a certain performer or mood for the soundtrack. De Heer has commented that “instinct is education you are unaware of” (13) and recounts many times that it has led him forward. For the first test screenings of Incident at Raven’s Gate, he had an instinct that sound would pull the rough unfinished movie together. When it was shown again later to the same executive producers, they refused to believe that no frames had been changed, so crucial was the imprint the sound left on the movie (14). The album notes provided with the soundtrack for Dingo similarly demonstrate the intensity with which de Heer relates music to narrative.

De Heer’s films seem to reflect a need to understand the minority, whether it is a disabled person, an indigenous Australian, an alien or a child. Perhaps sound can be seen as the marginalised but essential ingredient in our visual culture. De Heer’s use of sound design to manipulate our sentiments and impressions in his stories testifies to the power of the medium. Maybe, as Jake Wilson suggests, de Heer has a “habit of using a struggle over spoken language as a central plot device” (15) but the power of sound in his films does not stop there. This article has just skimmed the surface: each of de Heer’s films merits a detailed treatise on the way they feature innovative sound ideas in the scripting and production stages, resulting in some of the most challenging and exciting cinema made in Australia today.

This paper is also available on line with images at
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/31/sound_design_rolf_de_heer.html

This paper examines the role of sound installation and music composition practices in addressing the relationship between sound and telecommunications devices, in this case the mobile phone. The popularity of mobile phone artworks is rapidly increasing, with handsets readily available, artists excited about sponsorship opportunities, and the general push in the “electronic arts” area.
This role will be addressed primarily through the discussion of a work by Perth mobile phone sound art collective, Metaphonica, who explore many issues raised by this art form. “Phonebox” (2005) is a site specific sound installation where phones are called from a remote computer presenting a synchronized composition featuring sounds created by the artists installed on the handsets as ring tones; subverted by visitors to the exhibition location.

1. Mobile Phones in Art

John Cage: “I am here / , / and there is nothing to say / . / . . .”(1)
The use of telephones in art is not new. Lazlo Moholy Nagy is considered to be one of the first artists to experiment with telephones to create a so-called ‘telepresence’ piece in 1922, using a telephone to transmit directions for fabricating paintings. Similarly, in 1969 the Chicago Museum of Contemporary art organized an exhibition entitled “Art by Telephone” where artists would call through to the gallery staff and instruct them as to the creation of their artworks. British group The Disembodied Art Gallery has created several telephone-based works. “Babble” (1993) was a telematic art installation that received over 70 voice contributions from the public to an answering machine, later replayed into a gallery. “Temporary Line” (1994) was a telephone sculpture that activated the sound of whispering voices through handsets whenever a member of the public walked close to the sculpture (Figure 1). In 2005, “Zhong Shuo” Ian Mott, Ding Jie, the Chongqing Art Collective and the Li Chuan Group uses a the telephone for the collection and telling of stories from different locations around China.
Mobile phone works are a genre of electronic art which Frank Popper defines “communication art”. He describes the six main characteristics of this genre: it stages physical presence at distance; it telescopes the immediate and the delayed; it focuses on the playfulness of interactivity; it combines memory and real time; it promotes planetary communication and it encourages a detailed study of human social groupings. (2)
All mobile phone works could also be considered ‘telepresence’ works to some extent. Stephen Wilson defines telepresence as “a technology for a person to be present in some form in a distant place” (3). Mobile phone works can transmit a person in the form of thier creative idea and its content.

The focus of this paper and the projects it discusses is on sound art using mobile phones. Sound content in mobile phone art can be divided into two general areas: pieces using “real” sounds recorded by or stored in the phones; and pieces that use the pre fabricated sounds inside the phones (monophonic and polyphonic arrangements of MIDI sounds, pre set ring tones).
Mobile phones have been used in musical works as musical instruments in their own right. In 2003, Bernd Kremling, conductor the Drumming Hands Orchestra in Wuerzburg, Germany used mobile phone ring tones in orchestral works, set off by the musicians or by backstage hands a predetermined moment during the performance. Other projects, such as “Artones.net” (2002) by British mobile phone artists The Phonebook Ltd, commissioned compositions using the sounds available in the phone handset software. “Dialtones, A Telesymphony” (2001) by Golan Levin is a well-documented example of a large-scale performed ‘composition’ that uses ringtones downloaded to visitors phones as they arrive to the concert hall. It used this as source material to create a composition. In “Pocket Gamelan”, by Greg Schiemer and Mark Havryliv, Java interfaces were developed to allow performance of music using mobile phone ensembles, with the intention of allowing large groups of non-expert players to perform music based on just intonation using their own phones. In “Mandala 3”, Schiemer and his collaborators swing their mobiles in bags in the air to create a interesting spatialisation effect.

“Telephony” (2000) by Alison Craighead and Jon Thompson (Figure. 2), is an installation where gallery visitors are invited to dial a wall-based grid of 42 mobile telephones, which in turn begin to call each other creating an arrangement of the prevalent NokiaTune.
Handsets have also been used as transmitters for live phone tone composition; Tim Didymus conducted a live concert in 2003 featuring music and sounds generated entirely on-the-fly using a mobile phone application called Intent Sound System (iSS), a suite of audio technologies that makes it possible to relay music composed live on the phone to another in real time.
Each of these works uses the sounds inside the handsets in a different way, determined to some extent by the amount of interaction the public has with the work. The recording of real sounds offers different possibilities for the mobile phone to take on more of a locative role. A predecessor to real sound recordings, voice mail has offered many possibilities for artists working with sound and telephony. The Disembodied Art Gallery created a CD compilation entitled “Answering Machine Solution” (Staalplat, 1996) of tracks created by artists to be used as answer machine messages. Ian Pollock and Janet Silk created “The Museum of the Future” (1997), a work that accumulated texts from callers using a phone tree where participants can listen to and leave messages. Jim Pallas created “Phoney-Vents” (1973), where he played works to people he chose to call, and “Dialevents” (1978), where people could call in to listen to sounds of his creation.
“Placing Voices” (2005) by Brian House is a mobile-sound-blog software which uses the built-in sound recording feature of mobile phones and MMS messaging to place sound fragments on a web-accessible map of the sounds as they arrive. The use of the Internet in mobile phone art is becoming more common as the phones themselves have increased accessibility to the Internet trough GPRS and WAP functionality.
Uphone is an internet project that archives calls to its web site. In 2003, the “Uphone Sparrow Report” by Kate Rich uses the mobile phone network to record and collect live data on the vainisheing population of sparrows in New York and London. Zoe Irvine created the “Dial-A- Diva” project, which coins the term “phonecasts”, described by the artist as “a person attending concert who uses their telephone as a a microphone to broadcast the sound” (4). The project invites and broadcasts songs made into phones over a 24 hour period.

Perhaps the most interesting artist working in the area of sound and mobile phones is Usman Harque from the UK. His piece “Sky Ear” (2004) is a one-night event in which a glowing “cloud” of mobile phones and helium balloons is released into the air. People can dial into the cloud and listen to the sounds of the sky, which includes sounds of the atmospheric electromagnetic phenomena that are the audible equivalent of the Northern Lights. His piece “Japanese Whispers” (2000) was an experiment into the way sound changed when being digitally processed and transmitted through electromagnetic space using feedback loops created by the phone sounds (Figure 3). Both these pieces work within the premise of the phones as transmitters and receivers of sound as a primary, fundamental idea and use it to create and control other elements of the works.

Sound may also be used to help users use their phones better, a premise explored in “Social Mobiles” (2002), a collaboration between design company IDEO and artist Crispin Jones (Figure 4). To quote the artist; “the phone requires the user to play the tune of the phone number they wish to call. “The public performance that dialing demands acts as a litmus test of when it is appropriate to make a call”. (5)
Mobile Phone art is alive and well in Australia, through digital art organizations such as dLux Media Arts, whoc feature mobile phone art through programs such as Future Screen Mobile and d>Art.05 Exhibition program. It does have a visual focus, however.

2. Metaphonica

Meta (Greek: “about,” “beyond”) is a common English prefix, used to indicate a concept that is an abstraction from another concept. Metadata refers to data about data, information that describes another set of data. A metaphor, according to I. A. Richards, in his The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), consists of two parts: the tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed, the vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are derived. Metaphonica is a title created by Western Australian sound artists Rob Muir and Cat Hope for their sound art for mobile phones collective, which aims to embody these concepts in their artworks.
Metaphonica create installations that are informed by the works cited above. They use handsets as networkable portable music players, loaded with the artists’ creations – digital storage chips with antennas and speakers. The sonic experience of the installation is in the listening, not the calling. They play the stored compositions no matter where either artist or object may be located, and they allow the audience to be part of the work if they choose.
Sounds are created and then systematically arranged into a composition for each Metaphonica installation. The component sounds may recorded directly onto the phones or other devices such as mini discs, then processed on audio software to achieve optimum audibility or other effects before uploaded to the handsets. These handsets are then called from a computer operating specially scripted telephony software (scripted by media artist Dave Primmer), according to the preconceived composition (Figure 6). The artists and visitors phones may also call the installation and interrupt this sequence, as all these numbers have so called ‘ring tones’ (i.e. sound works attributed to caller numbers)– artist 1, artist 2, computer1, computer2, unknown number etc. A landline calling a mobile from one network to another would ring for around 30 seconds. A mobile to one of the installation phones, no matter which network, would ring for around 60 seconds. The phones have no diversion set so simply ring out. No call cost is required to participate in the installation, for the artists or visitors, since the phones are never answered. The sounds just ‘are’ – they are no longer alarms symbolizing the need to answer.
“Phonebox” (2005) was Metaphonica’s first installation, a work that lamented the loss of the physical Phonebox on the Australian urban landscape (Figure 5). The handsets were placed in museum box style recesses in a wall, behind glass doors in a busy corridor at the Swanston Street Artspace at RMIT University, in the centre of Melbourne, Australia. Sounds were chosen thematically and equalized for maximum audiabitility through the thick glass in the busy area.
“Phonebox” was devised out of a challenge – the offer of an installation space 6000 kilometers away that was made up of cabinets with glass doors, without power, in a thoroughfare. The mobile phones as installation objects provided an excellent foil to this challenge; they are compact to post, rechargeable, lasting around 24 hours without charge, do not require the artists to be present to operate them (most people understand the operating basics of a mobile phone), and can have sounds shaped to travel through glass.

Challenges aside, a major source of inspiration for using mobile phones as transmitters for sound art came from the writings of Duchamp, credited as conceptualizing and producing the first ever ‘readymade’ artwork:
“It is very difficult to choose an object, because after a few weeks you start to like it or to hate it. You must approach a thing with indifference, as if you have no esthetic emotion. The choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the complete absence of good or bad taste.” (6)
This explains the position the artists took when sourcing the model of mobile phone handset. “Phonebox”, and indeed all Metaphonica works, encourage people to hear rather than see, hold or use their mobile phones; so their visual aesthetic is superfluous, and the handsets have their screens turned away. Mobile phones have limited audio quality, and this has become a feature to work with for the artists, rather than a hindrance to overcome. It provides an opportunity to make new timbres and contexts for sounds.

People can interfere and interact with a Metaphonica work from any location; provided they have access to a phone line. Those who call from remote locations only have the knowledge that they are disrupting the composition (or maybe they just find the calling card provided at the installation and call the numbers to ‘see what happens’(Figure 7) as the number they call rings out. In this way, the audience becomes part of the composition by the very act of disrupting it. They become physical performers in the installation when they stand in front of it and call, or even when they call from elsewhere. Visitors to the exhibition can imagine the place the phones are being called from, or think about the sounds and the way they interfere with their environment. adding elements to the work that are not always immediately apparent. Locative issues are particularly useful for the artists – they need not be present with the installation. They and their pre set computer may call it from any location. This complex relationship between audience, creator and performance lead to interesting questions about the creation and control of artwork, and are new platforms for a sort of accidental improvised participation.

Metaphonica aims to encourage people to think of these very personal devices in a different way – simply as sound speakers to listen to – remote receivers for a music composition that anyone can add to as it runs its course. They use affordable, readily available technologies to do it.
“Phonebox” was one of the top five picks from the Liquid Architecture Festival of Sound Arts in which it was featured. The public truly engaged with the work and were generally surprised by hearing mobile phones, for many a necessary evil, used this way.

3. Building Sounds for Mobile phones

There are several important audio considerations when using mobile phones for sound installation. Primarily the sounds are quiet, as the handsets are built to sound best at very close range (i.e. on the listeners ear) unless you have a pre set speaker phone function. The range of frequencies produced by the compressions and speaker ability is very particular. So sounds must be carefully equalized using audio software outside the handset to achieve clarity and volume tailored to their installation location theme.
Different handsets have varying audio possibilities. Many handsets have only MIDI (7) capability, and are only able to play monophonic or polyphonic compositions using a preset sound library. Many handsets now have mp3 and live sound recording and playback, using audio compression formats such as such adaptive multirate codec (amr) formats, although software companies such as Beatnik (working with Nokia) and Tao Multimedia are working with new platforms and ideas. Most of the scriptable mobile phone software uses Java programming, which operates as a plug in giving extra options on the handset menu. Sounds are uploaded from computer and phone-to-phone using Bluetooth, Infrared or cable, depending on the handsets functionality.

4. Future Developments

As part of funded research, Metaphonica are working with VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) models to make more lines available using less computers; up to now each calling line out to the phones has required a separate computer running the telephony software. However, without additional hardware, there is currently an issue with caller identification (caller ID); a vital part of Metaphonica’s system, as each sign belongs to a “caller”, and most VOIP providers do not provide caller ID to the outgoing calls from their service.
The artists have also been discussing with members of SIGGRAPH in Perth, considering the possibilities of making specific phone software, new plug ins, and Bluetooth possibilities to enhance the locative elements of the installations.
In late 2005, Metaphonica create a new installation, entitled “Conning the Text”. It is a work using similar principles and processes as “Phonebox”, and is based on an adaptation of poet Edith Sitwell’s work “Façade”. This work, originally performed in 1923 from behind a curtain with the aid of a megaphone, is a series of abstract poems where rhythms counterfeited those of music. The poetry in Façade is considered an important study in word-rhythms and onomatopoeia, making it an ideal text for adaptation to Metaphonica’s techniques of organization meeting interruption. Narrator Julia Moody records excerpts of Sitwells’ work that are then processed by artists and stored on the phones, then sequenced and interrupted in the same manner as the compositions in “Phonebox”.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank her collaborator Rob Muir, the ArtsWA BEApworks research grant program, Liquid Archtecture Festival of Sound Arts, WAAPA @ ECU and Dr. Jonathan Marshall.

REFERENCES

(1) John Cage: “Lecture on Nothing” Incontri Musicali, August 1959. [In: Silence. Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1973, pp. 109-126.
(2) Frank Popper, “Art of the Electronic Age”, New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1993) p. 127
(3) Stephen Wilson, “Chapter 6: Telecommunications,” in “Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology*, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2002) p526.
(4) http://www.dialadiva.net/sing.html (accessed November 2005)
(4) http://www.ideo.com/case_studies/Social_Mobiles/SoMo3-1.html accessed 10/8/05
(5) Marcel Duchamp: “Apropos of ‘Readymades’.” Art and Artists, 1, 4 (July 1966). [Lecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 19, 1961.
(6) Musical Digital Interface

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. http://www.netzwissenschaft.de/mobi.htm (accessed Sept 2005)
2. http://www.haque.co.uk/ (accessed August 2005)
3. http://www.jpallas.com/phone/dialyvent.html (accessed august 2005)
4. http://thomson-craighead.net/docs/telf.html (Accessed August 2005)
5. http://bureauit.org/uphone/sparrow/ (accessed August 2005)
6. http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html (Accessed August 2005)
7. Souza E Silva, A. Art By Telephone: From Static To Mobile Interfaces http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/related/ (accessed October 2005)
8. Scheimer, G and Mark, H , Pocket Gamealn: a Pure Data Interface for Mobile Phones, http://hct.ece.ubc.ca/nime/2005/proc/nime2005_156.pdf (accessed November 2005)
9. http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/related (accessed October 2005)
10. Behrendt, F. From calling a cloud to finding the missing track : Artistic approaches to mobile music http:///www.station-acht.de (accessed September 2005)
11. Davis, A Mobilising Phone Art, Realtime Arts Magazine, Edition 66, 2004
12. http://www.dlux.org.au/mobile/artandfilm.html (access October 2005)
13. http://dlux.org.au/mobilejourneys/ (accessed September 2005)
14. http://www.reverberant.com/ME/index.htm (accessedNovember 2005)
15. Mott, I, Sound Mapping: An assertion of place proceedings of Interface, 1997. http://www.reverberant.com/SM/smpaper.html

This paper has also been published in the “Sound Scripts – Proceedings of the Totally Huge New Music Festsival Conference 2005″ ISBN 0-7298-0618-9