1. The Mobile Orchestra
Being trapped in a room with hundreds of ringing phones is a movie-goer’s idea of hell. Not a major hell, which would compete with the likes of the Scary Movies on infinite loop, but a minor hell – the sort you go to for owning “Epic Movie” or complaining how a film isn’t like the comic. Despite this the Estonian “Mobile Symphony” makes haunting music with hundreds of old phones donated from around the country just by ringing them. Special software allows a conductor’s MIDI keyboard to call the phones for short periods, triggering a range of ringtones and creating sounds which are simultaneously spooky and standard.
2. The Mobile Mobile
Winning the award for “most awesomely embodied turn of phrase” is James Theophane’s “mobile mobile”, a musical hanging garden of obsolete phones. When his company upgraded their handsets, James gave the old equipment new value – ‘upcycling’ instead of ‘recycling’ – by constructing an illuminated electronic acoustic contraption. The hanging mobile mobile can be controlled in person or online via Twitter, setting off screens and sounds in a cellphone symphony.
3. iPhone Guitar
It’s impossible to write anything without an iPhone infecting the article, but don’t worry, this isn’t one of those awful “you’ve gotta see this” apps your most boring friend breaks out at parties. This is real hardware, integrating the iPhone’s touchscreen into an actual instrument.
At £180 a pop (and only fifty in production) it’s expensive, especially as it’s more ukulelian than acoustic, but you’ll beat the hell out of everyone in any silly “look what mine can do” smartphone competitions.
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