This is a presentation of my dissertation work to faculty and students at UC-Irvine's ICIT program. Here I discuss the use of mobile phones in musical contexts. The main thrust is the transition of making music with phones prior to the 'smartphone' era, and then exploring current possibilities and practices with mobile music apps. Presented January 28, 2014.

1. Mobile Phones and Interactive Music
Systems: History and Forecast
Nathan Bowen, PhD
Moorpark College / CUNY Graduate Center
nbowen@gmail.com
January 28, 2014
@ UC Irvine

2. history of mobile phone music

3. three histories:
telephone art
mobile music
networked music

4. telephone art

5. telephone art
interest in how this communication medium is
different than other available technologies
conversations as opposed to one-way ‘speeches’
(printing press, radio, TV, traditional concerts)
participative media: audience is given a voice

6. Art by Telephone – Robert Huot (1969)
artist creates context
for visitor to take part
in creative process
telephone used to
make art-making a
social experience

7. Max Neuhaus – Public Supply I (1966)
radio switchboard
plus callers making
sounds
mixed by Neuhaus at
WBAI, New York
performance space
over large geographic
area

8. ...It seems that what these works are really about is proposing to
reinstate a kind of music which we have forgotten about and
which is perhaps the original impulse for music in man: not
making a musical product to be listened to, but forming a
dialogue, a dialogue without language, a sound dialogue.
Max Neuhaus (1939-2009)
Public Supply I (1966)
Public Supply IV (1973)
Radio Net (1977)

9. mobile music

10. mobile music
music on the go
old history – processionals, parades, marching
bands, etc.
instrument is frequently adapted for convenience
with mobile apps, the ‘pocket’ instrument carries on
this aesthetic

11. Lalya Gaye et al. – Sonic City (2002-04)

12. Mark Shepard – Tactical Sound
Garden(2007)

13. networked music

14. networked music
ability for ‘instrument’ to be played by multiple
people, intercommunication
ability to jam over great distances (JackTrip, The
Sound Wire Project, MUSE)
performer/composer/audience paradigm disrupted
(or not)
emphasis on new instruments, new configurations

15. League of Automatic Music Composers –
later… The Hub

16. laptop orchestras and other ensembles
Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk)

18. Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead – Telephony
(2001)
http://www.thomson-craighead.net/docs/teleph.html

19. Ligna – Wählt die Signale (2003)
http://ligna.blogspot.com/2009/07/dial-signals-radio-concert-for-144.html

20. Levin et al. – Dialtones: A Telesymphony
(2001)

21. Ryan and Hays Holladay – Location Aware
Music (2011)

22. mobile phone orchestras
Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble

23. audience participation
Luke Dahl, Jorge Herrera, Carr Wilkerson TweetDreams (2010)

24. distributed systems
Jesse Allison, Divergence (2012)