Monday, September 1, 2008

Max Richter Takes On Ring Tones

Minimalist composer Max Richter hears opportunity when a cell phone rings.

"Why is is it that the ringtone medium has so far been treated as unfit for creative music?" he wonders.

In his "24 Postcards" suite, Richter has composed short pieces designed to be used as cell phone ring tones. He envisions a performance in which the audience, having received text messages from the composer, "performs" the work. Very interesting!

Go to the 24 Postcards site to listen to the ring tones. They're very inspiring, and further push what I'm now recognizing as a new creative discipline: the creation of visual art or music intended for an audience using a specific piece of digital hardware, like a phone, or a computer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In some weird techno-tangent, this reminds me of ZAIREEKA, which was a musical performance designed to be heard over 4 different musical outputs (car stereos, turntables, tape decks, etc) simultaneously.

They should bring Wayne Coyne on to consult about that.

Red said...

I want a ring tone to melodically intone: "turn off your f-ing phone." Any takers?