Telephone Etude 1: Shakespeare Cuisinart (2001)

"It’s a gas to do, but it’s also thought provoking, and hugely democratic — considering that it lets non musical, non technical, unwired people use regular phones to access some of the internet’s most sophisticated features." — David Giddens, MediaTV

"The results sound both familiar and strange. Although the voice is recognizably your own, it has been looped, layered and rearranged so that randomly selected passages recur and overlap in a fuguelike counterpoint reminiscent of vocal works by the composer Steve Reich." — Matthew Mirapaul, New York Times

Thanks to the generosity of Angel.com, Telephone Etude #1: Shakespeare Cuisinart is now available at 1-866-260-2961. If you run into any technical problems, please contact me. If you already called, then you can retrieve your cuisinart creation over the web.

Thanks also to TellMe Networks, the original host of Shakespeare Cuisinart, which hosted the piece from April 2001 through April 2003 and handled over 35,000 calls.

About the Piece

Telephone Etude #1: Shakespeare Cuisinart is an interactive musical work accessible by telephone. Callers are asked to say their favorite quotation from a Shakespeare play or poem. Moments later, they hear a short piece of music generated from slicing, dicing, and layering their voice. Callers may also later visit the Shakespeare Cuisinart web site to download their musical creations to disk or e-mail them to friends.

Telephone Etude #1: Shakespeare Cuisinart was originally created for Heavy Music For Light People.

Related Links

• Read about the piece in Matthew Mirapaul's New York Times article.
• Listen to an interview on NPR's All Things Considered. (Requires RealPlayer.)
• Read a summary of my interview with Robert Siegel on NPR.
• Read a description of the piece on disquiet.com.
• Read this article in the September issue of The American Organist.
• Read a summary of a story about it on MediaTV (Toronto).
• Read a description and jury statement from transmediale.02, which awarded Shakespeare Cuisinart an honorable mention for its prize in the category of "interactivity."

More info:

Computer software generates a 60-90 second piece of music based entirely on the caller’s voice, using a hierarchy of random decisions. The caller’s voice is not subjected to any digital signal processing; it is only spliced and layered in a manner similar to classic musique concrete of the 1950s.

I was attracted to using the telephone because it is the most ubiquitous, easiest-to-use device for sending and receiving audio. There is no software to install, no minimum RAM or CPU requirements to meet, no broadband Internet connection to get — just a handset and a toll-free number to dial. Though telephone audio quality is low-fi, I was happy to work with it in order to create an interactive piece with such a low barrier to entry.

People are also naturally comfortable using the phone. Callers who might be intimidated to participate in an interactive installation in a gallery were excited to creatively participate via this more private medium. They pushed the limits of Shakespeare Cuisinart in ways I never could have imagined. And they made some pretty interesting music along the way.

Core Technologies

• VoiceXML (powered by Tellme Studio)
• PHP
• CMIX
• sndlib

Performance and Presentation History

Serial Underground (live performance version), May 2005, Cornelia Street Cafe, New York City

World Turning Festival (live performance version), August 2003, Medicine Show Theater, New York City

Heavy Music for Light People (live performance version), May 2001, Flea Theater, New York City

Dorkbot (lecture-demonstration), September 2001, New York City

American Composers Orchestra "Orchestra Tech" Conference (lecture-demonstration as part of "Music and the Internet" panel), October 2001, New York City

transmediale.02 Media Lounge (exhibition), February 2002, Berlin
[this work received an Honorable Mention for the transmediale.02 award]

Over the course of two years, over 35,000 callers interacted with Shakespeare Cuisinart. Besides the links to press articles above, the piece was also featured on WFUV radio (New York) and on CNET radio (San Francisco).

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