The Smartphone Orchestra is an unique project that makes use of the participants’ smartphones in order to create a single, monumental work of music, composed especially for the occasion. So looking forward to see the resulted interaction with the Playgrounds Blend crowd!
It’s a common complaint that mobile phones isolate us from one another. So the Dutch creators of the Smartphone Orchestra joined forces with the British group Anagram to come up with new mobile rituals – and IDFA DocLab invited them to develop a mobile experience that brings us together. The result is W/O/R/K, an extraordinary collective experience that plays out on all the audience members’ mobile phones, creating an interactive group experience that parodies the popular team-building exercises and inspirational videos that help us become better humans. W/O/R/K is the product of a society bent on mastering love and compassion for the benefit of greater economic gain. So charge your phone beforehand, and find out what it’s like to be a cog in a beautiful machine.
Steye Hallema, initiator of The Smartphone Orchestra:
‘The smartphone is literally getting more and more “under our skin”. It makes a lot of things much easier, and I also make use of the advantages it offers. However, I regularly ask myself if it is healthy for us to be continually overloaded with information. Our brain also needs to be able to daydream and to “tune out”. This is why we wanted to reverse the operation of the smartphone and use it to get people to come together and share a wonderful experience. We are very proud that we were able to achieve something on this scale at the Netherlands’ most pioneering pop festival. It was an experience that I, in any case, will not quickly forget!’
Photo credits: Joao MB Costa