I don't have an iPhone, but there are times I have wished I did... like when I'm lost and need directions, when I want to order food but don't have their phone number, or shop for shoes at the wedding of my uncle's second cousin. And now I can add another to this wondrous list I have going.
Since it's release in 2007 the iPhone has revolutionized society in more ways than I think anyone saw coming- it's applications, multi-media capabilities, 8 GB of storage, internet-access and overall ease and simplicity seemed to be what the world had been looking for in a mobile phone. So is it safe to assume Apple's iPhone will come to replace video cameras, tv's, computers and mp3 players???
I don't really think this is going to happen. Although it possesses the capabilities of each of these technologies, the quality on the iPhone is going to be limited.
This article agrees with me; scratching the surface of the iPhone's capabilities and comparing them to that of it's multi-media successor, the iPod. Bobbie Johnson predicts the iPod and iPhone will work cooperatively with one another as they are now without one phasing the other out. While they overlap in terms of music availability, they cannot replace each other and depending on what a consumer wants there will be an obvious choice between the iPod and the iPhone.
For example- yes, you have the ability to listen to music with your iPhone... but there is only 8 GB of storage. This is enough for about 2,000 songs (assuming you only upload songs- this number will decrease if you add videos and other larger multi-media files). This is a great thing to have for the casual music listener, but for music junkies who like to carry around their entire music library with them at all times (like me), this would not suffice. [I would personally feel shorted if I had to pick which songs and artists I wanted to listen to for the day and had to leave the rest at home on my computer. What if I change my mind during the day? :/ Hm.]
You can watch videos and movies but again, limited selection. The iPhone has a large phone for an on-the-go mobile device, but when it comes to replacing DVD players and TV's, it will never happen because comparatively the TV has 20x the screen size and no one is going to choose the iPhone over that.
The way I see it, the iPhone has done a fabulous job in what it was designed to do. It was created in hopes of accommodating the demands of an entertainment-driven, technologically-advanced but also aggressive working population. It seems (at least from what I can see in America) human beings have this drive to always do more and move forward- like a never-ending to-do list. And we need a device that can keep up with us. We don't always have time to sit at home and watch our favorite tv shows, enjoy a movie, or just sit around and listen to a good album. The iPhone lets us keep our cluttered lives while still giving us the pleasure of our favorite things with ease, right at our very fingertips.
Stumbling through cyber-space I found one of the most interesting articles I've ever read. It's called: An iPhone Can Make Music, but Is It Art? put together by Claire Cain Miller and Miguel Helft. Thank you, for this wonderfully informative bit!
Did you know that two of this country's most prominent Ivy-league colleges (Stanford and Princeton) have started iphone and laptop ensembles?!? Amazing! You can take a closer look here:
Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPho)
The Stanford MoPho is directed by Professor Ge Wang, who is quoted in the article above saying:
“'Both the laptop orchestra and the cellphone orchestra have the potential
to be just demonstrations of uses of technology,” he said.
“But the intent is really to create a place to make music.
If you put good musicians together with this technology, they will make good music with it.'”
to be just demonstrations of uses of technology,” he said.
“But the intent is really to create a place to make music.
If you put good musicians together with this technology, they will make good music with it.'”
In a Stanford University news article done by Cynthia Haven, Ge Wang describes the MoPho performance, "MoPhO performers wear black... they are mostly shoeless in outré socks... the alien cylinders that are sewn onto their fingerless gloves are 'wearable speakers,' Wang explained."
A link from Haven's article directed me to this video clip of Wang's MoPho:
It is such a new phenomenon that it is inevitably going to meet resistance somewhere- everything does when it is first emerges. But I have several thoughts of my own I'd like to share, and as always, I want to hear yours :)
When you open your eyes to it, music and art are all around us in non-traditional ways- nature is the most perfect example I can think of.
But even if you are not as hippie as I am, I think you can choose to hear anything as "music" if you choose to- not just songs written and produced with a title and radio time. The way I see it, ALL music is art and the two are intertwined. Music is the purely audio form of expression, a depiction of emotion, something created to fill the silence...
"Music is what feelings sound like." -Author unknown
So even though the music we are used to come from bands, microphones and instruments, would these iPhone or laptop orchestras be considered music, or art? Some may argue that because it is a computer producing the sounds and not a person that it is less creative or artistic- no one is learning an instrument and we don't get the beautiful picture of someone talented sitting with their instrument and playing us their soul.
But I disagree that there is less creativity involved. Perhaps there is even more, since this is such an unexplored area for the music industry.
The advantages of such a production: you have the perfect precision of a digital device, while there is still a creative realm in which the human being can produce and adjust things to their creative liking. A computer does not have a vision, it is not creative and it doesn't harness inspiration. Those are qualities humans possess. The computer is accurate, it is precise and it does exactly what you tell it to. Combine both and you have a semi-human, semi-computer team working to produce something our ears have never heard before.
Perfectly exemplifying this is the ocarina (a 12,000-year-old clay wind instrument) which Wang has turned his iPhone into.
"Wang held his iPhone as if he were holding a sandwich, then blew into the microphone at the bottom of the device. He controlled the vibrato by tilting the phone as he played 'the Zelda tune' from a popular fantasy-action video game called The Legend of Zelda."
He then continued to launch the ocarina application for the iPhone, and has been downloaded over 600,00 times since November, 2008. On the ocarina app, Wang stated, "'Most of these half-a-million users, we don't think they are professional musicians or performers or people who would think of themselves as artists or musicians; they are simply people who like music... they can pull out the ocarina and play it while they are waiting to get milk at the supermarket. They can play while they are waiting for the bus. They can play during family gatherings.'"
(Please note: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS SAYING IN THE BEGINNING OF THIS ENTRY about how our society demands a mobile device that they can interact with on the go!!! I was very excited to read about this, and I would love to meet this professor. )
Still, concerning questions do arise for now and the future... How does the iPhone ensemble/orchestra sound comparatively to live musicians?Are people who make their living playing instruments going to decrease to the ever-increasing production of iPhones?
Will everyone with an iPhone begin to become a music producer because they have all the tools they need- as opposed to having to buy an instrument ($$), learn it from the very beginning and eventually master it through practicepracticepractice?
If this becomes popular and spreads to colleges, what will happen to the marching bands?
Can you envision yourself going to great concert halls and paying to hear a laptop or mobile phone orchestra?
If this has happened in only two years, what else can we do?
What kind of music will the next generation be exposed to and grow up with?
What I love about music is that there is never a "right" way. So let's stop hating this because it is new and different. Let's give it a chance- who knows what kind of amazing things we could discover.
However you choose to view these digital ensembles I've been describing, they exist. And that is an enormous distance to come in merely two years.
None of us can deny this is a beginning; a new path has emerged and is slowly being paved as we take each step. I think our technologically thriving generation is hungry for a musical bomb to go off- something that will change everything from this point forward....
perhaps this is it?
Final Thought: Ge Wang (from Stanford's MoPho) and I are on the same exact page.
"'Mobile phones are becoming so powerful that we cannot ignore them anymore as platforms for creativity,' said Wang, 31, who sees us on the brink of a 'mobile renaissance, maybe a new mobile revolution.'"
No comments:
Post a Comment