14 DAY TRIAL // When there are 50 HTC Touch phones that are needed no more and a great deal of imagination and work, the result is an impressive one: an installation that can deliver a Christmas experience. The six-meter circumference interactive sculpture, called “Mobile Mobile,” has James Theophane as its Creative Director, and is said to be the signature piece for the entrance of the Brick Lane studio.
Here's how it works, “Mobile Mobile upcycles fifty old agency cell phones (available after an agency-wide upgrade just two months prior). Each phone is individually addressed by a computer to co-function and create a choral arrangement. Assigning each phone a tone, the mass is transformed into an aural form that appears to come alive, shimmering and flirting for onlookers.”
Each of the fifty handsets not only plays a certain note, but also flashes in time. A small program running on the device and a controller running on a PC that sends the commands are other important pieces of the puzzle. Mobile Mobile became a semi-permanent hanging (exhibition) space, and in January, it is expected to make room for another hanging media, it seems.
“Mobile Mobile is one in a line of many great lo-fi art/build concepts; from the Design Museum's Aquarium, Digital By Design, Troika and The Cloud, the Printer Bleeping Thingy (I can't remember who did it), all the great work by W+K and, of course AKQA's wonderful microwaves from last Christmas. Hopefully there'll be many more to come,” a post on theophane.co.uk states.
The best part of the deal, as wmpoweruser and theophane note, is that anyone can easily control the installation over the Internet. Those interested in this can access this page for more details. The video below will show you how it all works. For what it's worth, this is indeed something that deserves a lot of appreciation, especially considering the difficulties met.