Piano Phase Phone

I helped the students of the University of Michigan Digital Music Ensemble hack a rotary dial phone for their performance of Robert Ashley’s In Memoriam… Kit Carson. During one rehearsal, I heard Steve Rush say that he considered Ashley to be a minimalist like Reich and Riley. There was an extra phone lying around, and this gave me an idea.

I’ve been thinking about designing interfaces that are “bespoke” (to use a term I picked up in Ireland) to compositions. It made me consider whether we can embody a composition into an interface or instrument.