Telephony is an installation developed in 2000 by Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead that allows gallery visitors to dial into a wall based grid of 42 mobile phones, which in turn begin to call each other and create a piece of “music.”

Each phone is linked up to a laptop with a sound card and has been programmed with a different ringtone, which played en-masse, create various harmonic layers all of which are based on the NokiaTune. The more people who dial into the work (whether inside or beyond the gallery walls) the more complex and layered the audio becomes.

A piece of “elevator” musac, also based on Nokiatune, plays into the space as a kind of background layer.

Via Clippings Mobile Audience.