Bacterial Orchestra uses iPhones to create “viral music”

Computers & Mobile Music

Debuting at the Volt Festival (site in Swedish) on June 6th in Uppsala, Sweden, the latest incarnation of the Bacterial Orchestra – Public Epidemic No 1 – will be unleashed on a participating public. Organizers speculate impending world-wide sound pandemic.

What do you get if you gather hundreds of iPhones and let them play with each other? A huge musical organism that is not only self-organizing, but also evolving with the sound environment.

Enter the new generation: Bacterial Orchestra – Public Epidemic No 1 (2009).

Bacterial Orchestra (2006) is a self-organizing evolutionary musical organism. The installation consists of several audio cells. Every cell listens to its surroundings and picks up sounds, trying to play together in a musical way. The musical material comes from the background noise, people talking or sounds played by other cells.

Public Epidemic No 1 (2009) is a generation of the installation where each cell lives on an Apple iPhone (it can be ported to any mobile phone, but the iPhone was chosen because it’s popular and the centralized App Store makes it easy for the epidemic to spread…

Bacterial Orchestra [via TUAW]

2 thoughts on “Bacterial Orchestra uses iPhones to create “viral music”

  1. Ed says:

    If they really wanted to be heavy on puns, they could have called it the Bachterial orchestra…

Comments are closed.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

I make cool stuff and write about other people making cool stuff on makezine.com. If you have something you think I should see, send me a tip.

View more articles by Adam Flaherty

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK