LookingOutwards-10

The Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO) is an innovative ensemble that explores social music-making using mobile devices, instantiated in 2007, directed by Ge Wang.

This project takes advantage of existing technologies and turns them into personal musical instruments. People on the internet could also add sound to existing music.

I admire how this project affords new possibilities for us to be expressive in the field of music creation. In the past, only those who received special training could play certain instruments, but with MoPhO, anyone interested in music could easily express themselves musically with available devices. For example, one of the instrument it could mimic is the ancient flute. By simply blowing into the microphone, the sensor embedded in the phone could detect the strength of your sound and synthesizing the sound according to where the fingers are pressing on the screen interface. This changes the way humans think about making music and the approach they use.