AD: When you developed Phonemer did you see yourself making a
new musical instrument?
EH: Not really.
I was thinking about the piece being more related to the voice
and poetry. There is a poetic quality that I enjoy. It
reminds me of Dada poems.
What got me thinking about Phonemer was the idea
that speech is modular and that the Internet works in
a similar way, with its tiny data packets.
By using the phonetic sounds in a system
where they can rearranged and spit back at the user (in
a somewhat clumsy manner), the Phonemer has the
potential to give meaning to a series of simple sound
samples.
AD: Phonemer differs from conventional
audio software in that it is collaborative and easily
used from a Web browser. Is it significant that you're
involving people in making their own compositions rather
than downloading someone else's music? What are some pros and
cons of this approach?
EH: It's very important to have collaboration. Many people use the
software differently. When there are two or three people using the
piece, the results can go two different ways. One is that the users
begin to collaborate on separate chunks of words in a cooperative
communication. Each chunk is representative of each user. The other
is more competitive. There is usually one large chunks of sounds
that each user is adding and deleting from. The sounds that emerge
are usually a string of baby talk, or another language. I like the
results very much.
As far as pros and cons go. As I said before, the chaotic
results are very interesting to me. Other people may not like that,
but they can always go and change it. That's why the piece is
collaborative. If you think the piece should be reciting song
lyrics, then you can make it do that, instead of gibberish.
But is very difficult to "talk" to each other with this piece.
When you hear the sounds spoken back to you, there is a much different
response than when you hear someone on the phone (with the voice's emotion)
or a message in a chat room (with the text's emotion). The Phonemer has
it's own character, which is no emotion. It's not simply a messenger between
people. It acts more like a broken typewriter.
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