The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Mobile Mobile: The Christmas Tree Retought

This month, interactive artist James Theophane was tasked with creating a holiday experience that embodied the spirit of collaboration for London ad agency Lost Boys. When he heard that there had been an agency-wide cell phone upgrade two months earlier, leaving behind fifty old phones, Theophane decided to upcycle the old phones into a reinterpretation of the idea of the Christmas tree and its role as a communal focal point.

The result was Mobile Mobile, a giant interactive chandelier, where each hanging phone plays a different note of a Christmas carol and flashes in time.

The elaborate scheme works by assigning a tone to each phone and making it individually addressable by a computer to create the choral arrangement, bringing the choir of devices to life.

Visitors and onlookers can “play” the installation from their browser, and it has also been wired to respond to tweets.

Indulge your inner geek with a behind-the-scenes look at the rather impressive production process. And if you have an old phone lying around, unless you can wire it up into a brilliant interactive chandelier, why not consider donating it to Hope Phones?


Published December 21, 2009

https://www.themarginalian.org/2009/12/21/mobile-mobile/

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