Artists Statement

Cellphonia: San Jose is a cellphone karaoke opera about Mexican wholesale nursery workers, hotshot Indian coders, Vietnamese dragon boat builders, Silicon Valley desk jockeys, and Filipino airport workers. Visitors or locals can choose which group’s song they want to sing. Cellphonia’s libretto is delivered via RSS newsfeeds relevant to the subject. The music is algorithmically generated in ibalon, cancion, Bombay pop, Misery pop, and chiptunes. Every fifteen minutes the opera song cycle restarts. A festival caller hears a fragment of the libretto on his/her cellphone and is cued to repeat it, karaoke-style. At the end of the song, he/she is directed to the festival location of the Cellphonia: San Jose 24/7 streaming opera to hear the entire performance.  cellphonia.org/listen

• Tim Perkis, Scot Gresham-Lancaster & Steve Bull, USA