_{Emojiii by Steye Hallema}

It’s almost 10 years now since Dutch VR artist and director Steye Hallema had the idea for The Smartphone Orchestra. He was sitting on the train from Utrecht to Amsterdam having recently completed work on a new installation which involved 40 audio speakers. This was in 2014, a time he now describes as when the “zombie apocalypse started” in earnest and the whole world seemingly became addicted overnight to staring at their smartphones.

“I realised, wait a second, there is a speaker in every phone and through the internet we must be able to synchronise these phones. That hit me as a Eureka [moment]…that’s when The Smartphone Orchestra started.”

Early on, Hallema set about creating “magical sound fields” to which every spectator could contribute as if they were separate orchestra members. “But then, slowly but clearly, a much bigger idea started to come across,” the director remembers. He realised that smartphones could be used for collective artistic enterprises. They were a way for “telling stories with the audience, not to them.”

Now, Hallema and his collaborators, among them co-writer Shea Elmore, Eric Magnée and Nicholas Robert Thayer, are about to unveil their latest work together, Emojiii, which is receiving its world premiere in the immersive section of the Tribeca Festival. It is billed as “a crazy 25-minute interactive group experience designed to test your emoji utilisation.”

Participants come into the venue, log onto the Smartphone Orchestra platform and are given prompts via their phones. They then take part in a series of exercises. One requires them to choose their favourite emoji, form a group with other audience members and then “come up with a story composed of the three emojis in your group.”

The next challenge sees audience members coupled in pairs. One member has four emojis on their phone and the other has one. One uses body language (movement and facial expressions) and the other has to guess which emoji is being portrayed.

“People have to smile and grin,” Hallema explains. “That’s the fun, of course. In no time, a group of 100 people are making funny faces to each other which for us, as the creators, is hilarious!”

This isn’t just jokey fun. Emojiii isn’t just trying to make people laugh. It is exploring new ways of digital storytelling. “We’re basically developing this language to create shared experiences through digital communications in real time, in a real place.”

The immersive Emojiii is one of the group’s lighter and more playful works but it still confronts audience members with nagging and provocative questions about how the digital world is changing their physical behaviour and ways of communicating. Emojis are now one of the most commonplace devices humans use for communicating with each other - but this is effectively a new language created by a handful of wealthy tech companies.

“I am not against emojis at all. I think emojis are great…but I think we should question this. When companies are making up the language we speak, we might lose something. There is an urgency in that.”

Hallema warns of the dark side of digital and social media communication. “People feel so easily criticised,” he notes of how tweets and Instagram feeds prey on users’ insecurities. He also talks about the danger of “monologues from people who feel they’re right” and who aren’t ready to engage in dialogue.

“As artists, we should really question what the digital world is doing but also create fun stuff. I think Emojiii is a way of making people connect through a digital device…”

The Smartphone Orchestra founder comes from an intriguing background. His father is the celebrated Dutch magician, Flip (Magic!) Hallema, inventor of several now famous tricks with cards, ropes, rings and sticks.

Hallema sees similarities between his work and that of his dad. “A magic trick is mostly a fairly simple technical trick but it’s the story around it that makes the trick shine…there is an analogy there.”

The Orchestra finances its work by applying for public funding and by selling its shows. “We play at digital storytelling festivals but we also play at company events. We play at theatres. We play in curated programmes about how technology is changing the world,” Hallema says of how the company keeps itself going. He himself works as a Creative Director on various other VR projects.

“I’ve been a musician for a while and I’ve been a songwriter but I really got fed up that it was about me all the time, so I’ve made it about…YOU,” he says. “I love doing VR but The Smartphone Orchestra is really my first love because it is so social. It’s about people together…it is countering everyone staring at their phones. It’s bringing people together and I really feel a big urgency that this is really what people at the moment need. Please put that in as a big hippy quote!” he checks out.
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