Undermined by Digital Technology!

One Found Sound was kind enough to call me out on a major misunderstanding. This morning I took issue with the ensemble for the absence of program notes, particularly for the two new works in the first half of the program. Not long after I filed my article, I received word from One Found Sound providing a URL for the digital program: https://www.onefoundsound.org/sonicblooms.

Front face of the latest (as of this writing) Apple iPhone (from the iPhone Wikipedia page)

At last night’s concert, this was available to anyone with a cell phone that could capture a QR code on the table where tickets were being sold. I used that code and all four of the works on the program fit on my phone’s screen. Unfortunately, a cell phone screen is not like a window in a computer screen display. When I visited the URL on my computer, I saw a scroll bar, which I could not see on my phone display.

Sure enough, there was a generous amount of content that I could see on my computer that I did not know existed on my phone! I missed the acknowledgement “that the land on which we are gathered for this performance, and on which we have gathered for our rehearsals, is located on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples.” That text was provided in Spanish following the English version. Continuing the scroll led to a complete account of all the contributing performers, sorted by their respective instruments. Most of what followed was then devoted to the sort of program notes that tend to guide how I write about the performances I attend (again in both English and Spanish).

This made for a generous amount of background content. Most important were the one-paragraph summaries provided by each of the two composers of the new works. My guess is that, had I read those paragraphs, I would have had more to say about those recent compositions; but, in the absence of that content, there was little I could offer beyond what I wrote yesterday!

To be fair, the full background for each of those composers occupied far more space than was occupied by the list of program selections. I doubt that I would have given this much content the attention it deserves had I been limited to the window on my iPhone. On the other hand, preparing a physical document, such as the one given to me at this afternoon’s recital in Herbst Theatre, is a major undertaking for both time and finances. I can appreciate the “digital advantages” of a cell phone, but last night taught me a harsh lesson about its limitations!