At Mastermundo 2009 Ritzo decided not to do his talk, while he was invited as a speaker. Thank god he didn’t. He decided he wanted to do things with lots of people. Because he likes things with lots of people. And he became a hero in a day.

After a long day, everybody was kind of wasted. And we decided collectively not to do the performance at the Spuiplein. It missed out on a lot. We decided to do a final session with Itay and then call it a day and together enjoy the TodaysArt festival instead. The majority of people joined in for the closure session. To see if we could get something to work. We ended up standing in a big circle, with Itay in the center, challenging the group to do things. Almost nobody felt like doing much. All ideas ended up in more collective ideas. And not in music but in ‘noise’ as Itay calls it. Screaming and shouting, but nothing structural, nothing really creative. So at a certain point we were doing a wave by voice instead of hands. At that point, Ritzo came in. With a phone in his hand. That he had ANP on the phone, the general Dutch press service. He told me that I had to explain Mastermundo. So I did. The lady on the otherside ended the call with: ‘Can you ask Ritzo to call me back, to share if the record attempt succeeded?’ ‘Okay.’ Then we hung up. ‘What record attempt, Ritzo?’ So he explained.

Vocal Domino. A record attempt Vocal Domino. Which was similar to the voice wave we were already doing. So, we tried to find a way to do that as a group, define the rules, the how, etc. Then Ritzo received a sms message: we made it to the AD. It was national news now:

Den Haag doet recordpoging ‘vocal domino’
DEN HAAG (ANP) – Op het Spuiplein in Den Haag vindt zaterdagavond een recordpoging ‘vocal domino’ plaats. De Israëlische dirigent Itay Talgam hoopt zoveel mogelijk mensen op de been te krijgen die achter elkaar een toon uitstoten. De recordpoging maakt deel uit van een chaosconcert, waar ook een improvisatieorkest deel van uitmaakt.

De actie vocal domino vindt plaats in het kader van Mastermundo, een jaarlijks terugkerend samenzijn van kunstenaars. Zij proberen in de Hofstad in één dag iets moois te creëren. De organisatie roept via blogs en twitter zoveel mogelijk mensen op zich tegen half elf ’s avonds op het Spui in Den Haag te melden. ,,Je hoeft niet per se te kunnen zingen”, beklemtoont dirigent Itay Talgam.

Hij rekent op tussen de duizend en vijfduizend deelnemers aan de recordpoging.

It was exactly what the group needed. Apparently need to have an incentive to participate. A lot of laughs and a bundle of energy. It became a group instantly. After agreeing to go for it at 10.30pm we rounded up, packed our stuff and finished the day at the auditorium of the KABK.

When I brought Itay to his hotel, I bumped into Olof van Winden, the director of TodaysArt and explained him what the situation was. We arranged a guerilla beamer set-up, contacted the social web godfather Roeland P. Landegent who was in control of everything social web at TodaysArt and we spread the word. In the restaurant the rules were made up. What is Vocal Domino? How does it work? Who is presenting it? What should be visible on the screens? Mark Ridder joined to make the screens and then left to make all the arrangements. So cool. The rest is history:



And such a great ending for the day. When we started the day, we had no clue where we would end up with. It was truly building an airplane while flying. And we had a great flight. For a large part, thanks to Ritzo.