The female voice speaks serenely and dreamily: ‘I’ve always thought of life as a kind of canvas and people as different colored paints. Each decorates your canvas in a different way.’

Musical chords begin to fill the space around her words. She speaks about this analogy and her philosophy of life. Her voice begins to fade out, replaced by twinkling notes.

Scores of audio clips like this fill the homepage of One Hello World (onehelloworld.com), countless stories with no introduction but a humming of music. And it all begins with a phone number.

One Hello World, a Syracuse-based project, is both a digital social experiment and a musical masterpiece created by Syracuse resident Jared Brickman. Anonymous callers leave messages, both pensive and passionate, on any topic. Brickman then composes original tracks to accompany the calls.

Brickman plans to further expand and connect One Hello World’s audience by releasing an album. The record will be a 20-track LP that will include remastered versions of the project’s best pieces. The album, titled ‘The Listener,’ will be funded by donations. From mid-November through Dec. 31, the website’s fans raised more than $5,000 for the project.

Brickman started the project in the summer of 2010. He first posted his phone number on his Facebook page and encouraged viewers to call in to share stories on the voicemail.

‘I had a bunch of friends call me and tell me what they think happiness is, and then I made a track from it and posted it online,’ he said. ‘All of a sudden, I started getting phone calls from other people.’

Eventually, his project migrated to Tumblr and then to its own website, where the phone number is posted atop the page. Today, the project has more than 21,000 subscribers.

The project recently gathered special success. PostSecret, an online art project that consists of secrets mailed in by users on postcards, featured a track from One Hello World as a ‘secret’ on its website during the week of Dec. 18.

Brickman said he felt humbled by the mention because One Hello World was partially inspired by the PostSecret project. Frank Warren, founder and operator of PostSecret, also recognized a connection between the two works.

Though PostSecret uses visual art as its means of expression and One Hello World relies on audio, the projects are essentially very similar in purpose.

‘Our projects use different paths, but they take people to the same place,’ Warren said. ‘That’s feeling more connected, understanding that everyone has a voice that can and should be heard, and seeing and discovering new value in the world.’

The callers sharevignettes of heartbreak and hope, one-sided conversations to the past and future with life advice and lessons learned.

‘My family is the definition of dysfunction, and it’s my fault,’ one voice laments in a voicemail. ‘It all started when I came out.’

Another voice on a different track reflects about love: ‘I used to have this crazy idea as to what love really was. About seven years ago, I met this girl who completely changed my opinion of that.’

But what begins as a phone call confessional is transformed into a musical work, a symphony of emotion and experience. Brickman chooses recordings he finds particularly poignant. He then pairs it with a track with various instruments to go with the narrative as it unfolds. The two fused together results in a cohesive artistic composition. Lastly, he posts the track onto the One Hello World blog.

The project, less than 18 months old, currently has 91 tracks. Brickman produced seven pieces in December alone.

‘He works on it every day,’ said Jeff Bower, Brickman’s roommate and friend of 12 years. ‘Sometimes, you can open the door and he doesn’t even realize that the door has been opened.’

Brickman, who studied music at the State University of New York at Potsdam, hopes that the album will help expand the project and bring even more people together through the bonds of common understanding.

He said he believes music is fundamental to achieving the purpose of One Hello World, as it mirrors and heightens the feelings of the story that a caller tells. Ultimately, common feelings strung through unique perspectives of the works link callers and listeners.

‘Through music, because it’s wordless and it creates intangible sensations, you can get a connection to another individual,’ he said.

Though the basis of these pieces is just one person’s voice, he said the project has evolved into a conversation between the callers and their audience.

‘It’s more than a bunch of monologues. It’s turned into a dialogue,’ Brickman said.

This dialogue can be noted on nearly every track, particularly ‘I Called This Stupid Number to Pretend It’s You,’ which acknowledges the lonely silence of the answering machine.

‘I felt like calling you because I miss you and, um, I don’t know. I wish I was actually calling the real you,’ the voice stumbles on the recording. ‘I wish you had told me that you wanted to try again because you thought that we were worth it. But we weren’t and that’s the hardest part to accept.’

‘You’re not alone, I know how you feel,’ replied Tumblr user be-heartstrong to the anonymous caller.

Brickman said the audience is imperative to the project, for both calling and listening. The most distinctive aspect of One Hello World is that it’s completely participant-generated. The messages that callers leave are uninhibited, raw and completely personal.

‘I’m just here to make the music to what you’re calling about,’ Brickman said. He extends the responsibility for the project’s success to the honesty and merit of his callers.

Brickman hopes to have the opportunity to work with other musicians, particularly those from other cultures, when turning these voicemails into works of art. Brickman said he would love to learn from the music of different traditions to pair with voicemail tracks, infusing his pieces with diversity. He said he believes it would culturally unite people.

‘In a project that is ultimately isolated, I feel like I’m in the company of thousands,’ he said. ‘And all of us are being creative together.’

ggriccar@syr.edu

Published on January 18, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Gabriela: ggriccar@syr.edu