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Botopera Wiels - Brussels Poetry Fest
http://poetryfest.brussels
11-13th September 2015

PLANNING
* Mon/Tue 7&8/9: finetuning installation & performance?
* Wed 9/9 14-18h: transport plotter + installation (Gijs, An)
* Thu 10/9 10-18h: technical set-up, soundcheck, plotting check, network  etc (Gijs, Michael, Anne, Antonio? I'm only available till 14h)
* Fri 11/9 -> 10-17h: Rehearsal?
               -> 18h: performance
* Sat/Sun 10-18h: attendance installation (we can organise turns) + other events of the festival
* Sun 13/9 18h-20h: transport plotter (Gijs, An)


BUDGET (will be minimal for now)

* Minimal plan with minimum fee, plotter that prints 1 poster at the time & Constant members willing to do the preparations for free

Technical rider
---------------
- support for 40kg (weight plotter)
- space of 3 x 1m x 1,5m
- keybord
- screen
- internet cable
- speakers
- extension cables (5 normal + 2 long)


Budget
------
* Transport plotter:
- rent cambio 2 x 0,5 day Brussels-Vorst return: 30€
- driver & carrier 2 x (2 x 0,5 day): included

* Fee performers: 200€ x 5 : 1000€
- Michael Murtaugh
- Gijs de Heij
- Antonio Roberts
- Anne Laforet
- An Mertens

* Installation/Removal set-up 2 x (2 x 0,5 day): included

* Travel cost performers
- Anne Laforet: 226€ Narbonne - Brussel return
- Antonio Roberts: 202€ Birmingham - Brussel return

* Stay performers: with friends


Total
1458€


* Ideal plan, with fees, plotter that prints on roll

Technical rider
---------------
- support for 60kg (weight plotter)
- space of 3 x 1,5m x 1,5m (h)
- keybord
- screen
- internet cable
- speakers
- beamer
- mixing panel
- extension cables (5 normal + 2 long)

Budget
------
* Transport plotter:
- rent camionnette 2 x 0,5 day Brussel-Vorst return: 80€
- driver & carrier 2 x (2 x 0,5 day @ 150€/day): 300€

* Fee performers: 250€ x 5 : 1250€
- Michael Murtaugh
- Gijs de Heij
- Antonio Roberts
- Anne Laforet
- An Mertens

* Installation/Removal set-up 2 x (2 x 0,5 day): 300€

* Travel cost performers
- Anne Laforet: 226€ Narbonne - Brussel return
- Antonio Roberts: 202€ Birmingham - Brussel return

* Stay performers
2 x 2 nights in hotel

Total
2358€ + hotel


Constant V - version

Meeting 6-3-15

posters: 
not only interpreting text (selection of stems/no stop words), but also the sound (make sound flowers)
in order to avoid the overflow of information: pick message, print with timestamp, when finished, go to next
link between pattent drawings/rabbits & plotter
could be a poster with only text
-> say something about these things being in the public domain
-> mention the license, republish drawings
-> one poster/week: text/image/sound/mix

information in the window/flyer
add subtitle: A bot séance
JOIN the BOTSPOT
connect to the hotspot " botopera " and surf to this address: botopera.lan | have text online
-> A4

An: médor contact for auction

Friday 13th
Dona/An: cocktail as punch + virgin zombie / rum-pineapple-brandy-black straws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_%28cocktail%29

Chatroom
what is happening in the chat as default?
let go of the performance structure partly
ex Fats Bot Waller: wikipedia / archive.org / lyric timing to teach him lyrics / Fat singing new lyrics
duet: interaction between two bots: beatrix paroding what he sings / can echo back to everyone (POS/search in text)

M is writing masterbot that can start other bots - would be good if it could remove a bot (or pause it)
kick command prevents bot from rejoining (would we then need to program our bots to automatically rejoin?)

Anne/Antonio: we just had a long discussion on how to organise our stuff for Michael
Here is the proposal:
    for Antonio: we record your performance on Friday and we replay the recorded files in the installation
    for Anne: if you could make a series of behaviours (functions your bots does) and events it reacts to (f.ex. a word in a message), present each  behaviour as Python script that takes a text as input and gives an output. For events (True/False), I will push the python script for Beatrix as an example on the gitorious repository
    Deadline for these files to get to Michael: Wednesday 11-3

Michael makes the macro-structure on Thursday. I'll be there to test.

The death of the Authors, 1943
Le Charme discret de la botoisie/The Discrete Charm of the Botoisie

See also here: http://note.pad.constantvzw.org/public_pad/Botopera _notes

Text
Fats Waller,  Nicolas Tesla, Beatrix Potter, Sergei Rachmaninov, Henri La Fontaine are  some of the authors who left this world during WWII in 1943. Seventy  years after their death their works have entered the public domain, and  can be used, remixed, republished. Enough of a reason to bring these  authors together around a virtual table to create new relationships  between their works. 
The  authors will be reanimated in the form of chatbots. A chatbot is a  computer program that takes part in a text chat, pretending to be human.  The bots will premiere at Nova in an interactive performance, embodied  via chat as well as in audio-visual and physical printed form.  Afterwards the bots will remain available online for future conversation  and creative development. 

Performance featuring: Bots Waller, NICKola tesla, Beatrix Plotter, Rachmanibot, henrIRC lafontaine & their plotters  
A creation by Michael Murtaugh, Anne Laforet, Gijs De Heij, Antonio Roberts, An Mertens
Duration: 30 min

Authors (+ 1943, entered in the public domain in 2014)
- Fats Waller - Fats Bot Waller -> compositions, not digital recording; 'Ain't misbehaving' has been performed thousand times in different ways
https://archive.org/details/Fats_Waller_Tape_1_1922-1931
- Rachmaninov  - Rachmanibot
- Henri Lafontaine - henrIRC lafontaine
- Beatrix Potter - Beatrix Botter or Beatrix Plotter (BOTrix plotter ??)
- NICKola tesla

Planning  
Days we set to work on it, ideally remotely to test out the interface: 
* Friday 5-12, Saturday 6-12 (Michael, Anne, An) 
* Sunday 7-12 (Anne , An ) 
* Friday 12-12 testrun 
* Saturday 9-1: final check (let's try)
* Thursday/Friday 5 & 6-2: fintetuning, with Antonio in Brussels
* Saturday 7-2: Public Domain Day, performance at Cinema Nova!! 


Bots

- Bots Waller: filter out basslines & have other texts over it, speed can change, chords change...
reacting to the presence of chat
Michael: Interested in simulation of a Fats Waller left hand

- An: Average distance between words -- apply to Beatrix Potter
Generate new texts based on text analysis

- Gijs: Beatrix Plotter? have the plotter(s) as observer(s) of the conversation? work with circles/stars?

- OCR bot: Uses tesseract to OCR an image (selectable) ... and outputs (incorrect) text to IRC (not correcting the sentences?)
Already take an OCR text (with errors)
 LaFontaine, productive bot
(Reading / Misreading OCR bot... ) speak about the practice of OCR

- NICKolas Tesla: high power, inventor, a la Edison 
An: Tesla, generating new machines from combining elements together.
Outputs: Images, Patent Texts / lawyer gibberish
? How would it interact in text ?

Platform
stream = playlist
Alternative to stream would be images in directories, "animated gif" style presentation of say the last 10 images.
and/or image sent to plotter?

dinner party between  bots, IRC users can trigger functions, intervene, launch playlist,  generate/analyse text, generate images or pull images and show it in  the stream
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ance_on_a_Wet_Afternoon

Plotters are witnessing, writing automatons that leave traces of the 'historical moment'
5 plotters at Gijs, every bot each output device
1 plotter = performer, begins and stops
-> writing automaton

text-to-speech, create songs, insert text in songs, cfr OSP printparty: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/blog/news/hachures-tournures-balsamine-print-party

The setup / Nova:
    Screen (images/text) , sound, plotter
? Is there some Input terminal (place to type as audience)... but only outside of the performance time
We are there as performers with laptops, running the bots, and typing into the chat.

Dinner party /round table format - you can revisit it afterwards online :
    * Introduce the guests / order (WIKIPEDIA)
    * Google Bot with nr hits? who has the biggest heritage/most famous
    * Feature the year of death (theme)
    * Botler 'introduce yourself', drunk mode
    * serve dishes with 'keywords', certain keywords trigger certain interactions
-> bots interact between each other using keywords as trigger (for image, sound)
    
Henrirc LaFontaine: The Idealist, Nobel Peace prize winner Feminist sufragette movement
Beatrix Potter: Conservative childrens author
Fats Waller: The Jazz pianist from the US working in segregated Hollywood
Tesla: The mad scientist

Intro / Apero - 5 min
* search their hits on google
* Crawl wikipedia to introduce themselves
* Bots Waller Playing music (need to think of a good intro)

Main dish - 10 min
* each one presents their work
 -> Beatrix prints lines based on frequency of a word & length of words, combines with Fats Waller 
 -> Nikola Tesla could combine with Rachmaninov
* each one remixes his own work
Nikola Tesla will show new machines
Beatrix rewrites her sentences - without vowels/breaking down tales in sentences, sorting them, (rewriting them to be more positive??)

Cheese/Desert - 10 min
Drunken absurd mish mash at end....
do they die? or immediate jodi-switch-out?

Plotter is a witness, transcribes
circles with spikes 
reporting on different levels: text/position of characters/...
? Signatures of the authors for the plotter

Performance = demonstration
Set-up in corridor afterwards for online public interaction with platform, with 1 plotter connected

Sunday 15 March

* Confusing to see all the different bots -- the idea of authors in the PD as bots is strong, people like to address them -- as personalities -- so they need to respond:
* Single bots per author with multiple behaviours that can be swtiched. (stronger sense of identity)
* Bots should respond when addressed by name
* Mute is then a "state" or behaviour of the bots (and they tend to enter this if not addressed)
* Act Structure

* What worked:
    * "Choose a year between 18xx and 19xx and the bots respond" (but then it didn't work, for instance Peter Rabbit , Rachmaninoff could me more thorough, it was pieced out quickly)
    * People did feel engaged to chat with the bots as authors, scientists, whatever. Tried to address them by name (but that didn't work)... They have preferences with whom to speak.
    * The moment when Fats archive.org was triggered by the Wikipedia (chat triggered sentence with "Birmingham Blues" and then it started to play from archive.org). (Lesson: important to not isolate the different behaviours)
    * Parody mode of Beatrix was seen as poetic, and prophetic (I love you, She's leaving him) moment. Man types: The world is entering eternity.... Response: A laughter is smiling a minute.
   * Tesla imagery in response to years very strong. (Magical just typing a year, and seeing it in the image of the patent application) Also the animated gifs through the year.
   * watching Roland
 * Personal engagment with the authors (to get a personal engagement with a software)... Chat as a space really works as a literary device, engages a sense of "suspension of disbelief"
 
PRIORITIES
* Stabilize what we have so that it works well
* Reduce the messiness of bossy bots (finding balance)
* 

TODO (and who)

An
* complete html publicdomainday.constantvzw.org (An) -> password in Revelation is incorrect - mail sent to Denis, I'll upload html page tomorrow
* text for window (to be plotted by Gijs) (An) with sources from where we got the material
* text for prepage (An)
* Beatrix Potter images indexed by year (+ Rachmaninov/Fats)
* Frequency + length bot fix 

Anne
* understanding how to add elements to the bot
* Tesla Biography text indexed by year (Anne, Michael?)
* Nickola: Original Patent Images with texts (Anne)
* Nickola : gif of patents by theme : a few done. more to do ? need to find new categories : electricity may be too wide (it would create a massive gif).perhaps energy ?
* Nickola : "new machines"
* Nickola : zoom of drawings (gifs) 
* upload raw materials on git repo : patents (png, pdf, txt), autobiography
* upload image remixes on git repo

Michael
* Code Walkthrough -- document on wiki
* Prevent screen blanking on Basement PC (Michael)
* FORCE FOCUS on message entry
* Fix keyboard (& Scrolling fix position) (Michael)
* Fix login as constant vitrine... plus autologin ... special URL (Michael)
* Auto-relaunch Firefox (if quit)
* Remember function of the callback, maybe needs to always respond when addressed (Have addresed in the FSM) (Michael)
* Rewrite / organize the bot behaviours in single bots (Michael)
* Finish preliminary bash bots + indexes
* Video Fats ... add to index (Michael?)
* Revise hostbot to start others
* Install / test on server
* Image display in the chat (scale by height) (Michael)
* Clear audio not working in the interface (Michael)
* try client: xrandr --output VGA1 --rotate left (didn't work)
* update plotbot from repo
* hostbot announce "acts", set topic
* host random act from time to time
* Rachmanibot basic bot (wikipedia + archive works stub)
* fats srt singer (simple twins)
* beatrix index (An?!)
* Rachmanibot pd patch, running on server + streaming (Michael)
* some kind of addressability (ability to mute or solo a bot)

Gijs
* Drawbot: Respond when it takes an action (Hey that's an image let me draw that for you...) (Gijs)... Roland
* Install 'HPGL-bot' on EEEPC
* Write manual to 'boot' plotter in the evening & turn him off in the morning

lower priority
* (e)Speak Bot (maybe not this time, harder than I thought + timing difficult and dealing with message floods)
* Private messages (test with window)
* Kiwi login selector with other names from 1943 deaths
* mention source for 'sentences' and files, in ultimate version: th author from Wikipedia
* Rachmanibot wrapper bot (Michael ... something to simply paste the stream URL)
* Transcription bot to mediawiki (Michael)
* Include source links
* Ideally the sources (URLs) could be compacted into an icon
* An: scrape images of Little Pig Robinson with Pattern
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/potter-pigrobinson/potter-pigrobinson-00-h-dir/potter-pigrobinson-00-h.html
* Extend the index of fats with more archive.org materials