Examples/Questions from previous meetings
http://publicdomainday.constantvzw.org/
Examples / Counterexamples (good / bad)...
Pet Shop Boys with the Turing-inspired work A Man from the Future
(Nice: reading of a text against music, Not so nice: Classical cliches of the performance, the artist, the singular outcome)
Donald Judd, Auto Icon
A positive example http://www.iniva.org/autoicon/DR/index.htm
Chat as an interface into a collection of texts
Brainopera (don't go there!) http://vimeo.com/7900562
Constraint: work 2 x 2 days?
Is the project about one time botopera (performance for the public domain day) or an online project that can be installed permanently or for specific sessions (the death of the authors bot kit - 1943) ?
-> would be nice to go on stage at specific moment, with plotters and other devices for embodiment
mix between humans and bots, live, physical and as chat
-> online after? or possibility to reenact them; yourself
is it a bot-only performance space or does it invite human activators (us, irc users, public domain day audience ) ? how an hybrid setting would work (in which there's a certain level of automation but which invites humans (and bots not written by us) to interact) ?
Thinking about the bot parade as a model for a perfomance:
* Concern if whether the personal engagement was crucial (and would maybe be missing in a public performance).
possibility of talking back to the material as a workshop of 2 days?
* Develop a partition as a libretto.... (hm)
Questions
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interaction amongst bots?
i assume that bots will be made available (git repo) along with an how-to to operate them on different channels. do we make them available through an irc channel (constant/freenode/else) ?
--> Decide on where and when you want them to engage and with whom
IRC-Encounter with the authors
trying to find a way to bring these authors back alive
ONLINE: Desire to erase the line between performers and audience? IRC as a way for an audience to take active part, bots in a more continuous.flow of operation.
PLOTTER: as physical presence and interpretation of what happens in IRC channel
Bots are available as a resource to be used in a chat.
The Plotter then is a potential accessory for a physical meeting.
Public Domain Day -- NOVA
The 2084 idea: Bots as a simulation of the artists // As an access to an archive
A way to talk to the work
cfr Kurenniemi: he made work with this aim, in an entertaining way -> connect to now with its failures, that you can play with it, sometimes in a not so respectful way
-> IRC with bridge to Twitter?
? Remote connection (sense of opening a connection ... a channel)
IRC is nice place to have a meeting, create it in webpage? AndroIRC?
-> what about sound and images???
Anne: thinking about IRC in the gallery // New analog
Importance of invoking the "layers of technology" -- taking a technology from the past not as nostaliga, but to talk about technology of
idea of making ocnnection to older technologies, like we connect to old material
Both on the cultural level (why care about texts from 70 years ago), and technical (why use an "old" protocol) or care about "obscure" or deprecated tech
Paul Otlet: "he also imagined a system that allowed groups of individuals to take part in collaborative experiences like lectures, opera performances, or scholarly meetings, where they might “applaud” or “give ovations.”"
Graham Bell : phone for opera
Marcel Proust subscribed as user of service of theatre over the phone at your house
Neil Stephenson, Diamond Age: Learning - "ractor"
Bitnic project to listen remotely to the opera... Server automatically called people
What if people's phones are used literally as phones -- receiving and sending phones.
different modalities: collective chat spaces, private space
the textual elements happen on the irc, but what about the sound ? on the user terminal (how does it work ?) ? streamed from the server (icecast or else) ?
is the plotter only to be used on the public domain day performance or is there data potential used by plotters (operated by the users) at every moment ?
make clear the score/libretto distinction if we use the opera context/metaphor. what elements are we interested to play with/emphasize ?
the time-based element of the opera is to be thought about : write the interactions in a scenario (script) with bots launched in a certain order
sound-wise : how do we do with the music ? generate sound from rachmaninov scores with texts from henri lafontaine for instance ?
publicdomainday bot which introduce bots/context/lthe rules of the game
The question of the meeting:
* Meet the author individually
* Authors speak to each other (dialog)
* All authors in a space
make scenarios of how it could happen
? maybe mockups of possible
Proposal for next meeting
FRIDAY NOV 7 at 14
SATURDAY NOV 8 ...
Dorisbot (Reading Dept)
extracts from wiki into lay-out, A4 that folds like post card or A3 that reads like newspaper
cfr oamos.com
https://librivox.org/great-big-treasury-of-beatrix-potter/
epub website
-> make a platform
http://constantvzw.org/site/Transcommunautaire-Karaoke,415.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45264
DIY Opera?
Generate a script for a story
Performing
Workshop / Recording Session
(Installation: Recording booths)
"Opera" is the place of performance
Keep the model of open recording + performance (a la TCKaraoke)
How could the different media structure the result.
IRC or WebRTC or a hybrid?
Either recording before time.
Big Audience: "Entrance fee" is to perform
Performance is "IRC" driven -- ie possibility ...
IRC as performance protocol.
Take the structure of Tenor / Sprano / Chorus
? Bots are the authors
<!> THe Author names ARE the bots ... we DON'T make the separation of "the texts" from the authors ...
A performance platform driven by IRC / text.
The sense of being at a dinner with the artist guests.
...
Speaking it
OAMOS as an example of what the interface looks like:
A text chat is running. A hyperlink to an image is placed. The image is loaded and displayed on the web page.
"Chorus" bots respond to the chat by adding sounds to the
Shift pitch of sound...
<!> How to have a sense of a LIVE performance
(Last years, felt canned, even if generated)
Liquid soap for sound ?!
NOT about an isolated performance but ... a Distributed shared experience
it could be a website;
Problem case of Henri La Fontaine, work that is not digitized, only available at KBR / not legal to take it out of the building
check collection of fondation-hlf.mundaneum.or
-> organise it in a workshop
Reverse OCR (Example of a work talking about OCR / limits thereof)
http://reverseocr.tumblr.com/
---
RESUME
What we came up with:
The main idea would be a streamcast web interface, that would also be the projection in Nova (but that can exist as an online platform as well).
For the esthetics we looked at oamos.com, but the infrastructure would be an IRC-channel (Michael would take this on).
The aim is to 'reanimate' the authors throughout their work (not their lives, because that is all out there already).
So the bots wear the names of the authors.
Some sense of direction:
A text chat is running. Hyperlinks to images are placed. The images are loaded and displayed on the web page.
"Chorus" bots respond to the chat by adding sounds.
We think of textbot Beatrix Plotter/Botter (An); soundbots Bots Waller and Rachmanibot (Antonio?); and imagebot IRC Tesla (Anne?).
Outputs could be handwriting/typefaced plotted or digitized outputs, like epub, or printed A4 that folds like post card or A3 that reads like newspaper (Gijs & Michael?). Michael has developed this already for content from a wiki (http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/2014/10/07/hybrid-workflow-how-to-introduction-editing-steps/)
Then there is the problem ofHenri La Fontaine, his work is not digitized, only available at KBR / not legal to take it out of the building
An has to check collection of fondation-hlf.mundaneum, we could also organise 'him' as an OCR-bot or organise the manual labour in a workshop
Introduction text - not used
Fats Waller, Nicolas Tesla, Beatrix Potter, 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 around the table in a festive meeting, that might create new relationships between their works.
Bots have that specific quality to be able to bring archives back to life. After the encounter they will continue their existencee online where the audience can go into dialogue with them. Some performative plotters registrer will register the unique moment and will give the audience the opportunity to go home with fresh, new, original artworks.
Using chatbots to access, (re)activate and combine works by authors in the public domain is a way to experience their works again in a social space, making the private conversation one has with an author (though asynchronous and asymetric) into a shared and playful space. Through IRC, the audience is invited to interact with the bots, actively engaging with the authors works through text, sound, image manipulations.