Workshop
For general descriptions & bios,see: http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/Frankenstein_revisited_proposal
Planning
29 August: dress rehearsal in Paris & online, organise a testrun of the workshop, answer editorial questions
4th September: travel to Bern (James/Piero: car or evt train Amsterdam-Bern, Catherine: train Tours-Bern, Anne: train Narbonne or Paris-Bern, An: train Brussels-Bern)
5th September: set-up space, rehearsal, print-issues (printer/shop), Sarah: train Paris-Bern
6-8th September: workshop Bern
9th: Publication day, Sarah travels back in the evening / Festival evening (anyone who wants, stays, not paid, An happy to give presentation, but the more the better)
TBC 10 or 11th September: James, Piero, Anne, Catherine, An travel back
Technical requirements
Set-up needs:
- internet connection with ethernet cable (MS = Mad Scientist)
- 2 projectors (MS) & screenspace (white wall), one for IRC-chat and one for datavisualisations & images
- 10 sixstrips for plugs (MS)
- printer A3? B/W? Colour? (MS)
- tables, chairs for 21 people (MS)
- paper, pens, tape (An)
- Raspberry Pi with tools & libraries (James), TP-Link with local IRC (An)
- webcam, joybox (Sarah)
ContentContext provided through short lectures during the workshop (every day some)
- Constant/algolit (An & Catherine)
- Frankenstein the novel, the context, related sources (Catherine & Piero)
- introduction to chatbots (Piero & Anne) http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/Frankenstein_revisited_wkspchatbotpresentation
- history of IRC (James & Anne)
- hybrid publication machine (Sarah & An)
- local network set-up (James)
- neural networks (James)
Type of bots 'being a creator creating your creature!'
Code & images: http://www.algolit.net/scripts/Frankenstein
Bots related to the text of the novel:
- novel bot prints lines of the novel
- permutation bot: this bot takes a significant sentence from the novel and generates permutations of it based on rhyme, letter changes and semantic attributes. Significant sentences in this case are those spoken by the monster or the romanticized and too-generic descriptions of how the monster came to life. By using technology to change these sentences, the bot points to the missing technological aspect in the language of the novel.
- climate bot
- neural network bot re-mixing the novel based on the neural net, doesn't have to be the only input...and it also doesn't necessarily have to be english
Bots related to the learning process of the monster in Frankenstein
- carbon powder bot
- hovelbot
- precisionbot: training a supervised ML algorithm to predict uncertainty based on annotated sentences of the novel
Bots related to actions of the novel
- murderbot
- kickbot
Bots related to activities in the chat
- monk bot: logs everything, username, time, text
- publication bot: typing 'grep' in the chat will copy the last 10 lines in a .txt-file, and save it to the shared folder, so people can comment the lines of the chat
- definition bot: takes the last message of the chat and replaces nouns of the sentence by their definition
- parody bot: takes last message of the chat, analyses its syntax, and rewrites the structure using random but syntactically 'correct' text from the novel
Visual elements
- Zalgo Bot: playing with the idea that a bot can become an entirely separate entity disrupting the normal flow of a IRC chat channel, Zalgo Bot uses Unicode combining characters that get
"attached" to regular text. Together they can overflow the line separation and visually take over the channel.
- Figlet (ASCII), ...
* these are ways to play with the look of the text in the IRC chatroom
- datavisualisations based on logs of the chat (via shared image folder)
* this gives an overview per hour (tbc) of the activities in the chat, the type of words used, their frequencies...
- images from films, books, wikis (via shared image folder)
- pictures taken in the space (via shared image folder)
- pictures from the Dodok: collages made on the spot (via shared image folder)
Program 3 days workshop
2 or 3 types of activity
* chatting with the bots & commenting the fragments
* writing and rewriting the code of the bots
* pj'ing with the pjbox & create pdfs of pages
Monday evening
18:25: Sarah arrives
19-20h30: Dress rehearsal - we make a first quick publication using the pj-box to test
Tuesday
* Morning: Introductions: Constant/algolit (An&Catherine), Frankenstein (Catherine&Piero), chatbots (Piero&Anne)
* Afternoon: Presentation of the bots (chatting & coding) & pjbox with publication
Parade (sharing/showing bots) , all in the same chatroom
Wednesday
Split in different groups / chatrooms for testing
Introductions: history of IRC (James&Anne), Turing Test (Goostman)
* Morning: group1 (editing/chatting) - group2 (coding) // participants can try out the publication machine
* Afternoon: group2 (editing/chatting) - group1 (coding) - group 3 (pubiishing)
Thursday
* Morning: Introduction on hybrid publishing + present template for publishing (ask Gui) + possibilities for distribution of the publication -> this can maybe be part of the first day and be integrated during the days, producing a different version of the publication every day -> to be seen
selection of previously generated material (see Friday)
* Afternoon: finalization of the publication
Friday (no participants, only us)
Publication final touch & printing
Form
- format: book
- Japanese binding
- find copyshop/printer
- fold & bind
Content
* Introduction
* Bots present themselves with the text of Frankenstein
* Part of taken from the logs with comments
* Code of the bots (how to organize / by time? by bots?)
* List of participants
* License
----> Questions:
how to make sure the publication is 'legible' and not fragmented?
how to assure the 'stitching' that is so present in Frankenstein?
can we present conceptual chapters based on the generated material?
there will be different folders on the local server:
° images
+ long texts
° short texts
° pdfs
° selection for the publication (can be pdfs, images, txts)
THE "AFTERLIFES"
- Article in peer reviewed art journal : http://www.jar-online.net // deadline 31st October
- Constant V (tbc) // opening 27th October
- Exhibition Piero (tbc)
- State Festival Berlin // November 2016 (tbc)
- Workshop in exhibition Ygrec Paris / / January 2017 (tbc)