User:Inge Hoonte/Is This On?

For 'Is This On?', which I coordinated with Birgit Bachler as part of UpStage 11:11:11, I worked with the boundaries and overlap between on/offline performance. Over the course of three collaborative workshops and performances, we actively tried pushing physical matter onto the web stage, and vice versa. We played with the idea that the operating system which a computer user interacts with is actually a person inside the machine. In the third performance, the storyline had matured enough for some participants to transport the user avatar inside the machine, making her fall in love with a GNU character, while going on a date in the green pastures of the typical Windows desktop background.

UPSTAGE FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

STREAMING: 10am-20pm

10:00-10:30 coffee tea welcome

10.30-11:00 introduction UpStage

11:00-11:20 IS IT ON [1]

11:20-11:30 small break

11:30-13-30 WORKSHOP 1

13:30-14:15 lunch break

14:15-14:30 set-up Is It On [2]

14:30-14:50 IS IT ON [2]

14:50-15:00 small break

15:00-18:00 WORKSHOP 2

18:00-19:00 break, preparation, mingling

19:00-19:30 set-up IS IT ON [3]

19:30-19:50 IS IT ON [3]

after eight beer & wine

Is This On? performed on 11/11/11 as part of the UpStage festival. Info here

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11:11:11 = 5 time zones, 12 shows, 24 hours, 34 artists!

From 11am on 11/11/11 New Zealand time until 11pm on 11/11/11 European time, an exciting selection of cyberformance will be presented at the 11:11:11 UpStage Festival. Anyone with a standard internet connection and browser can attend with just one click.

Publicity Pack: download as one zipped file (2.7MB), or as individual PDFs:

festival schedule announcement
real life access nodes announcement
11:11:11 donations appeal/ trailer
“Reinterpreting the classics in cyberspace”
“Artists bring decades of experience to cyberformance”
“Interacting with online audiences”
Background to UpStage – including screengrabs and links to past festival showreels.

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Oct 9
Some PR
Is It On? works with the first steps of learning how to program. Sympathizing with the computer, unexpected love and jealousy between open source and proprietary software seem to form the perfect setting for a geek tragedy. Are we programmers, script-writers, designers, performers, button-pushers, hardware-hackers, sound nerds, or a bit of all? Where are opportunities to oppose, prove wrong, learn from and copy one another?

For the practical application of our ideas, we chose to build virtual apartments into a desktop computer, which are projected into the UpStage platform. There are two apartments, one inhabited by the Proprietary family, and in the other one lives the Open Source family. The script is as much based on conflicts between Apple, Windows and Linux, as it is on the Montagues and the Capulets. The performance is about how the members of these groups communicate and seek connection in their differences and similarities through scripting, programs, software and analog means.

Students, alumni and friends of Piet Zwart Institute are invited to join Inge and Birgit during a series of workshops to develop tools of storytelling with open source and/or proprietary software tools, create generative avatars and build DIY-electronic stages. As we're directly working with students in a studio environment, there's a natural habit to walk in and out and learn from one another, while also sharing lunch and watching movies in the same spaces. Within the department we're used to logging our work progress on a media wiki. UpStage enables us to push this social environment further online.

Through a mix of analog and digital means such as writing, hacking, scripting, programming, and soldering we aim to blur the boundaries between the real and the virtual. Webcams record physical spaces and the people performing in them, a screen that is then inserted into the online stage. This allows analog performers and digital avatars that appear on the screen to interact with one another. Real and virtual start to blend.

We aim to push cross-fertilization between our practices. Inge has more experience in writing and performing while Birgit has more of a programming background. In our collaboration for UpStage, programming influenced the script for example, and ideas for live performance influenced the code for how to operate the avatars.

Sept 7
Birgit Bachler and I are working on an online performance event called IS THIS ON?
It's part of the UpStage project on 11/11/11, that we will host and stream live at PZI on Nov 11.
Last night, we set up the video stream to experiment with video avatars.
Earlier this week, we brainstormed and worked on code to enable random operation of the avatars on the screen.

Sept 9
Concept brainstorm. Stage will be a remodeled desktop hard drive, with apartments that are projected into it on UpStage. Actors/performers/operators are live in screen (in other parts of building). Also avatars. Avatar making workshop previous to performance. We'll provide script. CD drives are extended balconies.

# goofy sentence generator
    
import random
    
def make_sentence(part1, part2, part3, part4, part5, n=1):
   """return n random sentences"""
   # convert to lists
   p1 = part1.split('\n')
   p2 = part2.split('\n')
   p3 = part3.split('\n')
   p4 = part4.split('\n')
   p5 = part5.split('\n')
   # shuffle the lists
   random.shuffle(p1)
   random.shuffle(p2)
   random.shuffle(p3)
   random.shuffle(p4)
   random.shuffle(p5)
   # concatinate the sentences
   sentence = []
   for k in range(n):
   	try:
   		s = p1[k] + ', take the avatar ' + p2[k] + ' and execute ' + p3[k] + ' make a move ' + p4[k] + ' and say ' + p5[k] 
   		s = s.capitalize() + '.'
   		sentence.append(s)
   	except IndexError:
   		break
   return sentence
    
# break a typical sentence into 5 parts
# p1: who in the audienc
part1 = """\
Birgit
Inge
The neighbor"""

# p2: which avatar
part2 = """\
tail
helen
cat"""

# p3: make action
part3 = """\
/a1
/a2
/a3"""

# p4: move avatar where?
part4 = """\
up the screen
bottom
left
anywhere"""

# p5: say this text:
part5 = """\
hallo
poop
goodbye
the world is great"""

print '-'*60

sentence = make_sentence(part1, part2, part3, part4, part5, 1)
for item in sentence:
	print item
print '-'*60

"""

"""