User:Max Dovey/Reading Writing Research Methodologies/maxmethods2

We produce a lot of information don't we?

My recent works have been exploring speech recognition programs as a tool for (mis)interpretation in cinema and live performance. In 'Smart Objects' the speech recognition software 'listens' to household objects and translates the sound of their humming, buzzing and whirling sounds into text that appears on screen as subtitles. The on screen microphone detects the sounds made from the objects and presents the interpretations made by the speech recognition software. The words are made by the computer registering phonetic patterns in the acoustics of everyday objects, the (mis)interpretations present the absurdity of social computing and 'smart technology'

Foley Narrative

I am interested in methods of generating narrative thats improvised and somewhat sketchy, unbalanced, volatile, random. That the audience can also see into, they can see that there is a level of improvisation going on. But the things that interest me most is generative language, using it in a live context where you can see the object or the noise going into the machine and then you have your interpretation. So there is a circuit between the performer (or the sound) and the computer and the result and then improvising with that and beginning to respond to that.I guess there is also a level of ventriloquism going on here, bringing the computer to life, making it speak, making it responsive.

And i'm dancing round it persuading it to be my co-performer. To be generative.

Using the automation of computational procesessess into a live and improvised performance. Bringing its systematic processes into the performative realm, using that process as content for experience and performance. Working with the material that is produced by our interactions with 'it'. I guess whats really nice about doing this live is that you enter into a temporal framework with the computer. As soon as that mic is on its listening and its feeding back instantly to what I'm doing.you have that automated improvisation that begins to happen from the system that just responds from my interactions with it and not the normal well sometimes it is just the systematic responding to my actions, if i then respond back with an audience that hopefully can become more interested i hope, i don't know…

Diary (2013)

Diary(2013) is a an image made from 52 weeks of my diary planner scanned and laid onto a single composition. The scrawling handwritten notes explode over the page with faint straight lines that separate each day are in the background. The work has been exhibited as a single c-type digital print and printed live onto an overhead projector. Each layer has been printed onto a clear transparent sheet and printed continuously onto a printer, slowly layering up the layers to result in this final image. The image is a personal artefact of the duration of a year and an accumulation of daily notes, ideas and to do lists.

Diary (2013) is a compression of time into a single image, and excess of data and information that cannot be interpreted, it cannot be processed or read. It's a years worth of day to day meetings, notes, planning, shopping lists all layered onto one image to make an unreadable annual disaster that is visually overwhelming, an overwhelming amount of data that cannot be processed. It's a compression of a temporal experience into the now. We are loosing the conditions of the presence by always having these (mobile phones) on and being bombarded by other time zones, you know world news or whatever, we have no sense of what the now is any more. So it was about compressing a years worth of time into the now which is what life can sometimes feel like on a day to day when your constantly linked in to all these news feeds. There was a whole process of copying each day, reprinting all this expired data, this is useless information, its like re-reading every old email you ever wrote. There was a couple of nice moments but generally there was no sentimental or nostalgia it was purely about the compression of time.