Oldideas

Week 1 and 2

I have a few ideas that I might want to work on. Some are in really early stages and I will not share them yet. But two are a little bit more mature and I'll describe them briefly below.

Performance space as a computer

The note by Alexander Galloway on code as a language that is executable reminded me of John Cage and performances of him I heard about. He wrote instructions for his performers for example:

"In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action"

You could translate these instructions into code like language like:

BEGIN
sound.level = sound.maxlevel;
performance.action = "a disciplined action";
END


If you approach these instructions from a code point of view you can borrow concepts from programming languages (for instance procedures) to shape the instructions. This will make the instructions work differently. In the case of borrowing the concept op procedures the instructions become more dynamic:

PROCEDURE openWindow()
BEGIN
performance.action = "open a window";
END

PROCEDURE closeWindow()
BEGIN
performance.action = "close a window";
END

BEGIN
openWindow();
closeWindow();
openWindow();
openWindow();
closeWindow();
END

Looking at instructions this way turns the stage into a platform where the performers act as processors and you can create art by writing code.

Most people will know the work of John Cage and that of Allan Kaprow. LeWitt seems to be another artist concerned with code that executes art. I will have to broaden my knowledge about them and especially my knowledge about the people who came after them. With this theoretic research I hope to learn more about the possibilities of shaping instructions.

In the end this research may develop into a protocol that leads the performers. And as Alexander Galloway writes, this protocol has the potential to be a field of possibility where the performers can "hack" the protocol and break out of their impediment; showing creativity.

I like this idea a lot, because it appeals to my motto which is: "Freedom only exist in how you respond to what people do to you". Likewise freedom only exists in how as a performer/audience you deal with the protocol.

rotterdammers.nl

My second idea is about art facilitating contact between strangers. Sometimes I'm struck by the realization that everybody I meet on the street could be a valuable person to know in my life, but that I'll never know, because they'll always remain strangers to me. Reason enough for me to think how art may change this in my life.

The first thing I thought of (an idea from last year) was to make a performance about strangers that would automatically get into contact with each other through a site called www.rotturdammurs.nl, without them realizing exactly what is going on. I imagined the play to be about problems that might occur in online contact and would end with the announcement that everybody in the audience was now subscribed to www.rotturdammurs.nl and that they could check it out themselves to meet the strangers that are now sitting in the theatre.

Now that I know more about wireless connections through Danja and Gordo's classes I was thinking that it might be exciting to listen to a public wireless connection (like the one from Rotterdam) and see what people browse on these networks. If you compare the surf behavior of different individuals you might be able to match people together and bring them into contact. The idea of the play would be executed in real life. I'm not 100% sure how this would work technically, but I will try to listen to some traffic soon and talk about the possibilities with the tutors.

Week 3

A lot of stuff happend this week. First all give a short update on my ideas so far and then I'll go into the prospects of the other classes that I took this week.

Performers space as a computer

Unfortunately I have not red as much as I wanted to. But some Kaprow texts are now printed in my bag and I got to read the first chapter of Galloway. It remains difficult to think of a translation from what protocol is to a theatrical protocol, but the second chapter of Galloway about form is promising, because it will give a more abstract description of what protocol is, making any translations easier.

Through Dusan I heard about an alumni called Mara. It appears that she made a performance project very similar to my current idea's. She wrote instructions in Perl for performers to execute. I will try to get into contact with Mara and see how we might benefit from each others work and idea's.

The glimpses I saw of Kaprow's text remind me of the current Prototype assignment. You can check my results with this assignment here. Happenings might be not so different from algorithms. With Happenings (so it seems now) you don't prepare much but you let a piece of art develop depending on the participants. Likewise you could expect an algorithm to create output based on participant input. For instance a favorite song of a participant could be downloaded and function as a time structure for a Happening. You could import the favorite 3D world of participants to be the base for the space structure. This way a lot of variables in the Happening are set through the computer. But more on this after I red some more Kaprow!

Rotterdammers.nl

I got a little wiser on the technical part of this idea. Apparently it is possible to put you wifi hardware into listening mode. This way you can collect data and decrypt info. With Wireshark it should be possible to view data packages.

On radicalization

I went to a masterclass organised by Forum. The masterclass was about radicalization. I was shocked how teenagers with extreme ideas are pushed to the edges of internet where no one can give a counter sound to their ideas. Maturity is formed by discussing your idea's with people who think differently and this will not happen if you can only ventilate your idea's on extreme sites, because moderators do not allow it anywhere else. It is in my opinion a negative effect of controlling internet. I believe a lot of the internet is about meeting people who are like you and share your interests. I will contemplate on how you can bring together people with different idea's. Interesting in this matter is the notion of weak and strong ties between people. My bachelor thesis was about strengthening ties by using theater as a means, maybe I can continue this research by looking at online possibilities and barriers concerning ties between people.

On discrimination

Articles about activism through the internet made me think of an old idea of mine to create a Facebook game of "find the differences". By using faces of different ethnicity, sex, subculture etc. you might reduce implicit discrimination (since studies show that becoming aware of differences in faces between people of the same race reduce implicit discrimination). It might be worthwhile to think about an installation that might be taken from school to school in order to promote the game and anti-discrimination.

Week 4 and 5

In the last two weeks my ideas have gone through a filter. By attending a tutorial with Rennee and Aymeric I got a better idea what my direction is. In short: I would like to work with my personal motto (freedom lies in how you react to what people do to you) at this moment, I have to think of low-tech high-performance solutions, I have to decide on the role of the audience (how to crowdsource).

At the moment I have a hard time to figure out the crowdsourcing part. I deem it important because it deals with contemporary techniques and could give an answer to the question why an audience should care for the thinks I'll be doing on stage, but the solution has not presented itself yet.

I hate cooking, but I love the way I do it

I want to start with a cooking table and some cooking necessities. Apart from that there will be recipes. How these recipes will be introduced to the stage remains a question. They could be suggested by the audience. If so I need to split the instructions from the ingredients, buy the ingredients and partially prepare them before the performance (similar to how a cooking show on TV would). It might be interesting to create something which makes splitting the input into the ingredients and instruction parts easy (this tool might also stimulate a user into XML behavior). Yet I could also imagine that this part of the performance is not crowdsourced for convenience.

The performance environment will feed me the (cooking) instructions and I'll execute them. Since I do not enjoy cooking the protocol that makes me do it is something I want to break out of. The way I can brake out of it is by enjoying the performance quality that I will give to the instructions. Doing this is likely to severely slowdown the cooking process.

I could make the audience switch between modes where I'm allowed and not allowed to work against the protocol. Giving them control over my choice in how to interact with the system and with that how well I'll do on the task. Their behavior in this could be monitored and at the end feedback on this might be given, for instance the time ratio between the two modes, how far the task is completed and how much performance time is left. A conclusion might be drawn on the character of the audience as a group, ranging from very rebellious to very obedient.

I'm not yet sure if crowdsourcing my choices in to implement my motto or not is a good idea or not, but at least I have something on paper now that will force me to think it through more.

All is one and the "opposite algorithm"

A very central idea to both the Bible as the Quran and in my opinion this idea is opposite to my motto in the sense that my motto is practical and this idea remains theory. Yet the practice of crowdsourcing algorithms (as they seem to be implemented at the moment) group people in the same category for marketing purposes, this makes them "one" in a way and fits the idea of "all is one" well. But I'm curious if a system can be developed that searches for opposites. A system where "hate == love" has a result of true.

P.S.

I could also give the audience a control over the "all is one" motto. Of course this will have no effect on my performance, since this idea is purely theoretical on a performance level. At the end of the performance (because computers can't really differentiate all will be treated and judged as one. This way the polarity between these two philosophy's might become clear through the performance.

Final exploration

To finish the period of idea exploration I will write about the idea's that I will not do. These idea's might still be carried out at some point. For now I will tell why I have chosen not to do them

Performing

A problem that I encountered is that I'm not used to working alone anymore. It's hard to be the master planner and executive pawn at the same time. However I did recently meet three likely minded people and the idea's amongst us are going quite wild. Using Augmented Reality as a means to express critique on society and adding martial-arts to that mix is exciting, but it also has a way to go still.

The idea of Mechanical Turk is also fascinating. Natasja was speaking about it before, but it didn't register until recently that this site is a way to get instructions you hate to do. This in turn might feed my concept for a performance as mentioned above. Maybe I'll work at Amazon for a while ;)

It is disappointing that I was not able to participate nor see an online performance. This is a thing to look into and hopefully even solve during the break!!

Rotterdammers.nl

It proved very hard to sniff on wifi traffic so I put it on hold for now.

Radicalization and discrimination

I still like these idea's, but as the idea of collecting strange true stories it will have to go on hold for now. PyGame might be interesting for the anti-discrimination application and my project this trimester will touch on some of the stuff that concerns Radicalization.