User:Lieven Van Speybroeck/WHAT

The Listener

The Listener is an interactive installation that consists of two main parts. Firstly, it is an online multi-person chatbox that people can join by surfing to a certain web address. The chat is mediated by a computer script that alters the original messages by adding, deleting or replacing words. It operates in such a way that every participant sees his/her own unchanged messages, while the recipients are presented with a transformed variation. Secondly, a large pen plotter instantly prints out a complete transcript of the conversation, showing both the original and altered version of the messages. This way, the workings of the computer script are exposed – which is not the case in the interface of the chatbox itself – and a physical log of the conversation is made. The installation was presented at an internet cafe where people were invited to join the chatbox and could see their conversations being plotted at the same time.

Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway

'Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway' is an installation composed of four inkjet printers that perform the homonymous short story, each representing either one individual character or the narrator. The story is about a trip to a so-called „Indian Camp“ by a medical doctor, his son, and his uncle, in order to help an indigenous woman to give birth to her child. During the process - a Caesarian incision has to be made to save the mother and her child - the husband commits suicide. An important aspect is that apart from the narrator's voice, the whole story consists of dialogue between the father, uncle and son.

The installation uses the fictional time of the story as a timeline for the actual – 'real-time' – print performance. Dialogues and narrator breaks are thus printed out as if they would be performed by actors in a theatre play or movie, synchronized with each other and containing the time gaps of the original narrative. One complete print-out of the story is a five hour sequence of intense, concentrated printing sessions interspersed with long pauses. Nothing was added to or left out of the original text. As they are being printed, the sheets – usually not containing more than one sentence or a few words – fall on the floor, so people can pick them up to read and recompose the part of the story that has already been 'told'.

Folklore

A set of two animated .gifs displaying rotating kebab meat on vertical spits. Lamb & chicken!