User:Themsen/SDR-BBW
Concept: The Monitorial Citizen by Michael Schudson
Monitorial citizens tend to be defensive rather than proactive…. The monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than information gathering. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on the scene. They look inactive but they are poised for action if action is required. The monitorial citizen is not an absentee citizen but watchful, even while he or she is doing something else. (Michael Schudson)
What: Distorting a tweet through a web of listening and talking baby dolls. The networking artifacts create a noisy result much like the game 'Chinese Whispers'.
Tools
- Twitter acc @BigBabyHears (input)
- Text-to-speech application
- Small Speaker to record in intervals or on command(arduino?)
- Small Recorder to record in intervals or on command(arduino?)
- Speech-to-text application
- Twitter acc @BigBabySays (output)
How: Using twitter, and amplified audio distortion by feeding artificial sound from one computer to the other. The physical space becomes the interruption as visitors add more noise by their presence, or through direct action: by talking to- or around the installation. The initial sound is created artificially from a tweet post fed into a text-to-speech interpreter. The main (middle) baby of the network speaks what the speech-to-text interprets. It is then recorded and respoken by the two closest babies in the network, and so forth. With each artificial recording and speech the message becomes more distant as it reaches the outskirts. At the outskirts of the network the last four babies record the second-to last babies' speech and then send it onto a speech to text application on a desktop computer. The message then returns to its original form, in text, but distorted.
Why: The way we connect is through our hands -our keyboard and mouse- and we tend to stay connected quite extensively these days. The custom of connectivity has become part of our culture, perhaps out of complacency? Or out of naivety. The baby dolls express the naivety and artificiality with which we can't help conducting ourselves on the web. In many cases, like babes, we react to our environment according to our own reality. The vastness of the web goes beyond what we can manage, and so what we do with this potential may seem like childs' play.
When the outside world seems like noise, artificiality can be very comforting.
Influences
- Jean Tinguely: [[1]]
Jean has a passion for uncovering the alternate functions of machines, and through that knowledge he makes art which speaks to the world not on words, but in mechanical action and inaction.
- Jon Kessler - The Web: [[2]]
His style reminds me very much of my own way of building and forming physical objects. They have a kind of make-shifty character to them; what I need to do is make them as aesthetically pleasing as my drawings (even though some of them might not be considered aesthetic, or even counter-aesthetic, like Giger's).
- Alvin Lucier - I'm sitting in a room [[3]]
Mock-up
- Tweet in Twitter
- Copy tweet to Text to Speech
- Speech while recording on phone
- Record recording, while interrupting
- Record recording, while interrupting
- Record recording, while interrupting
- Speak recording into Speech to Text
- Copy & Tweet text
First Draft and Dummy
Draft Sketch
Dummy (Hung on ceiling)
