SimpleTEXT performance
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Yesterday evening, I went to the SimpleTEXT audio/visual performance by Family Filter. I was looking forward to it, but was a bit bitter as someone had just stolen my beloved mobile phone, so I coulnd't really participate.
Only two of the Family Filter members, Tim Redfern and Duncan Murphy were there. Jonah Brucker-Cohen couldn't come. People in the audience are invited to submit messages to control the audiovisual output of the installation (guiding how the music is created, and rhythmically driving a speech synthesizer) and the images that appear on the screens. Tim and Duncan had warned that the sms or e-mail had to be short as the images came from a search on Google. I found it really good. Unfortunately, the performance was a bit spoilt by the fact that many people found it more amusing to send each other long messages such as "Hi Jos�, I'm here, were are you?" which of course triggered only a "No image found" result with the text of the message underneath. |
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it is completely wrong to blame the audience for "spoiling" the performance. If you set up an interface like this in a public place you have to expect that the audience will become the show, and subvert what the artist wants them to do in order to do what they want to do, which is send silly messages to each other and have fun. That's the whole point, it's not a theatre. If you have to start telling the audience to play properly, you end up sounding like a kindergarten teacher