Staff Research Profiles

Performance

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Curator: Ambroisse Barras. This performance based project inquired into processes of interpretation when authorship is deferred through the use of computer based generative grammars. The work exists as a web-based piece and as a performance work. It consists of a piece of software employing automatic synthetic language generating algorithms. The computer automatically generates an endless text, grammatically correct and thematically coherent but ultimately intentless. The entire text remains visible at all times, whether on a screen or, as in performance, on a large video projection. The typography automatically re-sizes itself, getting smaller as more and more words appear on the screen. In the performative version the system continues to write, at great speed, so long as the audience remains still. Any physical movement will cause the system to pause. The software permits the text to be written both backwards and forwards at the same time. Thus the text begins at the centre of what is ultimately an infinitely long sentence. After a period of time the text has grown to such a length that to fit all of it on the screen it has been reduced to a single pixel point font size, rendering it illegible. At this stage it resembles white noise. The work was first performed as part of the international conference Hypertext 2003 at the University of Nottingham and then at the international conference Textes en Performance, Universite de Geneve. It is of note that the first involved international researchers in computing sciences whilst the second was a conference of Francophone literary scientists. Commissioning body: CeRNet, Geneva, Switzerland. Publication: Textes en Performance, editors Liliane Louvel and Catherine Rannoux, authors Ambroise Barras and Eric Eigenmann, publisher Presses Universitaires de Rennes, France (pp187-198). Vol: La Licorne 76, peer reviewed journal.

27/11/2003

29/11/2003

Ambroisse Barras

international conference Textes en Performance, Universite de Geneve