distributed intelligence on the fly?

It felt as closely observing a test tube in an internet ecology experiment.

I finally watched the video of our performance Online En-semble – Entanglement Training. It was so nice and touching to hear the voices, to listen to the the different soundqualities and latencies, to see the changing pixelations and environments. It was interesting to observe how the performers act, react, respond, with objects, sounds and words and find ways to co-create with each other and the machines.

Near the end we had 5 minutes of silently being together online. Helen didn’t get the sign for the end and continued alone.

It was also very engaging to see the audience chatting life during the performance. Randal Packer called this a non-stop flow of online viewer commentary: a simultaneous litany of questions, responses, digressions, and interjections in Power to the Viewer, the article he wrote after his Art of the Networked Practice symposium, where this performance was a part of.

Here are some citations of the chat log that particularly stroke me today:

Alan Sondheim: There’s an odd calmness here, as if they’re dream images or freud’s magic slate at work

Jessica Laraine Williams: I almost feel as if we are neural nets being trained with various iterants of standard objects, as a reference library. The repetitive verbal cues sound like training signals

Martina Ruhsam: as if they would imagine this performance that just happened in their mind

ximena: what are they listening to?
Maria Chatzichristodoulou: silence?
Jessica Laraine Williams: the space in between
Jessica Laraine Williams: white noise
Randall Packer: silence
Jan R 2: they are listening to us
…..
Ng Wen Lei: 4’33
Johannes Birringer: lovely, a telematic re-performance

Maria Chatzichristodoulou: it is interesting that Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz were also talking about experiments rather than performances as such, and considered training, rehearsal and performance to be the same

I would love to do a follow-up, to continue this entanglement training. I propose to keep this messy never ending unperfect strange conversation going …. it would be an example, a test tube for developping our empathy muscles over distance, to exercice in distributed intelligence.

Entanglement Training Online performance by Annie Abrahams with Antye Greie, Helen Varley Jamieson, Soyung Lee, Huong Ngô, Daniel Pinheiro, Igor Stromajer. Thursday 29 of March 2018 in the frame of Art of the Networked Practice symposium.
All project info (photos, protocol, collected phrases, reactions etc.)  bram.org/en-semble/

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, Alan Sondheim, Antye Greie, Art of the Networked Practice, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, Jessica Laraine Williams, Johannes Birringer, Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Martina Ruhsam, Ng Wen Lei, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, training