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Equal
parts digital graffiti and digital concrete poetry, TextOrgan
is the rave cousin of It's Alive! TextOrgan
takes the It's Alive! environment, adds a MIDI keyboard
for quick access to all the functionality, and allows the
user to either input text directly or to select among a set
of prepared texts that are then streamed onto the screen.
She can quickly build up immensely rich collages of performance-specific
poetry and found texts.
TextOrgan
was developed for use in conjunction with a DJ at musical
events. By collaborating beforehand, the DJ and the TextOrganist
can choose a selection of texts and discuss what sort of mood
or themes they want develop in the set. When the set begins,
the two embark on a improvisational duet, each reacting to
what the other is throwing into the media environment. The
DJ plays his decks, and the TextOrganist uses the MIDI keyboard
and a mouse to play the text. The output of the TextOrgan,
projected above the crowd, oscillates between text as pure
text, text as image, and pure image, creating an experience
that is at times reading, at times watching and at times both.
The TextOrganist can also extract simple signal information
such as pitch and intensity from either the ambient environment
or directly from the DJ's decks. This provides a mean of automating
some of the text dynamics to be in synch with the beat, or
to ebb and swell as the intensity of the music decreases and
increases.
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Creators |
Jason
E. Lewis
Alex
Weyers
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Date
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January
2000 - present
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| Download |
Download
TextOrgan here. |
| Exhibitions |
ISEA
2000, Paris, December 2000
Print
on Screen, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria, September
2000 - September 2002
CyberArts
2000, O.K Centrum für Gegenwartkunst, Linz, Austria, September
2000 (images)
British
Academy of Film & Television Artists,
Arts Alliance Global Summit 2000, London, February 2000 (images)
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| Awards |
Honorable
Mention, Prix Ars
Electronica 2000
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| Documentation |
ActiveText
Behaviors
ActiveText
SoftType
ActiveText:
A Method for Creating Dynamic and Interactive Texts
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| Technical
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Software
It's Alive!, custom-written application in C++
Windows
2000
Computer
PIII 800 Mhz (or faster)
32Mb (or greater) video card
77-key MIDI keyboard
Any standard MIDI keyboard
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Images
Made with TextOrgan
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Gallery
( go here
if you want to see the full set in large format)
CyberArts 2000
at Ars Electronica
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