2015-16
Networked, mixed-media installation (video, audio, tablet-interface), custom software, 2015
Artists’ Statement
Based on an earlier installation, Read for us … and show us the pictures, which debuted at ISEA 2015, The Readers Project presents the work of a software entity that generates digital video montage, with visual content sourced through live image search. The Montage Reader analyses its text and first establishes a overall visual grammar based on closed-class words that underlie linguistic structure. The reader then searches for images corresponding to phrases – ‘longest common phrases’ whenever possible – finally composing a sequence of still and animated images and video, that corresponds with the written language of the text both structurally and also semantically – at least in so far as contemporary image search proposes a correspondence that is meaningful for the human user-readers of network services and their aggregation of crowd-sourced indexing. The chief text read by the Montage Reader is ‘Some Thing We Are,’ a short story by Daniel C. Howe.
Bio:
Daniel C. Howe is an artist, writer, and critical technologist, whose work focuses on networked systems for text and sound, and on the social and political implications of computational technologies. He resides in New York and Hong Kong, where he teaches at the School of Creative Media.
John Cayley makes language art using programmable media. Recent work has explored aestheticized vectors of reading (thereadersproject.org) and ‘writing to be found’ within and against the services of Big Software. His most recent project is The Listeners. In this and future work he aims to compose for a readership that is as much aural as visual. Cayley is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. programmatology.shadoof.net