Verbal3: Call and Response
Network Performance Cabaret

Pre show:

M.River and T.Whid
Live Demonstration #1: Art Film Slide Advertisements [AFSA]

The AFSA are a collection of 20-30 slides presented in a loop which parody the slide advertisements one sees before popular Hollywood movies at one's local cineplex. MTAA have target-marketed the AFSA to the demographic of people who would attend art film screenings or performance art pieces. They are an ambient artwork, which one is free to pay as much attention too as one desires. The AFSA include trivia questions, audience surveys, advertisements for real and imagined art pieces, ads for legitimate businesses and nonprofit art organizations, and parody ads. Four Walls Film Club, Art in General, and The Anchorage are some placeswhere the AFSA have been shown. MTAA will begin screening the AFSA approximately 30 minutes before the scheduled start of Verbal3.

Evening begins:

M.River and T.Whid
Live Demonstration #2: MTAA's Live Demonstration of Call and Response Activity (AKA Dim Sum 100)

Action 1 - No announcement made for the start of piece (we could have a program note in the printed program). Ideally this is the first event for the night. M. River - on stage with microphone and cell phone, waiting. T. Whid begins by organizing people into groups of 10 or so--this grouping may be done by rows if in a theater--tells each group they may order $10.00 of Chinese take-out. M. River - (as T. Whid finishes distributing the menus) dials and makes contact with take-out location. Begins to negotiate delivery. T Whid - Heads back to first group - takes order and relays order to M. River who then relays it to take-out location. When all groups have ordered, M. River ends take out negotiation. M. River and T. Whid then leave the performance location. MTAA envision the MCs introducing the beginning of Verbal 3 at this point. Direction - Action 1 is played out as quickly as possible. T. Whid takes the audience's orders in a friendly yet pushy manner, so as to push them to quick decisions. M. River is to follow the same course with the take out location. Both M. River and T. Whid will audible keep track of the dollar total so as not to exceed the $100.00 allotment. Audience members may add money for more food but this option is not reveled until it occurs. If this occurs T. Whid holds the money.

Action 2 - (when food arrives - hold food distribution if an act is on stage - begin food after act ends) T. Whid passes out food. M. River snaps off Polaroids.

Robin Murphy: Call and Response: Meditation on the concept.

Diane Ludin and Ricardo Dominguez
Sorry, Wrong Number: Calling The Loss

"Indeed 'the call' is precisely something which we
ourselves have neither planned nor prepared for...It calls,
against our expectations and even against our will."
— from Being and Time, by Martin Heidegger.

The ear, eye, even skin have been divested of authority as they become amplifications of media, and not the reverse. The protocols of call and response are not the product of the body or the social body but of its loss. A loss that dials its moment of parting, a message left on a machine that no one will ever hear, *It* has already hung up on us. "Sorry, Wrong Number: Calling the Loss" will frame this condition telephonic intervention.

Each call will be 3-4 minutes long. The calls will be amplified so the audience will be able to listen to the transaction. The questions that comprise the text will be based on pivotal and poetic meditations on the convergence of presenting the loss of Ôthe callÕ or a series of contrasting circumstances in relationship to being able to Ôtake the callÕ

G.H. Hovagimyan
Can I Speak to a Human ? Information Filter automatic feed.

Using a telephone, a modem, computer speakers, a telephone pick-up, and an auto-dial, script a computer dials into any of a number of automated information voice mail menus. For New York city; these may include The Metropolitan Museum, The Welfare Office, The Transit Authority, The Sports News, The Racing results, Airline information, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and so on. The subsequent answering voice/ voice mail/ synth voice/ recorded menu / etc.. is amplified through loudspeakers. The piece can be adapted to any nation by altering the telephone numbers to be dialed by the computer. The sound may be recorded. The dial script or OOP schema may constitute a working drawing.

ats, atdt, 1, 5357710 [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]
ats, atdt, 1, 4175822 [[Welfare Inspector General]]
ats, atdt, 1,7183301234 [[Transit Authority]]
ats, atdt, 1,9762424 [[Sports Express Scoreboard Reports]]
ats, atdt, 1,9762121 [[OTB Result Line recorded announcements]]
ats, atdt, 1,7182444444 [[John F. Kennedy International Airport]]
ats, atdt, 1,5703676 [[The Whitney Museum of American Art]]

Yael MC

Mark Napier
P-Soup

Mark Napier, author of Potatoland.org, the Shredder and Digital Landfill, presents P-Soup, a multi-user net artwork that is animated by the participation of visitors.

Through a simple visual language, visitors to p-Soup create complex and subtle effects. Like a chat room, each visitor to the work sees what others are doing while they are interacting with the piece. Unlike chat, there is no text. Users communicate through the graphic "language" of the artwork.

For the next 15 minutes all visitors to potatoland.org are being redirected to p-Soup. What we will see on screen is the result of their actions and re-actions.

Robin Murphy: Call and Response: Meditation on the concept.

Tina LaPorta
Distance: In real-time a CU-SeeMe performance

The CU-SeeMe environment becomes the platform for my real-time performance for the Verbal3 event. While participating with the video and chat occurring on a reflector site, in an improvisational manner-- I will type in questions and wait for the participants on the reflector site to respond. I will at the same time have a camera set up reflecting back the audience into the CU-SeeMe environment.

The questions I will ask relate to the nature of "being" in cyberspace: - is technology a veil? - is the virtual, real? - are we getting closer or further apart? - who are you? - is physical space compressing? - is our interaction immediate? - what does distance mean to you right now?

Yael MC

Jen and Kevin McCoy
The Pink Light

Exploring ideas of personal faith, and the idea of religion as network, the McCoys will translate phone interviews with the religious faithful into binarized pulses of pink light.

Robin Murphy: Call and Response: Meditation on the concept.

Cary Peppermint
Exposure #0021: "Information For The Other Sides of Here"

6-8 participants stand on a blue polyurethane canvas in a semi-darkened room. 4 Floodlights are activated in synch with Techno-music generated from an Apple I-Book. The participants are asked to dance, kick balloons around, drink warm Budweiser beer and generally exude energy. The music stops at intermittent intervals along with a return to semi-darkness whereupon the participants "fix" themselves perfectly still; caught in mid-motion. A photographer then carefully documents the still participants with a Polaroid camera in a fashion akin to that of a crime scene. Polaroids fall out of the camera and onto the floor whereupon the whole sequence of events repeats itself. Participants begin to dance upon the increasing accumulation of their own images...

Yael MC — closing the evening