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Exploring Digital Infrastructures for Live Performance

I Agree to the Terms (2019-2022)

I Agree To The Terms was developed by The Builders Association in collaboration with a community of microworkers, or "MTurk" workers, who perform "Human Intelligence Tasks" for micro payments.

This system was created by Amazon and is widely used for things like training algorithms to social science research. These workers report making anywhere from nothing to $100 a day (sometimes more). MTurk "masters" have considerable skill as rated by the platform, have access to the highest paying HITs, and they make the most money. None of the workers understand how to become certified as a "master." That is determined by "the system" and is opaque to workers. All workers positions are however very precarious, depending upon their "Approval Rate." If a worker's approval rate falls below 95%, they basically will earn pennies a day.

We spent over a year in conversation with active MTurk workers and developed a phone-based system so audience members can experience what working on HITs is like, as well as feel a bit of the euphoria and dread these workers face everyday in this automated workplace. The show was preformed on Zoom with the audience simultaneously using their phones to access the app and compete with each other. Each audience member had a unique account and was rated against the other audience members on the accuracy and speed of their answers. VMD alumnus Giada Sun was the interaction designer and was instrumental to making this technical system function at scale. I Agree To The Terms is presented by NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, and was broadcast live from theater MITU580, in Brooklyn.

Example video of the phone based HIT interface, follwed by a tech highlights reel:

More Videos and Info at The Builders Website;

Elements of Oz (2015-2019)

I worked with a team for over 4 years developing an Augmented Reality App that was an integral part of the stage show. We workshopped the app at several locations before premiering for Peak Performances at the Kassar Theater, Montclair State University in New Jersey in 2015. We continued to develop the app and presented in a workshop at 3LD in Manhattan in 2016 and then a run at NYU’s Skirball Center in 2019.

We used the phones for much more than just AR imagery, we used the speakers on peoples phones to play back audio, like Munchkin giggles and tornado sounds. And we played back synchronized YouTube videos of different people and groups singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, cleverly avoiding copyright infringement. After the show people were encouraged to snap screen grabs of themselves inside the AR elements, and the program had image targets, so the audience can enjoy the animations after the show by launching the app and pointing their cameras at the program.

Dramaturgically we saw our phones “as Oz.” We use them everyday and don’t really know how they work, we are even legally prevented from “looking behind the curtain.”

It was an amazing experience but luckily the technologies have developed enough that authoring a custom app for a theater show is no longer necessary, and admittedly, it was a bit of a crazy idea and is not something I’d recommend doing. Web based applications avoid a lot of the headaches of app development. And we explored that workflow on our next big experimental project, I agree to the Terms.

Mediated Reality (class 2015-2023)

Starting in 2015, I've offered an advanced studio course exploring the potential of digital infrastructues and portable devices to expand the form and reach for storytelling and live events. The course stresses the connections to long simmering artistic and theatrical questions over mere technical wizardry, although there is plenty of that too. I'm very happy to be joined this year by Professor Johannes DeYoung for a co-taught class, hosted by the Studio for Creative Inquiry. Current course description below.

Mediated Realities is an advanced studio course that investigates the potential applications of mediated-reality technologies and location-based interactivity for storytelling, site-specific art-making, and live performance (broadly defined). Converging trends in cultural production, mobile computation, and media technologies present new affordances for artists and designers to shape location-based experiences. Studio work engages a breadth of strategies in post-media aesthetics, as related to ones experience and understanding of place. Trans-media storytelling, real-time graphics, machine learning, gamification, locative artworks, augmented reality and powerful portable media devices present opportunities for artists and designers to create experiences that heighten multisensory experience by merging live performance and participant interaction with systems for digital information, imagery, and 3D visualization - all ubiquitously available in low-cost and widely distributable formats (e.g. apps, mobile web sites). The course frames technological experimentation in the context of 1970s Land Art, Happenings, Fluxus games, Performance Art, Expanded Cinema, and the unresolved theoretical issues emerging from this rich period in American history - site specificity, competing definitions of community, the effects of media and representation, audience/performer dynamics, and the nature and limits of the art work. Reading discussions, site visits, and presentations from outside experts (CMU faculty, visiting artists) will expose a range of relevant topics, disciplinary and creative perspectives, and potential avenues for investigation. Specific areas of focus will include Pittsburgh history, local ecological dynamics, labor history and the effects of technology on the landscape and lives of Pittsburgh's population.