OPEN PLATFORM_8 - 08 November 2017 - Algomech Festival Opening Night

RAP(s) - Random Access Performances - OPEN PLATFORM_8
AlgoMech 2017, Access Space Labs, Sheffield, UK

Wednesday, 08 November 2017, 6-8pm

Free but booking essential.

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP(s) - TwT. returns as part of Algomech 2017 - Sheffield's Festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement! Algomech Festival seeks to examine the complex relationship between technology, art and performance. The first edition in 2016 celebrated the resurgence of making in performance, this year we are contemplating an underlying theme of unmaking.

AlgoMech 2017 takes place in various locations around Sheffield, UK, from 08-12 November 2017. The festival features concerts, talks, workshops, installations and an algorithmic rave. Full programme here. 

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP(s) - TwT. is a micro event series that explores the digital with physical means by asking performers to present digital work without using anything digital. 

Five performers take up the challenge of re-thinking the digital with free interpretations that are 1 to 10 minutes in duration, about or related to digital technology and happening on some sort of platform.

'Technology without Technology' (TwT) performances are a creative, playfully serious strategy to negotiate the 'unknowable' of digital technology and the constant information overload in our contemporary world.

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP(s) - TwT. originated at Access space in 2012 and is curated by Susanne Palzer.

OPEN PLATFORM_8 presenters/performers:

Dreams of a sleeping apple by Eddy Dreadnought
An immersive dream micro-workshop. Eddy will provide conditions and questions to enable the participants to explore what their computers dream about when in sleep mode.

Pattern Recognition by Rachael Hand
A light-hearted parlour game, evoking a digital non-native's struggles with an increasingly digital world. Struggles to grasp meaning and then retain it in memory will be enacted by volunteers from the audience. The winner will be the person with the most cards when the time is up.

A Typewriter Piece by Ryoko Akama
"I perform with a typewriter who performs with me who will make a performance by the typewriter who will instruct us all.”

howToNotDie(wT) by Sean Cotterill
"howToNotDie(wT) is a performance reflecting upon fantasies of technological disconnection in the context of a body with a chronic health condition, physically reliant on proprietary digital technologies for basic survival. Through performance I will discuss the technologies of my body and my personal processes of making/unmaking for survival, my deeply uncomfortable relationships with digital capitalism, and the ableist nature of contemporary 'disconnection' narratives."

Self Inverter by xname
A painting composes itself live, while the platform becomes a paradigm of cyclic instructions, loops, electronic impulses and the arcane symbology of Inverters. A speculative work addressing formal qualities of logic symbolism and their potential in investigating and rediscovering behaviour and the everyday, confronting the meaning of life with the mechanics of electronics.
The self, liberated, is finally projected onto the realm of the fantastic.

More information about OPEN PLATFORM/RAP(s)-TwT. and previous events here.

The Facebook event is here.

Like us on Facebook or send us a tweet!

@Open_Platform  @algomech  @AccessSpace  

Access Space Labs

14-16 Fitzalan Spuare

Sheffield

S1 2AZ

OPEN PLATFORM_5 04 April 2014 at Access Space - Performances

RAP(s)- Random Access Performance(s) - TwT.hashbangbinbash -x

Starting with a bang! OPEN PLATFORM_5 welcomed Pixelache Network to Access Space:

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP -
Platform selfie by Richard Bolam

Pixelache Network is an international network of cultural organizations engaging with art, technology and social change. Access Space is the UK hub of Pixelache Network and recently completed the larger EU Grundtvig supported project Open Sourcing Festivals in collaboration with other Pixelache Network nodes. The project concluded with Do It Anyway Festival which Access Space presented in May 2015.
Last year, from 03-05 April 2014, Access Space hosted artists, curators and cultural producers from Finland, Iceland, France and Norway when representatives from project partner organizations visited Sheffield for the first time.




Richard Bolam - Platform Announcements

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP:
Richard Bolam/Platform Announcements
HDV still: Richard Bolam/Susanne Palzer

"This is OPEN PLATFORM_5  ... Please stand well back from the platform!"




Opening OPEN PLATFORM_5 Richard Bolam delighted us with an imitation of automated announcements at train stations and on trains.




"We apologize for the late running of this event. This is due to the wrong kind of snacks." 



Liz Hall - Motherboard

" ... The job of the motherboard is to relay information between all components. Information is passed through electrical connections. Put simply it is the central circuit board of your computer ... A 2003 study found that spurious computer crashes, such as I/O read/write errors and screen distortions can be attributed not to faulty peripherals or software, but to ageing capacitors on motherboards. Despite the fact that it is important to have a good motherboard it will not necessarily increase the overall speed of your computer, none the less it is important to have one that is both reliable and stable as its role in the overall performance of the system is vital."

OPENPLATFORM/RAP: Liz Hall/Motherboard
HDV still: Richard Bolam/Susanne Palzer

Combining text, gestures and movements Liz Hall's performance 'Motherboard' looks at the central role of the mother image in computer terminology, and the correlation with the intimacy of human relationships. 

James Price - Stream II 

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP:
James Price/Stream II
HDV still: Richard Bolam/Susanne Palzer

"Basically I'm talking very very very fast for ten minutes ... the internet ... materiality of the internet ... does the internet have a materiality ... does it have MATERIAL, is it something that is performative or is it something that is real ... the people around me are completely real, the internet is full of real people, people are the material of the internet ... you hope they are real, some of the things on the internet may be less real than others ... we should not think of the internet as a tool ... we should think of it as a material that we actually shape and form ... it defines the way you go ... it is a place of theatre, I can no longer forget things because if I do they are there on the internet ... it changes you as a person as material ... we are the tools not it, it is not a tool ... you need to make stuff and do stuff ... you will be better off for making stuff ... the new things we can carve with the material of the internet ... You - make stuff! ... Has anyone used any hair products probably advertised on the internet at some point of another? ... MATERIAL! ..." James Price 


Jake Harries/Paul Newman - Fluctuate Excitement ...

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP:
Paul Newman/Fluctuate Excitement ...
HDV still: Richard Bolam/Susanne Palzer

Jake Harries' current practice is based around using spam emails as raw material for composition and performing. For OPEN PLATFORM_5 he teamed up with Paul Newman to present the world premiere of Spam Theatre! Playing to a packed out 'house' the two actors performed a dramatic and passionate (spam) script, hamming it up Shakespearian-style - trying to get you to buy viagra!











On-Off Trio: John X. Moseley/Susanne Palzer/Kate Sicchio - OptionX - A Pseudo Script

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP:
On-Off Trio/OptionX-A Pseudo Script

"To switch or not to switch? Lots of UNIX commands have options. (They are also called switches because you switch the options on and off by typing or not typing them when you type the command. ...) Options make commands both more versatile and more confusing. ..."
(Unix for Dummies, p43)

On-Off Trio/OptionX -Performance Script

On-Off Trio presented a sound piece that as a project stayed close to the OPEN PLATFORM_5 theme but at the same time added the human factor by taking liberties with the language system of computing. Performing a pseudo script which opened with the hashbangbinbash -x command  - that allowed the audience 'to watch the script run' - the three performers executed binary shell script (1/0) with analogue switches (click/no click).

On-Off Trio are John X. Moseley, Susanne Palzer and Kate Sicchio.



The Facebook album for OPEN PLATFORM_5 is here.  

OPEN PLATFORM_5/RAP(s) - TwT.hashbangbinbash - x

RAP(s) - Random Access Performances - TwT.hashbangbinbash -x 

Friday, 04 April 2014, 6-8pm at Access Space

A big thank you to all the performers and anyone who came to OPEN PLATFORM_5/RAP(s) - TwT.hashbangbinbash -x. You made our fifth event a great success! We were also delighted to welcome the Pixelache Network to Access Space! OPEN PLATFORM_6 will take place later this year and we look forward to seeing you there! If you would like to present or perform please get in touch with Susanne or Jake.

OPEN PLATFORM_5/RAP: View from the platform
Random selfie: Richard Bolam

OPEN PLATFORM_5/RAP(s) - TwT.hashbangbinbash -x

RAP(s) - Random Access Performances - TwT.hashbangbinbash -x 
Friday, 04 April 2014, 6-8pm at Access Space

Richard Bolam 
Liz Hall
Jake Harries - Paul Newman
Susanne Palzer - John X. Moseley - Kate Sicchio
James Price

The Facebook event is here.

OPEN PLATFORM_4 06 December 2013 - Performances

RAP(s)- Random Access Performance(s) - TwT.codemehappy

Alex McLean/Susanne Palzer - Binary Transmission

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Alex McLean/Susanne Palzer

Binary Transmission

Timelapse Still: Susanne Palzer

OPEN PLATFORM_4 opens with a collaborative experiment in live coding without electricity. For the duration of 10 minutes Alex McLean transcodes every step of my binary on/off movements into a knit or pearl and produces a piece of fabric which represents the live performance. To allow for the 'human transcoding' by knitting I perform a slowed down version of a performance piece in which I step on and off a platform. 

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Alex McLean/Susanne Palzer

Binary Transmission

HDV Still: John X. Moseley/Susanne Palzer

The collaboration brings together elements of Alex' ongoing research into 'the binding of analogue and digital forms in the context of computer programming' and my current practice of investigating into the fusion of digital technology and physical performance. On/Off is a series of performances which explore the intersection between performance and technology by deconstruction.

Some thoughts on Alex McLean's 'knitting metaphor' can be found here.






Eddy Dreadnought - Motherboard

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Eddy Dreadnought

Motherboard

Timelapse Still: Susanne Palzer

Next on the platform is Eddy Dreadnought presenting a spoken piece. Apparently drawing on his "complete lack of knowledge" of how computers work he reads us an enlightening story about silicon. 'Motherboard' follows on from 'Embryonic Thought' which he performed at Manchester Science Festival in November.

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Eddy Dreadnought

Motherboard

HDV Still: Susanne Palzer

Here is an excerpt from 'Motherboard':

"... First message: 'the silicon words become strange, scarce even one dimension flat. Taut as any rim-shot, unimaginably compressed, forever saved as the last sedimentary gills of fossils.'

Message two: 'silicon language is spelled in letters, but also numbers and algebra, punctuation symbols and symbols from keyboards like percentiles and money, and symbols from playing cards and from any alphabet, Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek. And it has words for breathing, and pauses and stress, and the inscrutable intonations of Mandarin. And sometimes passages of volatile bits, its cells of zero and one, hoop and stick, all clicking like the consonants of Africa. And sometimes silicon language is in colour, and sometimes hovers over the screen as spatial as the helter-skelter of DNA'.

Message three: 'silicon cannot understand the kaleidoscopic ambiguity of our mother tongue, so talks in obsessively precise circles to avoid mistakes and shut out background. and its words are imperative because silicon has no common sense. It is at once retarded and advanced, concrete and mercurial. And unable to read eyes or bodies.'

The final message: 'the best silicon languages, though stripped of metaphor, can put into words inexpressible ideas, to become poetry. Recursively rhythmic like music or perseverating like Gertrude Stein. Esoteric languages whose vocabulary is the white space between words, or the movement between twenty modernist colours. or squares of cells like Vermeer chequerboard tiles.' ..."  

Kate Sicchio/Susanne Palzer - Asynchronous Transmission 
   

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Kate Sicchio/Susanne Palzer

Asynchronous Transmission

Timelapse Still: Susanne Palzer

Shortly after Eddy's performance a strange packet arrives and completes an asynchronous transmission from New York! Over the duration of four weeks, and based on a digital transmission that uses 'packet switching', Kate Sicchio sent several 'coded packets' by post from across the Atlantic to different recipients in Sheffield. All have brought their 'packets' with them to OPEN PLATFORM_4. Now a 'terminal' has to be 'unzipped' and placed on the platform. The 'packets' are being 'switched' between audience members, then assembled together in the correct order and finally 'presented at the terminal'. Contained within the 'packets' are cards with binary code on one side and a corresponding letter on the other. Once all cards are in place on the 'receiving terminal' the message is revealed: "Hello World"!

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Kate Sicchio/Susanne Palzer

Asynchronous Transmission

Timelapse Still: Susanne Palzer

We are currently developing OPEN PLATFORM/RAP(s)-TwT. into a mobile platform and our intention is to build a digital network with physical means. Asynchronous Transmission was conceived and devised in dialogue with choreographer Kate Sicchio exploring the possibilities for remote performances without live transmission.

A brief technical description of 'asynchronous transmission' can be found here.








Brian G. Gilson - if-then 

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Brian G. Gilson

if-then

Timelapse Still: Susanne Palzer

Straying slightly from his usual practice, which involves performance and the use of Processing and Csound, Brian G. Gilson performs a poem for his first appearance at OPEN PLATFORM: 'if-then' is an entertaining and clever simulation of a sonnet written using a two state cellular automaton. 












Jake Harries - Living the Spam I 

OPEN PLATFORM/RAP: Jake Harries

Living the Spam I

Timelapse Still: Susanne Palzer

With tinsel, santa hat, western union forms and a guitar Jake Harries brings festive spirit to OPEN PLATFORM_4. An expert in 'living the spam' he updates us on his latest romantic adventures and closes the event sharing his pre-Christmas joy!














OPEN PLATFORM_5  will take place on Friday, 04 April 2014 at Access Space. OPEN PLATFORM is an ongoing open call. If you are interested in taking part/performing at a future event please email Susanne or Jake.