<nettime> Horweite/Earshot post-notes

[Tom Sherman <twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu>]

Horweite/Earshot, Kunstradio, October 29, 2000
gal/Bernhard Loibner/Tom Sherman/Peter Forbes

Post-performance notes by Tom Sherman:

This story is about two self-appointed monitors, two men who monitor their
world and share their observations.  From his home KARL QR442 keeps an eye
on Maynard Orlick through an outdoor webcam.  Orlick is a street listener,
a man packing an inordinate amount of radio gear.  Orlick is drawn to the
exposure zone of the webcam as a means of amplifying his presence as a
listener, a monitor.  He wants to be observed, but does not know KARL
QR442 is tracking him.  Neither are technically employed as professional
surveillants.  In fact they both are self-motivated to perform diligent,
methodical acts of surveillance on their immediate environment.  They are
serious and obsessive.  They enjoy the routine and rigour of their work.  
They both 'report' the fruits of their labour to their respective
audiences.

The audience for Earshot links up with this anchored chain of
surveillance.  This chain of attention starts on Marshall Street in
Syracuse, New York.  In the frame of a live webcam Maynard Orlick appears
as a street 'freak' performing a quasi-military level of intelligence
gathering.  KARL QR442 tracks Orlick's presence via webcam and phones in
his analysis of Orlick's operations.  The audience listens to KARL QR442's
voice as they simultaneously watch Orlick's maneuvers.  The audience is
addressed directly as the commissioning agent of this surveillance.

This chain of observers is looped via satellite through Earshot's
headquarters in Vienna.  The audience, having logged into the audio stream
and webcam originating from ground zero in Syracuse, submits itself as a
statistical manifestation of attention.  A chat line is provided for those
who wish to display a more detailed log of their observations.

The Vienna radio studio, Earshot 'headquarters,' was the hub and catalyst
in this multi-dimensional performance.  All information was gathered,
processed and redistributed from there.  Input received in the studio via
telephone and the web was processed in real time and projected back into
the space of the radio and web, and into KARL QR442's telephone receiver.
The timing and emotional tone of Sherman's performance as KARL QR442 was
partially determined by the full mix, slightly delayed by satellite, in
the earpiece of his telephone.  The audiences' earshot was extended
infinitely in a telescoping system of feedback loops, simultaneously
agoraphobic and intimate.  41 minutes into the piece, Karl QR442 describes
this enhanced earshot, his and the audience's reality extended in real
time through several layers of media (telephone, radio, audio streams,
webcams, all turned in on each other) in one phrase:  "I can see you
listening to me right now..."

This story was told initially through the performance of Peter Forbes, the
artist on the street who plays Maynard Orlick, complete with homebrew
radio gear and running lights, and through Sherman's loosely scripted
improvisational monologue in the character of KARL QR442.  Earshot is
theatrical in the most minimal sense of theatricality.  It is a fictional
construction designed to anchor and simultaneously describe a system-based
collaboration between four artists, Sherman and Forbes in Syracuse, and
Bernhard Loibner and Bernhard Gal (gal) in Vienna.

>From Vienna, Loibner and gal and the Kunstradio webteam contextualized
this specific chain of surveillance into a web-addressed 'stream of
consciousness' within a vast, noisy universe of telecommunication clutter.
KARL QR442's voice literally threads itself through a cloud of signals,
symbols and noise.

This 'cloud' of telecommunications-based sounds consisted of various
sources and streams from multiple locations, real and virtual.  KARL
QR442's telephone voice was merged with other sounds directly sourced from
the web:  JFK airport radio, chat rooms and music shows; news broadcasts
and advertisements from local Syracuse radio stations, banter from a
Syracuse police-scanner, and text-based crime reports from Syracuse were
fed into a speech synthesizer; etc., etc.  A compositional strategy (in a
classical sense) was relinquished since the system had to remain open to
respond to the incoming live voice and web material.  With this said, a
number of acoustic configurations were developed during rehearsals and
used during the live performance.  Web sources were selected and mapped
onto specified processing patterns, cue points were defined, and
rhythmical structures were developed which appeared in the live mix.

Maynard Orlick's street maneuvers were covered by KARL QR442's voice-over,
which is put into a global perspective by Loibner and gal.  Orlick's image
and body language and KARL QR442's acoustic voice were translated and
extended through digital telecommunications into the range of a global
audience.  These self-appointed surveillants were within 'earshot' of the
audience, no matter how physically remote.  For those logged into the
website, the visual and acoustic signals arrived with an integrity limited
only by the distortions of digital telecommunications.  The web-addressed
audience saw the Orlick that KARL QR442 describes, in real time.

Beyond the website a broader, international radio audience lurked
unobserved as the broadcast of Earshot was spread as electromagnetic
radiation through the domestic, European broadcast of Kunstradio on the
ORF, Austria's national radio network, and simultaneously on shortwave via
Radio Austria International (5945 kHz, 6155 kHz, and 13730 kHz).  This
broader audience must 'see' Orlick through KARL QR442's voice.  Was Orlick
still within their 'earshot'?  gal, KARL QR442 and Loibner did their best
to make it so.


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For webcam images, text and Mp3 documentation go to:

http://www.allquiet.org/projects/nt/earshot/

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To listen to the whole 55 minute recorded broadcast, go to:

http://kunstradio.at/2000B/29_10_00/index.html

[click on "LISTEN to the RP2 LIVE MIXDOWN/BROADCAST"]

Note:  the 5 minute intro is in German, the performance is in English.

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For more information on Bernhard Loibner and Tom Sherman

(a.k.a. Nerve Theory), check out:  http://www.allquiet.org/

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