Plaintext Performance

It's a live writing performance over the net combining 1) keyboard writing, 2) machinated, algorithmic writing, and 3) feeds from the processes surrounding the writing (like system monitoring, net connection monitoring, ftp log, etc). All in realtime and plaintext. It was performed live at the BIOS symposium, Center for Literary Computing, West Virginia University, September 2006, with a unix ytalk session as a sideshow. The static version shown here is based on the exhibition "e and eye - art and poetry between the electronic and the visual" at Tate Modern, London, October 2006. It's part of a series of work called "protocol performances". 'Protocol' is meant both as a lower level set of rules of the format of communication, and as statements reporting observations and experiences in the most fundamental terms without interpretation, relating it to phenomenological 'noemata' - thought objects, and thus identifying a data stream with a stream of consciousness. 'Performance' is meant both as a data protocol's physical performance as much as its play on the meaning as an artist-centric execution of work. A later version, called "chyphertext performance", is more interactive, allowing users to write directly into the live execution, making it more of a decentralized 'happening'.(Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)