Zeitgeist (freedom in/poetry out) by Federico Bonelli and Robert Fischer
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Zeigeist is a Transformer: the manifestation of a process of transformation. In this event the process is made by people, encoded into recycled hardware, free software, knowledge of various sort and uses words. It needs a social gathering, a public space, sound vibrations and various other factors, here after specified that will concur to the success of the operation. The success is determined by it's poetry.
The operation is staged in 3 acts:
primo atto (first act)
A selected group of people are invited to a open gathering. They are requested to dress in black. They are requested to bring to the gathering a periodical, a news paper or a magazine they like to contribute to the operation. Around a table, with cutters, scissors, and other sort of blades they will be asked to tear the periodic apart, to free the word they like from the tyranny of copyrighted media. They will be allowed to express their inner poetry with freedom, cutting out from the raw material whatever they like to make their poems with. They must do so in a state of calm, disregarding any conscious thought about the content, the semantics or the theory included in the media they destroy. Poems made in this moment by our guests have to be assembled on white of A4 paper, to fulfill each participant aesthetic principles and poetic sensibility. At the end of the given time and with joy the poets will discharge the fragments with whom they have composed their poems of choice into the jar a machine constructed for the necessity as in fig. A. Such machine is called Pneumolisolemmigraph (wind breaking word writer) or ZPM (Zeitgeist Poetry Machine). The machine is activated by the master of ceremony. The ceremony ends.
secondo atto (second act)
The Pneumolisolemmigraph operates as the following: A wind making fan is controlled by a recycled computer running linux. The wind intensity is proportional to the sound recorder and broadcasted in the main piksel conference venue. The machine is housed into a completely transparent case apt to be exposed in the conference gallery as an installation. Every time the volume is below a limited value the fan stops and an image is taken by a webcam put on the top of the lying words on the bottom of the transparent box. This image will be processed by the Pneumolisolemmigraph with a custom designed algorithm using carefully chosen symbolic images, from ancient manuscripts and children drawings. This images will show on a LCD screen and posted as a stream of poetic consciousness on the Piksel blog. For a total of 23 times during the installation operation time a random image of the current poem will be sent to a recycled printer, to be impressed on a custom made paper roll.
terzo atto (third act)
In a final performance the Pneumolisolemmigraph will be de-activated by the poetic team and the words that have been used by the ZTM will be freed again, and distributed to the audience as a tool for further poetic actions.
