On Friday, January 10, I’ll be participating in the ELO’s MLA Off-Site E-Lit Reading at the Flaxman Library in Chicago. Here’s a link to the Facebook event invitation.
And here’s a description of the part I’ll be involved in.
Participants
(listed in alphabetical order):
- Leonardo Flores
- Mark Sample
- Zach Whalen
- Roger Whitson
Performance
This 10-minute performance will feature four scholars reading from a Twitter stream set to feature the output of multiple bots, including some created by the scholars themselves. Each reader will select several bots to read out loud, and the reading sequence will be determined by the curated Twitter stream, which will be displayed live on screen. The resulting juxtapositions should be both humorous and thought-provoking, with the individual readers’ voices lending continuity to the bots. During the performance, there will be a few moments in which a reader focuses on the text generated by a single bot, in the tradition of a solo riff.
This fun performance should raise awareness of a growing emergent e-lit genre: the bot.