“Diamonds in Dystopia” is an interactive, live-streaming poetry web app that takes the audience through the sensory decisions and experience of creating a poem collectively. The audience acts as collaborator by sending word selections that resonate with individual users by tapping them on their mobiles to trigger Markov chain reactions, creatively data mining 2500+ TED talks to send an improvisational stanza and audio effects as a performance enhancer to the poet on stage. The individual taps coming from the audience also trigger synthesized audio effects at varying pitches to create a musical experience as well as contributing to the visual projection of the poem. Created by Vincent A. Cellucci (poet and CxC Art + Design Coordinator), Jesse Allison (Professor of Experimental Music), and Derick Ostenko (Professor of Digital Art), the app uses advanced coding techniques to aggregate TED Talk transcripts as found text to generate a collective conscious sound installation and interactive web app from a foundational poem that Cellucci created using the same Markov chains creative process, which enables succinct recombination of massive amounts of language as source material. The app creators are interested in creative data mining and incorporating interactive media into performances that challenge people’s perceptions and expectations for the mediums of music, digital art and design, and poetry. Why? Because we’re pushing the traditional boundaries of technology, entertainment, and design (TED).
Vincent A. Cellucci Bound by Digital Countries all know who you are whole-hearted you download an episode often hold down apostasy jobs dancing sunlight in psychoanalysis new dimension new struggle street view drop in the dow jones departs on facebook, twitter, google maps can't afford allegiance rates "the 20th century expressed this" the positive forces eliminate the common denominator all regularities steps toward unification built borderless cheap even free we farmed fish fisherman assign values to the viewer when streaming's easy how we numb used to watching people drown everybody today unraveled connection everyone elements answer particles an hour of sea each and every year wasn't taken for granted there are 14,000 planes the amount of salmon to disappear damns EVERYWHERE but are there interfaces that tell of great nature? we often say to companies eating themselves, evolve it becomes a threat to spark a solution and we keep growing say this is what I found attempting to reach outside the world and make way complicit comeback of the collaborative red-eye flock don't mind stepping back for clean water the radioactive boys of dust threaten observers committed organic ubiquity of gluttons outside interference felt like today a fish now two blooms mean moon phenomena symmetries struggle cyborgs disarm the certainty of domination preferred by our elders defines the nowhered coded origins story refuge-floating opaque day-to-today biology mode of mud matter provided man analyzed Eden then analyzed the people the good and the grave one garden; we script war cross-hairs two tiny lines joined against our utopia is our apocalypse cripples water people taking shelter as if concern were an enforced homelessness the dream of infrastructure limited to the global intimately unscathed we tool the endless pursuit one which does not us manufacturing a hi-tech public sight-servers industry synthesis armistress teller technology electronics educated the age of eyes out of visible energies arises art displacing diamonds in dystopia the conditions that carry fear in the patient superb skin liquid parts lights in the shape of your birthday we want the real and painstaking to draw it out as far as planets everyone who stopped by responded with a crisis solution says I would haven withholding petroleum essential fuel technology gaping social mirrors mediated Earth coal-fired population who doubts today many need its waste death is building its answers I'm gonna compare stars go adaptable 25 microbes without we do we knowledge come on Earth media toxic therapy discuss this child too expensive to let under evening thriving irrigating minds: the one prototype for change more giving systems sea-sized leaks deepwater indulgence the justice problem when I start talking about failure won't fix the fissures we started for our children up to 26 minds' depth joined in diameter drilling your blue stage of flame 80% hydrated victorious spent to give and give I throw about forever "I want to touch it for a minute"