EXPERIMENTATION LOG — Setting up the theatre

 Aim

To set up the theatre as a constructed space / experience for a specific (reclaiming, performing, occupying) purpose. Create a threshold device, invitation in. 

Experiment with sound and voice through code. 

Experiment with the commenting and setting up the set up. 

Precedents / context

Feedback from project pitch, feedback from Andrew from the past few weeks. 

Process / methods

• Wrote an intro: 
  
  Fiends, deviants, mysteries, wretched ones
  Enter softly into the Cyborg Witch Theatre
  Parse into the dimension of thresholds
  Inbetween flesh and screen, input and output
  
  This is a theatre for
  Reimagining, recasting, recalibrating
  Our stories, our bodies, our words.
  Let us gather in the woods of the web. 
  
  We call forth our code into this space and stage. 
  We invite them to hold and occupy intersections
  Intersections of the cyborg and the witch
  Intersections of gender, race, sexuality.
  
  
  
  

• Started doing voice recordings, and layering them as separate files, but they weren't syncing up very well and it was super distracting, so I went in to audacity to cut it together. Just exported as single, compressed tracks so they would be easier to manage in code. 
• Thought it would be good to start testing a web-based output, so uploaded the files and code onto github and made it into a webpage. It doesn't work perfectly, and I don't really know what I'm doing in gitbhub but it's here! https://cyborgwitch.github.io/CyborgWitchTheatre/p5_CyborgWitch%206%20%E2%80%94%20setup/empty-example/

Reflection on action

• I think the voices, layered, are super powerful. They're really effective in tapping into a sort of collective force, power, knowledge. Like Andrew said, also bringing in this historic/mystic understanding of the witch as a speaker. 

• The code was frustrating, and I still don't understand why some it's not working the way I want it to. Same with github. I don't understand how long it takes to update? Just keep coming up against learning curves but I'm really glad that I started testing it as a potential outcome. I imagine there's also lots more that is possible with p5 sound, so I'm sitting with the uncertainty and frustration of figuring it out. But it's exciting! It was super gratifying to hear the audio files loaded in, and have that sitting on a actual website!!!! It makes it less of a final, mysterious object and more of a workable process, and I am leaning towards a website for the actual outcome because I can visualise doing it. 

• Regarding the words and actual content, keep going. I think I need to be more loose with it. I feel as though I'm half-assing it, or doing it and then not going back to rigorously unpack it and edit and make it better? I enjoy the process of writing and designing from words, but I think I need to trust my judgement and the PROCESS more instead of just ignoring it? This applies to the setup-invitation here, and the generative Chinese translations from runway, but I also want to have a proper crack at COMMENTING the code, especially with the setup of the theatre. 

Reflection for action

• Really test the shit out of p5 sound
• Commit to the editing process of the poetry. 
• Revisit this poem not as the content, but the commenting — maybe try modelling it off the Graham Harwood/Matsuko Yokokoji piece?