The Zone of Pure Doubt, Episode 2: The Dateline Theory
Submission Type
Performance
Start Date/Time (EDT)
20-7-2024 8:00 PM
End Date/Time (EDT)
20-7-2024 8:15 PM
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Abstract
The Zone of Pure Doubt
Episode 2: The Dateline Theory
The Zone of Pure Doubt is an ongoing (since 2023) multimodal project with elements of poetry, augmented reality, and musical performance that explores memory, obsolescence, gender, and time-travel through forms inspired by equatorial line-crossing ceremonies and the age-old human art of navigation by the stars. The Zone references an area of the pacific where the correct timing of the Jewish sabbath cannot be agreed upon using any of the traditional rules applied to account for the loss and gain of hours across regions of global time-keeping, an uncertainty amplified because of the disputed location of an ideal dateline, not necessarily equivalent to the international standard, itself subject to occasional reshaping. The Zone is imagined as a longitudinal slide of restlessness, a theoretical area without guarantee of rest, and a place where past selves and their mythologies as well as larger histories of indigenous knowledge and colonial violence are manifested as the wreckage of past navigational errors wrested from below the surface of the pacific ocean, at a depth previously, but perhaps no longer, impervious to the limitations of technological probings.
This live-zoomed performance of The Zone, The Dateline Theory, marks a 25 year interval since the creation of My Name is Captain, Captain, an early hypermedia night-flight elegy ultimately published by Eastgate Systems in 2002 and currently undergoing restoration with the support of a NEA grant connected to an initiative of the Brown University Library. In the performance, the restored Captain and its artifactual debris, present as a free-floating wreckage of text and image in augmented reality, become incorporated into the poetry and vocalizations of the new performance, synthesizing parallel movements of memory and media archaeology into a generative reckoning with the past on multiple scales.
The piece will feature two live-streamed performers, as interchangeable poet and muse, following a score comprising exchanges of reading and song including an engagement with the persistent spatial interruptions of the older work. As a physical emblem of obsolescence with a uniquely recognizable retro-futuristic aesthetic of human absence, the performance will invoke the presence of a disklavier player piano as an additional performer. The piano, featured in its own video stream, will be periodically receiving wireless transmissions of text translated into sequences of notes for auto-playing short musical compositions. The Zone of Pure Doubt: The Dateline Theory, through this poetically entangled apparatus of a 15 minute work, will perform a material migration of old media and past selves towards the uncertain destination of a future form and body.
Recommended Citation
Morrissey, Judd and Avnisan, Ava Aviva, "The Zone of Pure Doubt, Episode 2: The Dateline Theory" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 50.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/50
The Zone of Pure Doubt, Episode 2: The Dateline Theory
Algorithms & Imaginaries
The Zone of Pure Doubt
Episode 2: The Dateline Theory
The Zone of Pure Doubt is an ongoing (since 2023) multimodal project with elements of poetry, augmented reality, and musical performance that explores memory, obsolescence, gender, and time-travel through forms inspired by equatorial line-crossing ceremonies and the age-old human art of navigation by the stars. The Zone references an area of the pacific where the correct timing of the Jewish sabbath cannot be agreed upon using any of the traditional rules applied to account for the loss and gain of hours across regions of global time-keeping, an uncertainty amplified because of the disputed location of an ideal dateline, not necessarily equivalent to the international standard, itself subject to occasional reshaping. The Zone is imagined as a longitudinal slide of restlessness, a theoretical area without guarantee of rest, and a place where past selves and their mythologies as well as larger histories of indigenous knowledge and colonial violence are manifested as the wreckage of past navigational errors wrested from below the surface of the pacific ocean, at a depth previously, but perhaps no longer, impervious to the limitations of technological probings.
This live-zoomed performance of The Zone, The Dateline Theory, marks a 25 year interval since the creation of My Name is Captain, Captain, an early hypermedia night-flight elegy ultimately published by Eastgate Systems in 2002 and currently undergoing restoration with the support of a NEA grant connected to an initiative of the Brown University Library. In the performance, the restored Captain and its artifactual debris, present as a free-floating wreckage of text and image in augmented reality, become incorporated into the poetry and vocalizations of the new performance, synthesizing parallel movements of memory and media archaeology into a generative reckoning with the past on multiple scales.
The piece will feature two live-streamed performers, as interchangeable poet and muse, following a score comprising exchanges of reading and song including an engagement with the persistent spatial interruptions of the older work. As a physical emblem of obsolescence with a uniquely recognizable retro-futuristic aesthetic of human absence, the performance will invoke the presence of a disklavier player piano as an additional performer. The piano, featured in its own video stream, will be periodically receiving wireless transmissions of text translated into sequences of notes for auto-playing short musical compositions. The Zone of Pure Doubt: The Dateline Theory, through this poetically entangled apparatus of a 15 minute work, will perform a material migration of old media and past selves towards the uncertain destination of a future form and body.
Bio
Judd Morrissey is a writer and code artist who creates poetic systems across a range of platforms incorporating electronic writing, internet art, live performance, and augmented reality. He is a recipient of awards including an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a Fulbright Scholar’s Award in Digital Culture, and a Mellon Foundation Collaborative Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship. Judd is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of the Art and Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP) department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the co-founder of the performance and technology collective Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality (ATOM-r) .
see: judisdaid.org
Ava Aviva Avnisan (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text and code. Using a host of emerging technologies including 3D scanning, augmented reality and virtual reality, she creates applications for mobile devices, interactive installations and technologically mediated performances that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language.
see: avivaavnisan.com