Memory Theatre Two

Web Implementation: (2007), Local Implementation: (2003)

Director/Lingo

Click HERE for an eight-minute video tour (linear, with audio not available in the interactive web implementation). NOTE: Once on the page, click the four-pedal icon in the lower right corner for full-screen viewing.

For the interactive version, click "How to View" tab above.

In the present environment, the only thing that doesn't change too fast to sense...is the self.

We need to educate ourselves to the sensory friction of the environment against our bodies and our expectations.

Disorientation now is more likely because we are overwhelmed by change, instead of repetitively beaten by the same stick (as in the mechanical age).

There is the self, which changes slowly. There is the electronic environment, which changes constantly. For navigation you need a third point. The vanishing point isn't in the world any more, it has to come from our own sensory history, knowledge, and apperception.

Memory Theatre Two is a tool for this experience.

Programmed in 3D Lingo/Director for the net. Source content files include MIDI, jpeg, mp3s.

Requires Shockwave plugin from Adobe. and Quicktime plugin from Apple

Mac OSX / Intel users run browser in Rosetta mode.

Turn on your speakers and ensure your brower's pop up blockers are off

Use all arrow keys to change your viewing position.

Click here to launch Memory Theatre Two

(in)authentic (2008)

Sonya Rapoport, Content

Robert Edgar, Memory Theatre

Director/Lingo

History of Memory Theatres

(in progress)

Printed Text w/Director/Lingo

Dr. Kirsten Wagner, Text

Dr. Peter Matussek, Text

Robert Edgar, Memory Theatres

Collaborative work in progress

Dr. Peter Matussek and Dr. Kirsten Wagner invited Robert Edgar to present at "The Renaissance of the Theater of Memory“, a workshop that took place on April 11th and 12th, 2003 at the Freie Universität Berlin. The three decided to collaborate on a digital memory theatre to present the history of memory theatres from the fourteenth century to the present.

Collaborative work in progress

Programmed in Lingo/Director

To be released as Printed Text with online Memory Theatre

Text, Graphics, Video, Audio, 3D Net Art

Memory Theatre One, 1985

The Memory Theatre Atrium has three doors. The left door leads to the library. The right door leads to the Additive Memory Room.

The top rooms are painted with images and hold short autobiographical notes and memories.

The bottom rings each contain two pedestals, each holding an icon. The bottom rooms also hold short quotes from books, newspapers etc.

--

You move through the Memory Theatre by controlling the movement of the ego with your joystick.

The form of the ego changes as a result of the room you are in, yet you always have an ego.

Joystick, paddles or Koala pad

Monochromatic monitor

Articles on Memory Theatre One:

Musings on an Interactive Postmodern Metaphor by Fred Truck

The Age of Computer Art by Ben Davis

Click for Inquiries concerning Memory Theatre One

Robert Demonstrates Memory Theatre One, 1986

Electro-Acoustic Music 2006: The Duchamp Examinations

Robert's electro-acoustic music CD is available at www.electro-music.com.

Sand, or How Computers Imagine Truth in Cinema

Interactive Computer-based performance system

August 1994

The central theme of SAND: OR HOW COMPUTERS DREAM OF TRUTH IN CINEMA comes from a well-known quote that Cinema is truth 24 times a second. I grabbed stills (and sometimes generated images using 3D animation programs) of a sequence 6 frames long. I changed things in front of the camera between the shots. I then took the separate images and allowed the computer to imagine what happened between the frames--I did this using a morph program. Usually morph programs are used to change one object into another, but in SAND I used it to create an explanation (a visual one) for the changes that happened between the information that the computer had (it had only the separate stills). Of course, it didn't always guess right: things may move from left to right, when they actually were pulled apart, etc.

The mistakes--the artifacts from the morph--create their own poems, from their difference between what actually happened and what it "guessed" happened. My goal in the piece was to invent a new poetic space, which I believe I succeeded in doing here. And of course, there are parallels among all the media channels in the piece, as rememberances, arguments, occurrences, repeating riffs appear and advance in time.

Amiga 3000 computer,

Video Toaster,

AmigaVision, AREXX,

MIDI Guitar, MIDI sound module

DVD 1985 - 1995 Portfolio from rbedgar@stanford.edu

Living Cinema

Live Computer-based cinema performance system

1988

Living Cinema

After programming Memory Theatre One, I wanted to move to mis-en-scene, not design fixed data for display. I looked to create cinema in real time, like one played music in real time. I used video footage I'd collected diary-style, texts from musings, audio recordings, cells to create short animation loops, graphics etc, and programmed software to allow me to select and combine all the elements in real time in performance. I was also able to save the performance decisions and cursor moves I made and re-play them into the system, later during the same performance, for a kind of structural repetition with differently set up screen imagery.

Often I was joined in performance by Dutch Knotts on keyboard sampler.

Living Cinema

12 mhz Computer

Targa frame grabber

Sony videodisc player

Voice Synthesizer

Original software programmed in C

DVD 1985 - 1995 Portfolio from rbedgar@stanford.edu