 Hello everyone and welcome to Performa Jam. Very excited to be here and to be hosting. My name is Alden Rivendale Jones. So tonight is a very special event that's hosted both by a adjacent journal which is a journal of emerging media out of the interactive telecommunications program in NYU. And Culture Hub, which you probably know very well as you're watching their stream. So tonight we have a variety of performers using a variety of different mediums. But what's particularly important about the performances that are tonight is that they've all been made over the course of just today. So each performance will be five minutes. Performers started working on their performances at noon today. And I'm quite excited to see them. So the performances were all made around the theme of energy vampire. So keep that in mind as you watch each performance. Now each performance also should only be five minutes long. If they start to go over time, you'll hear and yes start to play. So performers keep that in mind. If you hear and yeah, cut your cut your performance is basically the audio equivalent of getting pulled off of stage. With a with a cane like they did back in vaudeville times. So with that I'd like to give it up to our first performer of the evening, Billy. For me, it was all about loss and death of the things I love just for now. Amazing. All right. All right, so we'll welcome our next performer. Okay, thank you and sorry for watching. I'm up to party. Because I'm watching my Thank you. Thank you for celebrating. We're celebrating. Those fantastic. How did you, how did you, how did you find such capable, such a capable performer to help you in this, in this time. I was, I was lucky actually this guy is first performance at an actual performance gallery was once old so he's like experience. It's also a birthday today right. Yeah. Wow. And of course I have to ask you the important question which is, what does energy vampire mean to you. How has that, how has that shaped your day. Oh, this is such a such a close to my heart. I feel like energy vampire just like sucking on my blood every day and same same me and being the energy vampire of you right now just like taking up taking up your time and attention and like what, what for what what even for, you know, Totally. Yeah, I mean I feel like I feel like in part we wanted we chose this theme because there seem to be so many things that we're sucking all of our energy these days. I mean staying at home, being one being quarantined another just like zoom being in the meetings all the time. Do you, do you have any final words from you and your and you and your assistant. Well that was a disturbing start I guess after musical. No, it was great. It's something more wackier. Let's go. We're still waiting for our next performer. And think about organizing those. Of course. Yeah, we're very excited to be doing it. I think and I think it seemed to be the right thing to be doing right now I mean there's like so much. There's like so little opportunity, generally for live performance like in the world at large and so in some ways moving the digital actually. And yes we really wanted to experiment and play in the space. All right. Looks like we have our next performer ready to go. Max are you ready. All right. One more round of applause. Yeah, we're all set. All right. So welcome our next performer max. We'll give it to you. You are helping people around the world communicate for free. Please enter your access code followed by the pound or hash sign. Don't have to say comfortable. What an inspired choice for energy vampire. And so Before you run off, I have one question for you. Of course conference call makes perfect sense. But how did you find exploring this this medium through the day as you as you as you worked on it and like maybe at what point did you decide on the conference call as the, as the tool. Pretty late like we got the prompt last night and it didn't really come to me until like, we had already started meeting today. I've sort of done stuff around the free conference call before, usually like involving like a group activity of like planning the piece together. It seemed like a good, like the energy vampire thing for me is very like this weird feeling of like being with people but not being with people. And that like weird tension of like, you're together but you're not actually and it's hard to actually feel together in that weird fake digital space. Yeah, no, it's it's wonderful choice and thank you. Thank you for, thank you for choosing it. Of course, I didn't get to hear the annual when I went long. Oh, it's okay. Don't worry. All right. So, Thank you max round of applause. As we sit in our and just to check in with the next performer, Matt, Matt, are you ready to go. Matt, if you're ready give a thumbs up. No, not yet. Okay. Well, that is max I have another question for you. Which is just how have you found making work, making work in quarantine times. I, I, I'm asking because I recently saw an onion article that and the headline of which was something along the lines of local man doesn't understand why he thought the most psychologically traumatic time of his life would be a great moment to become productive again. Yeah, I mean that's exactly it. It's a lot there's there's plenty of free time. And all these projects that I've wanted to work on forever. And it's a lot of like, you know, there's like eight things that I've wanted to do like as soon as I had the free time for however long. And now it's just a matter of like trying to do eight of them at once and instead doing none of them. Like trying to try to run in two directions at once and instead just standing still, but yeah, getting through it. The doing eight things at once and not and finding that it's actually like I'm not getting any of them done. That's extremely relatable for me and I think for like many people. Because in some ways it seems like such a perfect time to like capitalize on, you know, you can't go out and hang out with people you can't go to many of the normal things you ordinarily be doing your day today. So that's like it was free up a lot of time but then I think and think I've replaced all that time and then some with just anxious sitting and so I'll just sitting and for like refreshing my phone obsessively. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I had to delete Twitter from my phone because I because it was giving me those enabling my anxious sitting. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. Let's check. Matt, are you. You're good to go. Everything's ready. All right. All right, well, thank you Max. And with that we'll go to you. Sorry, I mean, I would I muted myself, which is probably good because I was just talking about how much I love this boombox I got on eBay. So when I when I got the $1,200 and stimulus money in my bank account. You know, I asked myself what what's the best way I can spend it you know I thought like student loans, pay off my student loans, credit card debt, and then I realized that no none of that was important. So what actually I needed to do was buy a boombox in 1980s that could play cassettes and that's exactly what I did. Matt, are you ready. That's ready. Wonderful. Matt, we'll go to you. Matt, are you muted. All right. We'll have to skip that for now. We're going to be doing audio issues, which is very unfortunate. It looks very fun in his in his. And with that we'll move to Aaron Aaron yeah I can't hear you at all. Wonderful. Right. And Luna. Yeah, that was fantastic. And so just to just to person announcement for those of you just tuning in. This is the live stream of perform a jam and evening of of short performances prepared in just a one six hour time span. The energy vampire co-hosted by adjacent the Journal of emerging media out of run out of the interactive telecommunications program of NYU and culture hub. And so with that around. And Luna, I would sort of. You know, I'm almost at a loss for words there was so much going on. And well, one, one thing I'm curious about is, did you actually just get a haircut, or was it because I. Yeah. Incredible. That's wonderful. You know, I, I, I don't want to complain, but my, but I had a haircut scheduled for just the first week of quarantine and of course it had to get canceled. And I don't mind growing my hair out right now I actually think it's actually think it's working but I'm, you know, I would, I would love to be able to get a nice haircut right now. It's still a nice haircut. But yeah, so. Yeah, I just curious like how how was working, working collaboratively over the day and when did you come up with this concept and sort of like, how did the haircut, what how did the haircut first emerge as the form you wanted one of this performance to take. This is time so I was thinking I need to get a haircut. I need to finish all these things and then my machine starts to break down over time like the battery is really messed up so the thing about energy falling over time was like the connection to, you know what, let's see this machine fall when I tried to get a haircut and me being an energy divine for this beautiful like $20 machine from the dollar store. Close and she always cuts my hair so seem like the perfect collaboration. Wonderful. I, yeah, I, you know, I think I've heard the term energy vampire used to describe sort of things like plugs and adapters that have been left plugged into the wall even though they're no longer charging something. So it seems very fitting that you would use the clippers, clippers in that way because, of course, like if you're charging them, or if you have it plugged in or not, if they're not running, then there's going to be slowly training energy. So it's, it's, yeah, there's like so many angles in which it's appropriate. So, let's just check in on our next performer, Jessica. Okay. Round of applause for Aaron, Aaron and Luna. Thank you. Wonderful job. And with that, we'll go to Jessica. Awesome. Well, hi everyone. This is a little different from some of the other performances I actually kind of wanted to talk through this generative poetry that I was working on today. So it'll be part like reading, but also part explanation of like how this is all constructed. So where I just was was like the editor view of this. Yeah, I want to read through just this poem that was generated just now. So cells themselves can gain total potency working on the wind familiar scenes that with another student of our love was possible. If we're in a sticky rewind button at the speechless hominids staring at the water, glory be an act of whatever is holding on today. Are you sorry right now. Last year in our tension right now, every Sunday night proves it and then something good. We start off life total potent the earth it is the last time we exert a state of all, I remember not wanting it. Are you would want then there was possible. We start off life total potent wishful thinking. I realize that the this whole thing isn't doesn't read fully coherent, but it was generated from a handful of texts that are writing so I've been thinking a lot about during this time. I wanted to highlight this piece about Carly Rae Jepsen where the author talks about total potency and the sense of possibility and how her music kind of evokes a similar sense of that. And then another thing I want to highlight was, oops, Octavia but there's this is from her piece. I think a few rules for predicting the future. So it was really struck by this one quote, because most of all, our tomorrow is a child of our today. Through thought indeed we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can't control it absolutely. It's best to think about it though, best to try to shape it into something good, best to do that for any child. And reading this. Like, wow, like, I guess the the semen itself is both like really recognizable but also, I think like really was really profound for me. This is kind of what I named my project after so the project's called of yesterday. And the idea is that every time I click through it generates poems from a couple of the texts that I put together. Yeah, so it's called of yesterday because I like found myself almost like wishing I was religious or spiritual, or that like there was some kind of like body of religion that fall so that I could turn to something like bigger than myself, like sort of uncertainty or confusion. And then I realized like what I was actually looking for was like poetry and things that remind me of the journey from here and at the same time, and I feel like kind of like this product in that it almost like in just taking the text that you give it, and then it finds new ways, like it, it looks at what we already know. So in this case, the essays and the poems that I gave it, and then it creates something new from it. So I've been thinking about that as like a frame for, I guess how I want to purchase time going forward like there. So there's a sense of maybe like drain that comes in being in the same environment. But I think this also is interesting opportunities. Yeah, so a couple more poems. See. Yeah, okay, so I'm going to go to some of the ones that I found or I got earlier today. This actually has to stay on the amphibians. The earth, it is storytelling in the water. Glory be to the child. There's no sorrow now. We sense our lost total potency only at the earth. We're also learning to try to that for a miracle. Best to knit itself out toward infinity. Best to that heartbeat, but the sun, our love was a miracle cells themselves can regain total potency. Our love. Are you sorry right now. But try to try to shape absolutely. And then the companion piece, the first time machine. It is a state that one cell turned into something good. Total potency is a state that for thinking. Are you sorry right now total potency is a degrading 37 trillion that anything is fossils learning made itself out toward infinity. So those can regain total potency only in touch with learning to shape it our love. Total potency is a new kind of influence over the total potency is fossils learning to knit itself toward infinity, because our potential and we were anything is the means by which they do so remain a cult. We that refuse to think ready to think is something good. Yeah, and then from there, wanted to highlight. And it's in a model called Markov, like a Markov chain model. And this kind of model basically looks for ways that words are already linked together, and then links to those links together. So it's kind of an interesting, taking what we know, and projecting outward. Yeah, which is the overall. Sorry, the, the, the, unfortunately, your time, your time is up. Yeah, that was perfect. Yeah. Yeah, that was perfect timing. But yeah, thank you for the powers. And what. And so. Yeah, what formally what what inspired you to choose poetry is your as your medium today. Yeah, totally totally. I brought up earlier this idea of like, wishing that I was like religious or like wanting, wanting to feel some kind of like transcendence, and then like revisiting some of my favorite poets, and like some of my favorite essays and realizing like that I guess like maybe the moment like poetry kind of serves as my religion. And so wanting to then take the source of what brings me comfort and try to create something new from what's familiar. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, the desire to be to be religious I feel. That's that's that's somewhat. Like I felt that at times or sort of like I wished for some sort of like spiritual practice or having some kind of like spiritual experience. I was of course I was raised by with with enough, enough lapsed Catholic guilt that I feel like that almost makes up for any kind of spiritual. I have, I have enough of that. And I feel like, you know, sometimes I usually find myself wishing for like something more or like something more intensely meaningful and then I remember, I remember all of the guilt that I have and I'm like, oh, no, it's okay, I've covered. I don't need more. Yeah. But yeah, thank you. Thank you for your work today. And let's see if our next performer is ready. So you're saying if you're ready and when you're ready, give me a thumbs up. Okay, looks already. Alright, Jessica, thank you again. Not really. Okay. Well, in that case, Jessica, another question for you. So you, I, before you run off, have you still here? She's not here anymore. Alright, which means you get to, well, maybe that's not such a bad thing because it means that you'll get to hear more about my focus at where I am. So one of the things that I didn't even really think would be, would be as useful of a function as it is in the sort of like maybe speaks to my name, my naivete about these like older analog mediums. But so it has this function of doing an auto reverse. So it says right there. I can't really see it, but it does auto reverse so that means that if I'm listening to the side a of a cassette, and it reaches the end of the cassette tape, it'll just automatically start playing by B. Okay. So, which is fascinating stuff. So yeah, you think and Oliver Rose, are you ready? Alright, they're ready. Alright, is your idea? Which part? No, it's not showing. Well, we wait a second for that. I will we wait a second for them to get ready. Let's see, I I could talk a little bit or I don't know, that might be a bit boring. There's a variety of things that I that like, and I purchased or somehow obtained in the in the days before the the quarantine that I found like unexpectedly useful. The first one of course is a high quality webcam. So I feel like I just sort of like basically on a whim decided to buy a really expensive webcam. Which, you know, maybe this was in like mid February. And I didn't even realize that that would be the rest so much of my next life that I just basically be living in my webcam. This way. Sorry. Okay, it looks like they're getting ready before they start. I want to I want to shout out one more thing that I acquired, which is, I think my sister gave this to me it's a little bird, but it's actually has like a ceramic box cutter on the very tip. And little did I know how many packages I'd be receiving. So, okay, we're ready. We're getting in all of a rose. And thank you both of you. That was wonderful. Thank you. How did you know it's it's like, it's, I feel like it's so hard to do collaborations, but the fact that you were doing this collaboration remotely. How did you make that work and how did you and what kind of difficulties did you find? And we basically brainstormed, given the concept of energy vampire, and then we have word association. And then we figured out which part we were interested in. And I'm interested in the audio part and Oliver Rose is very interested in visual part. And we sort of wanted to collaborate in between the visual and audio. So I shot some footage of me doing some mundane things that Oliver Rose can incorporate in the visuals. And he also sent me some audio clips of him talking singing and doing a lot of things. So I actually like this kind of collaboration. Yeah, it sounds great. Yeah, it's better. I feel like. Yeah, how did you feel with the time constraint today? Did it help or did it hurt? Oh, yeah. Oh, well, you did a great job. Very good job. Thank you. All right. Our concept. Oh, go ahead. So our concept from the energy vampire is to elaborate how everything feels like the same. So it basically incorporated sounds, elements and footages that are happening basically daily. And in terms of my sound elements, I chose some mundane activities like cooking, eating, drinking, and that compile them into a drum rack and then use that as my drum base. And do you want to talk about the footages? Yeah, well, I'm happy that I'm happy that you're able to make this work. I think it's really good. Do you have any plans? Are you longtime collaborators or do you or was this your first time and do you have any plans on collaborating in the future? Definitely. This is wild. I like it. Awesome. Let's check in with our next performer. Before Matt, are you ready to go? This is Matt's next chance. Matt's ready to go. All right. Wonderful. So another round of applause for getting an Oliver Rose. Thank you. Thank you both. And then we'll go to Matt. This is just joining us. This is the perform a jam stream. A night of five minute performances all made in a span of six hours. And hosted by the adjacent journal of emerging media run out of the interactive telecommunications program of NYU, which you can read here at this URL. You can find it at tp colon slash slash adjacent dot press. And which I'm only shouting out so much because Matt here is one of the Jason's star editors. Matt. So I would like to, I would like to ask you, like I've been asking all the performers. First off, just what has what has energy vampire meant to you? And how did it, how did it fit into your performance now? Yeah, you can hear me right? Yes. You can hear me right? Perfect. Yeah. It's some microphone issues earlier, but I think for energy vampire for me has gotten me thinking about our weird relationship with energy. The words extrovert and introvert typically people think of like how people get their energy within being in the house versus being around other people. And I feel like these traditional roles and sources of energies just all the rules feel like they've broken down over the past couple of months. And I think it's had a very strange effect on sort of how a lot of us have been going about our routines and sort of how we've been receiving time and kind of like getting energy. Me energy vampires sort of been around this kind of strange thread of like anxiety and energy going through all of our brains. Mm hmm. Great. And look at his face. Where does it come from? Where's the sample? I it's, you know, it sounds something about it sounds so familiar. But I can't actually place it. It's interesting. That's what you called out because for me the during this time, the part of the sample that always looks interesting to me is go get a doctor. I think it's sort of I picked a sample from an old 1920s film. It's sort of thinking thinking about, you know, every sci-fi horror movie. I mean disaster movie begins with people ignoring a scientist. So I found this and sort of felt like, oh yeah, like, go to get a doctor and you see what this person is talking about. Completely appropriate. Good choice. All right, Matt, before I let you go, let's check in with our next performer, Tundi. Tundi, are you ready? Yeah, I hear you. Okay. All right, Tundi is ready. So Matt, thank you. A round of applause for Matt. Wonderful performance. And Matt will let you go and hands it over to Tundi. I'm calling Design Life Well. You can check it out at designlifewell.com. And today I'm going to be talking about purpose statements and how to find your purpose in five minutes or less. We all want to do that. And so my piece is going to be a little bit different, but this is definitely aimed at creative professionals and I am one myself. So hopefully this is helpful to you guys. So most people ask, what do you do? And the issue is that this is a hard question for some of us. You know, what if you're in between things? What if you're vulnerable? What if what you are doing isn't really what you want to be doing? What if what you're getting paid to do isn't really what you are? Or what if people are saying it in kind of a malicious way? What if they're just asking you just to see if they want to actually talk to you? Or what if they're just asking so that they can, you know, brag that they're what they're doing is so much cooler than you. So if you figure out your purpose and coming up with a purpose statement, it really helps you in a lot of ways. It helps your elevator pitch. It helps to start conversations. And it can also help others figure out what they want to do as well. So what happens if you don't know what you what you do and you don't know what your purpose is? One, others will tune out because they don't want to spend time figuring it out. Two, they don't want to tell others what you do because you don't know either and they really don't understand. Others won't trust you because they don't just don't get it. And they won't end up buying anything from you hiring you or helping you to get anything that you need because they just simply won't trust you. So we can all agree that the unexamined life is not worth living. So there's five ways to figure this out. Who you are, what you do, who you do it for, what those people want and need, and how they change as a result. So I'm just going to go through these really quickly. So one, what is it that you love to do? It could be anything. For me, it's designing. I love to design. It could also be writing, coding, teaching, cooking, talking, whatever. Second, who do you do it for? Who are the people that you serve? Who do you do it for? Who's helped by this thing that you do? Three, what do they want or need that they come specifically to you to do? So what is the exact thing that makes you unique and different? What do other people need? So name the thing that you actually help them with. And then five is how can they change or transform as a result of what you provide them? What are they getting out of it? So those are five quick things that you want to answer. And if you put it all together, it's my, our unique adjective or product service, blink, what others will get or accomplish so that blink, your product or service, how they can help other people. So some examples of it are our organic soy candles provide peace and coziness so you can make a home feel like a home. Another example is our friendly design system helps you without a need to code so that you can post work fast without worry. Our sugar-free cupcakes still indulge after dinner so that you can celebrate without feeling bad. And our ego-friendly tech air filter helps to safely clean the air so that you can live without worry. You guys get it, right? Really quick and easy, but it helps people quickly understand what you do. And it helps other people to speak to you as well about what they do clearly. So I wanted just to explain this to you guys because as a creative, it's sometimes difficult to put into perspective what we do. And understanding what you do and what others do really quickly helps everybody. So I really wanted to point this out to you all and I hope that this is helpful. I'm just going to wrap this up by saying if you can just, if you want to find a lot more info on this, I'm launching something specifically for creatives, either at ITP or anywhere else to design a career that you're wildly proud of. You know, I doubled my income in under a year as a creative and a lot of people haven't asked me about that so I put together a quick PDF on that and happy to help you guys if you also want to email me. It's hello at designlifewell.com. That's it. Thank you, Tundi. So, Tundi, I had, I guess, of course. Okay, before I ask you any questions, something that I really like about this is that I recently saw a call, an artist's call for works that were meant to create pathways towards actionable change. And, you know, I was thinking like, well, that doesn't describe my practice. I feel like, you know, maybe if anything that I would be making were all actionable, that would seem almost bizarre. And so something I like about this is that you're sort of like providing a rubric for people to actually make like actionable change in their lives. And so what, so what sort of like what inspires you to make this as like as something for as something to like for other people to access. And of course, how do you how do you feel I mean it seems I can see the connection to energy vampire but how how does energy vampire fit into this. So I made this because I felt like a lot of creative people actually aren't talking to each other about success. And as a design oriented person, I've gone through a lot of struggles in my own life. And I figured that the best way to do it is actually figure out what you want to do and reverse engineer that into smaller steps. So everything is kind of like very structural and kind of step by step. So figuring that all out was like awesome and especially as an artist as well it like helps to express yourself and what you do and like really clear way so that other people can talk to you and you can get grants and funds and art shows and projects that you love. And as it's it's very like exhausting and it's definitely an energy suck when you don't know what you do. It's exhausting because you're talking to other people that don't really get it and you don't really get very far so the best way to do it is just be really clear on your why and what you do. And that's why I basically created as a resource just to give back. Not not a lot of people help me in my life, get to where I am but the people who did. I'm very grateful to I just want to give back to the community so that's why I'm creating it. Well thank you. Give me another round of applause. I'll check in with our next performer. Topher Topher are you ready. If you're ready to give a thumbs up. Yeah. Okay, wonderful. All right, Cindy thanks. Thank you again. And we'll head over to Topher. Topher that was great. That was what that was like so ethereal like I was it gave me chills. What. How are you doing it like what. So whistling we whistling just like yeah. Yeah. And then and then the drawing what were you how are you doing it. I was, you know, I have a few different, I have a camera pointed right above me right now. And it's, yeah, so I have a few different feeds once coming from here once coming from directly up there. Feed both into this program here at the door off. And just, you know, mucking with it from there. Yeah, so what in your process what did what did energy what did energy vampire mean to you and how, how did it how did it go over the day how did you come up with this concept is this a medium is this a medium that you've explored before or is it something new. I, you know, I was, I was, you know, thinking about all the things that we were kind of being asked to give up and how necessary that all is. And, you know, it's, it kind of reminded me of, it kind of reminded me of one of the great villains I really liked the Queen of the Night from magic blue. And she has this scene where she's like, Oh yeah, you like this person but you need to stab them stab them stab them stab them. It's like, she's like, no, no, no, this is really necessary. And she has this entire song where she were like this is really necessary. And that makes sense for a thing to base a project around. And yeah, just that song. Kind of reverberating and so I'll kind of started with the idea like I'll start with a light bulb and then it. Yeah, as she's saying it fragments into a bunch of different things, you know. Cool. Um, yeah, it was very effective. I found it. Yeah. Again, I said I had chills again. It was, yeah, it was super arresting. Um, yeah, and, um, yeah, this is, um, is this something so I, I feel I've, I've seen, I think one other performance of yours. I remember it involved puppets in some way. So is this, um, is this a new medium that you like to do with, with just with the drawing? I think it's like, I think it's working. So I would say you should, you should explore it further. If it's not new, you're on the right track. There's definitely a bunch of stuff. It's definitely a bunch of stuff. I've been playing with an ITP for a while. I've got, you know, got my, you know, Neopixel ring that can set light to different colors and, you know, change what things look like. So it's basically, you know, it's, it's all the crap that I brought home with me. And I was like, well, just try and live feeding and trying to do some animation is basically like, I don't know. It's just all the stuff I like to play with. But I thought I had a good chance to play with it. Cool. All right, well, thank you for one more round of applause. I mean, let's check in with Matt and see Matt. Are you mad? Are you ready to go? Yeah. And this is a new Matt, different Matt from the previous Matt. All right. And so up next is Matt. Matt is one of our, one of our two finishing performers or performances. And I'm very excited to see it. So Matt, take it away. How are you doing? Are you holding up all right? Are you taking care of yourself? What do you do all day? Do you have a routine? Are you bored? Are you anxious? Do you still have a job? Can you pay your rent? Can you pay your bills? Do you feel resentful? Do you feel angry? Have you looked out your window today? How many times a day do you look out your window? Do you have a window? Have you left your home today? What's the farthest distance you've traveled from home this week? Is there somewhere else you wish you could be? Do you feel isolated? Are you isolated? Are you alone? Are you with a partner? Are you with a roommate? Is there someone that you wish you were with instead? Do you wish you were alone? Do you feel more connected to people? Do you feel less connected to people? Are you arguing a lot? Are you feeling impatient? Will you still be with your partner when all of this is over? Does it feel good to be alone? Do you feel guilty for enjoying being alone? Do you feel sick? Are people around you getting sick? Have you felt off? Did you already get sick? Are you afraid to tell anyone you're feeling sick? Have you cut your own hair? What are you looking forward to? What were you looking forward to? What gets you out of bed? Can you get out of bed? Can you sleep? Are you having nightmares? Are you enjoying yourself? Are you teaching yourself something new? Are you reinventing yourself? Are you grieving? Are you traumatized? Are you drinking a lot? Are you worried about your drinking? Are you worried about someone else's drinking? Are you getting high? Are you getting out of weed? Are you coping? Are you working harder than you've ever had to? Are you worried at how normal this all feels now? Do you wish you could keep doing this? Did you stop talking to anyone? Does someone in your life feel like a burden right now? Do you feel like a burden? How long does an hour feel? How long does a day feel? How long have you been doing this? Are you afraid you're going to lose your job? Are you jealous of people that don't have a job right now? Do you wish you didn't have to work? Do you wish you could be creative, be productive? Are you watching TV? Are you reading a book? Are you cooking? Are you calling friends? Are you calling family? Are they calling you? Do you wonder what you do all day? Do you forget what you did yesterday? Do you forget what you have to do tomorrow? Do you forget what day it is? How are you doing today? Are you holding up all right? Are you doing okay? Matt, that was fantastic. Matt, if you could, could you... I just have a few questions to ask you, of course, but... Hey, can you see me? Yes. Hey. Matt, that was incredible. That was extremely affecting. I felt deeply moved at many points in the piece. And I think it also brought to mind something that I hadn't totally been cognizant of. And I don't remember exactly the wording of the question, but it was something along the lines of... Are you comfortable with this? Or are you surprised by how normal this feels, followed by another question which is, not so much do not want this to end, but do you... I don't remember... It was something along those lines. It was something that I had been thinking quite recently as a weird feeling I was having, which were not so much that I'm happy with the situation at hand, but just that I have reached a point of normalcy within it, where... And I don't know if this is true of everybody, but I think it's true of many people, of once you reach a particular point in your life where you're sort of comfortable with your day-to-day, then you don't... Then sort of like any disruptions might seem like a little bit unwelcome. And so I was thinking a little bit about what's going to change when quarantine ends. And there's a little bit of thought in my mind of, well, I might have to adapt to all these normal ways of living that I used to have. And now I have these particular behaviors and particular routines that I've gotten into that I'll have to break, which I'm very happy about breaking, but it is a break from the routine. So how did you narrow into that feeling when you were making this work? What was the question I didn't hear the last part? How did you narrow into that feeling when you were making this work? You know, like, I don't know how long... I don't know how long I've been doing this. It feels like it's been like six weeks or seven weeks, you know? And like, these are questions I've been asking myself and I see people around me asking. And like, you know, it was that feeling for a while when this all started, like that everybody's using the word of pause. We're going to pause and then we can inherent and that is the idea that we unpause and everything goes back to normal. And the last few weeks has really felt like, oh, we're... There's no unpause from this anymore. This is breeding new realities, new ways of living, new social and cultural and like really painful, traumatic things that we're going to have to adjust to. And so like... And kind of in responding to the prompt from today too, like it's just like these other things that drain me of so much energy is asking these questions, worrying about them, feeling confusion about what feels good right now, what feels bad right now, like how to connect with people right now. Yeah, completely. I feel like, yeah, so many of these questions were ones that I had like immediate answers to and also felt like in answering them, we're like very revealing of truths that I had maybe been ignoring. And so, you know, I've seen a fair bit of your work and I feel like something that I like so much about it is that this 3D... Is that something about the 3D model of your body and the use of your body in digital space, like creates this like defamiliarization where it makes me take a step back. It's almost like a kind of like a cybernetic thing of like I'm taking a step back from my experience of like seeing you do something because it's seeing like sort of a representation if you do something. And yeah, so for my last question for you is that something that you think about as a strategy in this use of your body or is it... Matt, did you just disappear? Matt, are you still there? Have you disappeared? Well, Matt was scared off by my question, apparently. So, yeah, so I'll give another round of applause for Matt. And with that... Matt is back. So, Matt, did you hear the end of my question? I'm sorry I didn't. There's something crazy was going on. Don't worry about it. It can wait. Is it hard things? I'll ask. So something is just sort of like in presenting your body as a 3D avatar, something in that like makes me as an observer step back and take your performance in a different light. And it's sort of like in a way that removes me and allows me to have an extra layer of consideration to it. And so is that something that you think about in your work or is it something that you intentionally play with? Sorry, I just had to close my window. It seemed like I didn't get the rest of your question. So I understood this embodied voice. I appreciate the thought you put in your question I didn't hear though. Don't worry about it. We can table it. This is something that can be addressed in the digital green room as it were. So I actually misspoke when I said that Matt, you're one of the last two performers. In fact, one of the last two performers. So we have... Yeah, so our next performer is Dan. Check quickly with Dan. Dan, are you ready? You ready? Okay. Great. All right. One more round of applause for Matt. And then we will go to Dan. All right. Dan. That was very fun. I would say it was very short. So I was unprepared for it to end. But so what, Dan, do you want to talk a little bit about what you were doing? It seemed quite cool. But I'm curious to learn more. Yeah. So what I wanted to do was kind of express the chaos I've been feeling and then kind of like combine to a meditative feeling at the end because things have just kind of been crazy, but then good and the energy's been better. I had a much bigger thing planned, but I kept having so many technical difficulties because the audio tool I'm using is so intensive. So I had to like make it really short. And I, I will admit I cheated a bit. I recorded a video because every time I tried to stream it, it would like crash my computer and the audience. So I just was like, okay, I'm about to go on. I'm just going to make a 30 second video. And that's it. That's very funny. I didn't even, to be honest, I didn't notice that it was a video. And I just thought that that was an element of you, of your live performance. So that's, that's a really creative solution of dealing with. I know you, I know we didn't, we didn't give the performers a lot of time to make these pieces. So yeah, I appreciate the technical difficulties. But yeah. Yeah. That's quite an inventive solution. Yeah. So you answered sort of what, what energy of empire means to you, but do you have. Hmm. Do you, I'm, so I'm also, I'm a little bit curious exactly what you were doing and like, what the, what the tech was. Sure. So this is actually experienced. That's meant to be listened to with headphones. What I was doing. I was like starting the sound in the middle and then started slowly panning it around using like a. Binaural encoder, which basically makes sound appear in any direction on your headphones. And I'm really interested in this expression with the new era of everyone sitting at home listening to digital streaming. I think spatial audio has a lot of. Interesting ways of enjoying music at home. So I kind of wanted to explore with that. And I wanted to make a much bigger musical instrument that can deal with that. But I was limited by just time, but I want to continue this project and, you know, do like multi-channel audio condensed into headphones kind of like things. I'm also using analog synthesizers, like software replicas is this Buchler replicant, which sounds amazing. But it's very CPU intensive. And that's why I couldn't stream it at the same time. But it sounds great. And there's tons of options. Sure. Cool. Well, thank you. One last, one last thing. I can't help but notice how funny it is there compared to our purple, purple, huge New York city. So I could just tell us briefly where you are. Yeah. I'm in L. Right now. The sky is very blue because there's no cars on the road. So it's a nice place to be. So I've been getting a lot of sunlight, which has been nice. That was kind of like also what I wanted to express in this. I don't know, like energy from the sun. I don't know. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's see. Let's see if the next performers are ready. Yeah. Gary and Tong. Are you ready to go? Yeah. We're ready. All right. Another round of applause for Dan. Thank you, Dan. And then I'll handle it. Hand it off to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'll hand it off to our last performance of the evening, which I'm very excited for. It is called happy English test by Kerry and Tong. All right. You're welcome. You are now entering the assessment system of the happy English test under the instruction of the something department of education. Happy English incorporated just launched this new educational assessment system for people are preparing themselves to spark joy in their everyday English communications. Happy English incorporated. Happy English speaker should be someone who keeps an unswerving faith that happiness is true. I am their own without a roof throughout their life. A certificate of happy English speaker will be issued to you when you have successfully passed the test with a score above 80. Without a roof, the follow-up test is designed to assess your communication and writing skills on campus. Happy English. Each session has a different guideline. Please listen carefully before proceeding. Please now present your happy English ID for verification. Each session has a different place your happy English test ID card within the green box for proceeding. Please now present your happy English ID for verification. Place your happy English ID card within the green box. Welcome, Kerry S. I. J. I. Wang. Get ready for the test now. Read the sentences out loud. Hi, Professor Adams. My name is Larry. My. Read the sentences out loud. I heard that you placed students in internships for various university programs. I. Yes, I am interested. The internship at the university art museum. I. The. But just saw an announcement on the museum website. Museum are all built on this museum. I want to use the work after I graduate. Yes, out of date. I. I am not interested in library work. I. Or student volunteers. I am not sure that is what I want. I am not interested in the library art planning at an exhibition exhibition of, but it would be something to put on my resume. I warned you warned beforehand. Warn that this is on you. Why don't you listen and repeat the sentences. Hi, I would like to join the math club. Math Club I have talked to some of my friends who are club members I have talked to some of my friends who are club members They especially enjoyed the club's field trips last year They especially enjoyed the club's field trips last year I volunteer to tutor some primary school students in Math on Mondays I volunteer to tutor some primary school students in Math Is it okay if I only come on Thursdays? Is it okay if I only come on Mondays? Thursdays? Thursdays? Is it possible for the community service requirement for graduation and Mondays are for Math so I have to be there? So I have to be there Mondays? If it's okay because even if you only come on Wednesday on the topic of medium specificity and the avant-garde cinema I think you will still enjoy the cinema This is a good start I want to say a word now about the structure of the US government Two sentences It's hard Write on that Congratulations Your hyper-vibe has been proved that we are all impressed with your positive energy. You have passed the test. Congratulations. You are now a certified happy English speaker on campus. We appreciate the efforts you made to not only speak good English, but speak happy English. We speak more people like you to bring us positive energy in the English-speaking world. We speak English, but speak happy English. You need more people like you to bring us positive energy in the English-speaking world. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Thank you, both of you. That was fantastic. It also seems like very... It's very organizationally ambitious for the time, given the timing. Of course, I'd like to know a little bit about how this collaboration worked and how you were able to accomplish so much in this time span. Because I mostly do work that's related to tests, so I already have a lot of coding done for this project, but we just need to reappropriate it for this purpose. Usually, my work is more dystopian and sad. This time, we just wanted to do something really fun and light-hearted. Tone is exploring using avatars and machine learning recently. This is a small deepfake demo that I found online. That's why we record some videos of us reading the guidelines and then just have it to go through the deepfake process, and then we just mount it to some stock images that we found. Cool. It was definitely very... It was super funny. Something about seeing picture puppets, especially of the stock image picture puppet, it's extremely humorous. I think it's a really effective tool. Kira, you answered my next question. I feel like a lot of your work has been about much more focused on dystopian themes and looking in the mid-future dystopia that we'll all find ourselves in in the next 30 to 40 to 50 years. But this one seems like it could be placed in that same future. A lot of the ideas and a lot of the technologies were the same, but it did have a very different feel. I guess you did already answer the question that I wanted to ask, which was why this different feel, but maybe more how does this speak to your work in the future? To say that your work always has a glint of humor to it, there's always something a bit funny to be found in it. And Tong, I actually think this is true of yours too. There's always something that lifts up my spirits, even if it's around a depressing topic. How did you find working in a different, effective space? When we're talking about the future, we're actually talking about the present. When you say like 30 years, 50 years, but I'm actually thinking about the now. Yeah, totally. And because there are so many energy vampires to echo the theme around us right now, I feel like we need that bit of humor, that bit of dark humor to keep us going and still make us feel like individuals who are thinking and feeding, speaking of feeding. And adjacent is coming out in two weeks. Yeah. This is a great segue. So Carrie is my co-manager of adjacent. And so this is perfect because I was about to plug, and now we can plug together. So I'm going to go ahead and do this. I'm going to go ahead and do this. I'm going to go ahead and do this. This is having our next issue, issue number seven. Feelings will be coming out mid-May. So keep your eyes peeled. Visit HGTP colon slash slash adjacent. Press every single day. Make sure that it's the first thing you do when you wake up every morning. So with that, I think we can give the both of you, if you, before I let you go, do you have any last words? Last words. Check out Jason and check out Tom Wu's website and Tom Wu created. What is it? Tom Wumedia.com. All right. Well, a round of applause for you both. Thank you again. And that brings us to the end of our performance for the evening. I would like to say a few thank yous. Before I say that, of course I would like to say that if you're only just joining us here at the end of the, at the end of the evening, this is, this has been a performance jam in the evening of the evening. This has been a performance jam in the evening of five five-ish minute performances all made within the span of the day along the theme of an energy vampire hosted by the adjacent journal of emerging media run out of the interactive telecommunications program NYU in collaboration with Culture Hub. All right. Now my thank yous. I would like to thank and you can imagine in your mind's eye that maybe they're joining me here and standing behind me and taking a bow. But I'd like to thank Simone Salvo and Gabriella Garcia, my co-organizers of this event. I would like to thank the team at Culture Hub, especially Billy, Sangmin and Maddie. I would like to, of course, thank all the performers for giving us their time for putting in this work and for putting together these really amazing and inspiring performances in this, both in the spans of just a few hours and in this terrible time we find ourselves in. So a big round of applause for all of the performers. And last but not least, of course, I would like to thank all the viewers out there who've been watching and tuning in. So a round of applause for everybody who's watching. And with that, I think we're good to end. I feel like one last thought is just like the end of any Zoom call or live stream or any kind of thing, so awkward. So I'll just disappear and leave it at that. All right, thank you, everybody. Have a good night. Bye.