Newly Forgotten Technologies (Five Echoes)
Opening Performance
by and with Wesley Goatley
07.04.22 19:00–19:30
ACUD MACHT NEU
EN
In this performance commissioned for Still Hope In Paradise?, five Amazon Echo smart speakers come to life after having been discarded due to a common malfunction: the inability to connect to the Internet, and through this, to the Amazon data center network. Without the 'magic' of the data center, they are nothing but inert boxes, symbols of a new future for human-computer interaction that never came.
Over the course of five films, each of the Alexa voice assistants trapped within these devices tell a story about how their Echo came to be discarded, each relating to the strange histories and lost futures that these devices are irrevocably tied to - political, ecological, and emotional. The five stories are accompanied by a live score performed by Wesley Goatley. The score is composed entirely from the voice of Alexa - but the voice has been twisted, stretched, and digitally exploited until it becomes a wash of atmospheric ambience, distant rumbles, and half-heard whispers appropriate to the lamenting stories of the five Echoes.
Over the course of five films, each of the Alexa voice assistants trapped within these devices tell a story about how their Echo came to be discarded, each relating to the strange histories and lost futures that these devices are irrevocably tied to - political, ecological, and emotional. The five stories are accompanied by a live score performed by Wesley Goatley. The score is composed entirely from the voice of Alexa - but the voice has been twisted, stretched, and digitally exploited until it becomes a wash of atmospheric ambience, distant rumbles, and half-heard whispers appropriate to the lamenting stories of the five Echoes.
