Texting with Tanaka

The texting remix is difficult to write about, since we, the "performers" were in a separate room, apart from the actual visual result of our actions. From others, though, I heard that the texts were captivating and from reading the result typed out, it seems to have resulted in what we hoped for-a random, disembodied form of poetry that makes some strange sense. Each of our characters worked in cohort, and at times uncannily together, to make flowing text that sometimes made sense, as though we planned who would write what when, and in what order. The chance exchange that turned into something sensical and even meaningful, was what we tried to achieve--each of our stolen characters absorbed in their own separate dialogues, that, when put together, made one larger one with new meaning.

I hoped that this texting performance would touch on new methods of communication in our society, and how the ever-increasing habit and language of texts is affecting our communications. I think it did succeed in commenting about this, on two levels. First, the texts we sent made up a disjunctured way of writing and speaking that did, at times make sense. Secondly, we, as the performers, were in a separate room sending the texts in real time. This meant that the conversation extended beyond our intimate space, into the other room entirely, where other people were privy to our intimate "conversations." Further, the fact that it was a live stream added another important element to the performance, as we were writing these in real time, as though real communicating were being interrupted and broadcast, making what should be intimate dialog amongst two people, blatantly public.

The texts were all appropriated from other sources, each of us developing a persona of our characters through texting. My character was a teenage cell-phone novelist named Tanaka. It was particularly interesting to see how her texts worked in conjunction with Tiger's. Because mine were short and open to interpretations, they softened his, while at the same time embodying perverted undertones of his texts, as though in dialog with them.