THE JESTER OF TONGA

PS122

Nov 13-23
Wed-Sat 8pm
Sun 6:30pm
$20, $15, $10

Silovsky and his robot Stanley tell the very true and complex story
of Jesse Bogdonoff, the sensational modern-day Court Jester to the
Tongan Royal Court. Twenty suitcases packed full with island lore spill
their secrets, scandals and adventures onto the stage.

Joe is a quintessential brilliant and quirky mad scientist type; who is constantly derailed from his story telling by the technology and his own exuberant interest in absolutely everything.  But the digressions are the fabulously interesting, and he's got Stanley the robot to keep him on track and tell you all about the woes cased by the last big financial bump on Wall Street.

I imaging there will be a few pore sole will be run out of town in the dead of night due to this financial crisis.  But I very much doubt they'll have as odd a story as Mr. Bogdonoff or as entertaining a chronicler as Mr. Silovsky.

One discussion I often find myself getting into with people when I start talking about robotic actors is what exactly do you mean by robot. Does it just have to look like a robot, (and what is that) or does it have to meet some semantic
or technical definition of robot.

I really don't have an answer accept how I feel about it, which is that a robot is a mechanical object that take a series of tasks without direct human intervention.

I feel there are still problems with that definition, but it works for me, although I keep ending up in arguments about weather my coffee pot and washing machine are robots.
So here I have started exploring the idea as a mind map, which unfortunately does not seem to fit very well int he blog.

ReSiDeNt @ LEMUR: New Works, New Instruments, New Artists
PERFORMANCE: Oct 9nd 8PM $5

ReSiDeNt Submissions

Deadlines are rolling, allowing artists to submit applications to be

considered for future residencies throughout the year.

Stanley's sister was born on August 14th, Tallulah May.  I will upload some pics of her as well as some refrence photos for Stan's vehicle...

Cheers,

Joe

So here is some update on Stanley- Last fall Jim gave me a little tutorial on Pro tools, and I have worked with it in my studio, so I can now record new tracks for Stanley as needed.  I used it to have Stanley sing Happy Birthday for a friend.  Stanley rode on his bike through a restaurant to the table and sang the song..Unfortunately I was hoping that it would also allow me to record Stanley's movements separately, but that is not possible as is.

I recently have been concentrating on making him more independent. I bought an FM transmitter, so that I could control Stanley from a distance with the ipod.  But FM transmission does not keep the signal from the L/R channels completely separate, and the loud servo motor control track sound bleeds over Stanley's voice.  So I decided to split the signal at the Ipod.  I had a broken set of wireless headphones- I gutted it and repackaged the receiver into a small box. I made a custom Y-cable that feeds out of the ipod and splits the signal to the FM transmitter (voice), and the wireless transmitter (servo control).  SO now Stanley could be across the room with a radio in his belly and I could play Ipod tracks without touching him.  

 
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Frequency Hopping

BENEFIT PERFORMANCE: June 7th 2008 8PM
$25-$100

9:30pm Antheil's Legacy concert.

10.30pm+ Afterparty with Joshua Fried's RADIO WONDERLAND

3LD Art & Technology Center.
80 Greenwich Street at Rector

DEADLINE: 1 May

ArtBots : 2008 Call for Works

I think I'm going to miss it once again.