Turbulence Commission: No Time Machine by Daniel C. Howe and Aya Karpinska [Needs a Java-Enabled Browser] - Quiet time, dead time, free time — call it what you will, there seems to be less and less of it. What do people give up in the race to maximize every second of their waking life? What kinds of activities are replaced by the panicked drive for efficiency? No Time Machine explores these questions by mining the Internet for mentions of the phrase “I don’t have time for” and variations such as “You can’t find the time for” and “We don’t make time for.” Based on a set of procedures they’ve set up, a program analyzes the search results and reconstructs them into a poetic conversation. Interwoven with this “found poetry” generated by the program are sentences that they re-contextualized themselves; a human-computer collaboration that expands the field of creative writing to include networked and programmable media.

No Time Machine is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHIES

Daniel C. Howe is a digital artist and researcher at NYU’s Media Research Lab. His interests include generative systems for artistic practice (specifically for digital literary production) and the social/political aspects of technology design. In addition to a background in music, he has graduate degrees in both computer science and creative writing, and has exhibited and performed his work internationally since 1997. He is currently a visiting professor at Brown University.

Aya Karpinska is an interaction designer and artist working in digital media. She creates interactive experiences through installation art, text, sound, and game design (but not all at the same time). Aya is currently an Electronic Writing Fellow at Brown University, developing children’s stories for mobile devices. She splits her time between Providence and New York City.

Daniel and Aya collaborated previously on a spatial poetry project, open.ended.