Here’s the MemeFactory Kitten Camp Presentation PDF!

This one is a single projector job and we kept pretty close to our ten minute time slot, but there’s some good stuff and ideas in there. This is the first time we talk about the altruism angle we’re hoping to work into the forthcoming MemeFactory Book.

This PDF and the content within is licensed CC-BY, so have fun!

On the way back from a trip to Brazil as goodwill American Memebassadors to Social Media Week São Paulo, we got to talking (the plane ride and customs line were really long). More than a year ago, a friend looked at us after a MemeFactory performance and said “you guys should write a book.” We all laughed. When a stranger said the same thing two months ago, we stroked our collective beard in deep consideration…

After some careful planning and more self-publishing research than we ever thought we’d do, we’ve decided we’re ready to embark on this adventure. So we’ve started some drafts, put together an outline and are funding the whole thing on Kickstarter.

We’ve spent the last two years developing ideas, theories and philosophies about internet culture and everything surrounding it.

We’re all three of us very opinionated and have a lot to say on the matter, which is not surprising seeing as how we’ve performed the show more than a dozen times now and it’s been different every time. We’re constantly rewriting, rethinking, re- (and over-) analyzing.

The problem is that while a fast-paced performative lecture is great for showing funny pictures, it’s not exactly suited for presenting the minutiae of some of these ideas we’ve developed and becomes really enamored with over the last two years. So we’d been searching for another outlet. Change the MemeFactory format? Naw. Write research papers for scholarly journals? Those guys don’t like jokes as much as we do. Rent out billboard space? Seems flashy.

So by the end of August, we hope to have a book. Like a real book, made of paper. We’re gonna sell it at our shows and maybe other places if people really seem to like it. But there will also be a free PDF on this website. And everything – the words, images, design, everything – is going to be licensed CC-BY. Because that’s how we roll.

Once it’s published, we’re also going to open up our MemeFactory Research Database, a little vault of media and ideas we’re using to put the book together and to store all the media for every MemeFactory show past and future.

There’s a ton more info – including the outline of the book – at our Kickstarter Project Page. We’ll hope you take a look, and we’ll double-extra-super-hope you’ll support our cause.

When we said we were going to take 2010 as a development year, we didn’t really plan on going as far into hiding as we did (well…”hiding” considering this was the busiest year for yet MemeFactory). Regardless, we’ve spent a good part of the last year putting together plans for 2011 and 2012, which will – funding and support pending – come to fruition starting in the spring. Nothing huge, no full productions in the works, but hopefully some sketches and works-in-progress of upcoming and in-development shows.

Pressure – and by extension Probability and Proximity – got tabled for 2010 but are now back at the drawing board. We’re hoping to get some funding to develop software which simulates Brownian motion for both the music and visuals of Proximity. The same goes for Probability, except we’re continuing to work with Google Maps and Sketchup in a way which has never – as far as we know – been done in performance yet.

The new big ticket item for this year is Relativity, a performance which aims to take the 1:1 ratio of spoken-words:visuals we developed in Forwards\Backwards to the next level. We’re still sussing out many of the big details of the show mechanic, but we’re working on a fast-paced performance system which is going to be able to keep up with the performer (not the other way around like in Fwds/Bkwds). We’re looking at Relativity to be our first multi-channel video piece besides MemeFactory and probably our first ever to use a video system which is not based in Keynote.

The sketch above details a small system which allows the performer to cue his or her own slides, since they would be best as indicating where in the text they are (think one button press and therefore one slide per word/syllable). The opposite page sketches out a system which would create a natural doppler effect by allowing the reinforcement in the room to be lowered and spun at a high speed. This is definitely an effect of my having worked on SIREN, and is related to the idea of Relative position effecting the perception of a physical phenomena.

As it stands right now, Relativity is still based almost entirely on the text of Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity. That may or may not be augmented by other bits of text- original or otherwise – but is at this point unlikely to change. Looking forward to developing both the video and visual control system for this one in the coming months. Look for updates as they happen!

It was about how much I dislike ASCAP. It was a while ago.

OMG WE MADE A PDF OF MEMEFACTORY BRASIL.

So we’ve been talking for forever about doing this, and it worked out that this most recent MemeFactory was the first in a while that was at a good cross-section of appropriate for PDF-ification and easy enough to make happen. So here it is. It ain’t perfect, but it’ll get the job done for all you people who want to quote us… why you’d want to do that in the first place… well… that’s your deal I guess.

We may or may not PDF our past shows, but will more than likely try to PDF all our future shows. So look forward to more of this extra-wide document goodness. And incase you’re curious, this shiz is:

You might not know it from reading this website – WHOOPS, SORRY EVERYBODY NOTHING TO SEE HERE APPARENTLY – but WWKSF went to Brasil at the beginning of the month with MemeFactory. Social Media Week Sao Paulo was kind enough to invite us to keynote the second evening of talks and it was a blast!

The folks over at The Conflux Festival asked us some questions about our work: developments after last years Conflux performance, what we’ve been up to recently and our thoughts on the ever-changing technology landscape.