NoSpace Zoom Discussion

Venue: Online, Cork
Town: Cork
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm

Web: eventbrite.ie/e/no-space-book-presentation-and-meeting-with-the-authors-tickets-171448776907
Email: t.madajczak@gmail.com
Booking Required: Yes

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Info

An online discussion, reflection and meeting with Tomasz Madajczak and Micheál O’Connel artists who collaborated in creation of the “NoSpace” automated transcription book. The event will involve reflections from the autors and will allow for questions to be answered after the presentation.

During the 2020 pandemic lockdown period, Co. Cork, Ireland based artist Tomasz Madajczak began
collaborating, by videocall, with other practitioners he had approached in the year before. Emerging
from exchanges with Micheál O’Connell (a.k.a. Mocksim) was the idea of ‘NoSpace’. As restrictions
relaxed temporarily in August of that year, Tomasz entered Uillinn, The West Cork Arts Centre to use
a studio space offered to him there. The concept, discussed remotely with Micheál (still unable to
travel due to Covid) was to subtract from the space, rather than ‘making’ anything. Several works
resulted from this attempt to empty an already empty studio.
They became interested in the auto-transcription records of their daily one-hour online
conversations. These words, generated by mysterious artificial intelligence, appeared a few hours
afterwards as a record of each call. Even though the ambition had been to produce nothing, the
algorithmic writing was something. Due to minor technical problems, varying bandwidth and issues
with mics for example, but also because AI still has problems dealing with the variety of colloquial
terms, accents, specific ways of communicating and especially irony, the transcripts, though
impressive, are also puzzling and amusing in places.
Micheál compiled the unedited conversations each day; Tomasz had them printed, and then pasted
the sheets in a grid pattern on the walls, crucially outside of, the studio. This book is another record
of those auto-transcribed discussions.
Note: this is a limited edition of 500, and pricing is determined by algorithm based on the low-cost
airline seat booking systems. In other words, the earlier copies will sell at a lower price. Contact the
authors for more details