ACTV is a Live-TV News-Injection system that broadcasts a live television news program with custom live-generated RSS news feed overlays from the internet. The media art installation, created by Michael Markert, is presented in German, English, and Czech languages, but the software itself is language-independent. The generated news feeds use actual news from online sources and undergo alterations, with statistical and randomized word- or character-reordering techniques implemented using a Markov-Chain algorithm. Consequently, the word »Breaking News« acquires a completely different connotation. Moreover, when combined with the live TV footage and the ever-changing content, a new meaning is continually created for the viewer.
In the background of ACTV is running a live TV news station. ACTV adds customized station logo; date/time, and a transparent scrolling marquee text have been added as a transparent overlay. The scrolling banner displays the latest world news in an altered way: Latest RSS newsfeeds from the internet are processed by a Markov Chain Text Generator. This generator analyzes the original source text based on a statistical distribution of words and generates new sentences. The result is a mix of grammatically correct and sometimes nonsensical sentences, but often with deeper meanings. Since the sense of these perceived sentences is interpreted by the reader, some of the results provide profound insights.
On display at re·turn – 350 Year Academy of Fine Arts Nürnberg
The work will be showcased in the exhibition »re·turn« at Auf AEG in Nuremberg. The exhibition features contemporary artists and alumni of the Academy of Fine Arts, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg, which is celebrating its 350th anniversary.
Marquee Texts and Broken News
ACTV Breaking News presents a continuous stream of news throughout its broadcast. It creates a dynamic and ever-evolving event, forming connections with the images viewers see. Sometimes, the visual footage of the TV program extends or changes, reflecting the ever-changing nature of the news. The name »Breaking News« signifies the latest news available, while also hinting at the idea that »breaking« can also mean »broken« news. In a sense, the injected news are indeed broken.
And there’s the relationship between images and text: do we read those marquee texts? Do we connect them with the images? There’s always the notion of urgency that can’t be easily escaped. Scrolling texts demand our attention; their movement must be noticed. (Noticing movement has been proven to be quite important, which is why evolution demands that we notice moving things.)
»But at the same time, moving texts provide a distraction from the images and videos we see, adding a different layer of reality.« Michael Markert
They are presented at a different pace: texts are literally faster than images. They provide the most recent information that has been processed much faster than any image would find its way through, despite very fast satellite transmissions. The text-feed moves without pause; it’s quick and sometimes even too quick to follow. It requires a noticeable amount of attention to be read and understood properly, and it becomes increasingly complicated the longer the sentences are. How do we follow a sentence whose beginning is off-screen for a while and thus out of reach? And still, sometimes it’s disappointing because even if a scrolling text appears to be the latest information, it’s just a replay of the information broadcasted just a couple of minutes ago.
Perception of News
The constant exposure to mass media and world news raises questions about its impact on our perception of the world. The incessant news coverage in printed and online media, as well as on public screens like airports, hotels, cafés, and bars, is constantly reshaping our reality. While it can be both frightening and dulling, alarming and numbing, addictive and sedating, the predominant negative news often influences our private views of the world and, in turn, affects global markets, personal mood, and political elections.
About the Technology
Michael explains that the software is programmed using Quartz Composer and incorporates some of my previously created Objective-C Plugins for this OpenGL visual programming environment from Apple. It serves as a transparent overlay that is projected over the live TV image. »Additionally, I developed a customized Objective-C application to simplify the setup of the presentation in the gallery space.«
The RSS-Sources can be selected freely and the whole program is language independent. The ACMarkov generator is deconstructing the real text and creating random sentences with a nearly intact grammatical syntax but with scrambled content. The news feeds may spoken by a synthesized computer voice. There are high quality computer voices available for many languages.
Exhibitions
- 2012: re·turn: 350 Jahre AdBK Nürnberg, Auf AEG, 16.05. – 01.07.2012
- 2011: ENTER5 | Datapolis, Media Arts Biennale Praha, Czech Repulic, 14. – 17.04.2011
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