Puppet Chorus

Right after we canceled classes, Puppet Chorus started out with an attempt to make a Collective Play experience work in a Zoom context. I remember video-chatting with Christina, Emily, and Vibert from the ITP floor before the total lockdown went into effect. The project was inspired by the idea of a spontaneous Greek tragic chorus.

Puppet Chorus allows every participant to sign into the server and add a brief story about their life according to a prompt that suggests the past, present, or future. A response to one of each of the prompts is randomly selected, and the response is broken up into individual words, which are assigned at random to participants. Participants say the word presented to them when cued, and then hit the space bar to advance the queue.

After a few hiccups it worked quite well. Moving forward I want to try doubling up voices, repeating words and phrases, and communicating more contextual information about the prompts and spaces between stories.