NEUE BÖHMISCHE DÖRFER
Goethe Institut Prag / Galerie Futura Prag

Installation/Performance: with Stepanka Simlova, laptop (online), two actors, data beamer 
A presentation in collaboration with the Futura Gallery, Prague. The basic idea behind the media performance was the translation of texts by contemporary German and Czech authors with the help of an online translation program. The performance began with a "sound carpet" of audio data that played the chosen sentences as text-to-speech data. Several of the texts were subsequently translated online and projected on the computer screen for the audience to follow. By a copy/paste method, the texts were back-translated several times so that errors increased exponentially. A Czech or a German actor read the texts (original – translation – back-translation) like a dialogue in their respective mother tongues. They "interpreted" the texts by acting them out according to the "transformation of their content through the translation". Furthermore, several fragments were entered online into the text-to-speech program (which "outreads" written texts). Since a Czech version of text-to-speech does not exist, the Czech texts were entered in German pronunciation, thus subverting the program. Stepanka Simlova dictated the Czech sentences to Achim Mohné phonetically, so that though the pronunciation was understandable, it was heard with a German accent. The sound documents of the computer-read verses were then played live. The Czech writer Jara Rudis with his group Collaps improvised translations of his own poems, which were read aloud from the projection.

PLACE(S) OF EXHIBITION:
- Goethe Institut Prag 2004 www.goethe.de/Prag

A COLLABORATION WITH:
- Galerie Futura Prague www.futuraprojects.cz