Text as Instrument?
PROJECT: Find or devise a computer program to be used on a laptop that can take text and display it in a visualization format that can also be customized in real time. Project this on a screen during performances of musicians. Before the performances, discuss with the musicians ideas that are important to them and type simultaneously the words that arise in one's head in response to the music.

I was pondering, as I always am for my zine, Future Wave, about what is beneath the music that musicians make. It is important to unify all of one's experiences as arts and all of one's arts as experience. It is all a holistic, cyclical process; what affinities the artist has are manifested in the art. An acknowledgement of the ideas can only nuance and accentuate this presence in the music.

I would hope that the projection of the text could be spontaneous and quick to register, yet easy to manage. The computer program would have to have different levels of user skill so that someone familiar with the program coul easily sit down and just worry about the words and not about the imagery (yet let the computer take this aspect over to be sure that the presentation was not dull). This way, during a performance, different idealists could tag each other out and switch off, just as two musicians often will exchange instruments, getting up from the drums to play guitar. There should also be capabilities, however, for the more advanced text artist to decide if the words should flash, pan, or linger, and what flashes of colors and effects can be shown at what times. I would imagine that it would be similar to the visualization plug-in modules that can be downloaded for the Winamp multimedia players...