The Last Performance [dot org]

Judd Morrissey, Mark Jeffery, and Fanny Holmin at the Electronic Literature in Europe conference in Bergen, September, 2008. Videography by Martin Arvebro.

Some of the most elegant and poetic content visualization I’ve seen is in this piece. I particularly like this performance in Bergen because it brings in the music that accompanies the dance from the Goat Island performance that its internal structures are based. If you have an opportunity to catch a live reading I highly recommend it.

Description from the author and programmer of the piece, Judd Morrissey:

The Last Performance [dot org] (2007-) is a constraint-based collaborative writing, archiving and text-visualization project responding to the theme of lastness in relation to architecture, acts of building, a final performance, and the interruption (that becomes the promise) of community.

The visual architecture of The Last Performance [dot org] is based on research into “double buildings,” a phrase used here to describe spaces that have housed multiple historical identities, with a specific concern for the Hagia Sophia and the functions of church, mosque, and museum. The project uses architectural forms as a contextual framework for collaborative authorship. Source texts submitted to the project become raw material for a constantly evolving textual landscape.

The Last Performance [dot org] was initiated in response to the work of the seminal performance collective, Goat Island, and their decision, after 20 years of practice, to create a last performance. The writing project and the final Goat Island performance, The Lastmaker, overlap significantly having evolved in parallel through shared generative constraints.

To read and interact with the piece online click here.