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Generator Ebay
by UBERMORGEN.COM

Project description

We will create individual user profiles - based on a large quantity of data from Ebay - and transform these into unique songs.

We scan Ebay sellers and buyers for their rating, sold objects, times and frequency of transactions, product sources and further data and automatically (by using custom made data-retrieving and -mining software) transform this data into a structured text. Based on this text we generate Text-to-Music with a special supercollider-application and the lyrics on top with the same text by speech synthesis. The songs will be part of the Ebay-Generator Web-Site (each user can generate text/songs by entering an Ebay-username).

By doing so we choose a different (a positive, affirmative) approach towards Ebay (in contrast to the critical approaches towards Google and Amazon within the Ekmrz-Trilogy). A reference might be Peter Weibels Song "Sex in der Stadt" (Sex in the City) from 1982 - Hotel Morphila Orchester, where he "raps" (sings) sex-ads from a newspaper.

The project enables us to do Live(real-time)-Performances. The Soundfiles (Supercollider or mp3) can be combined/interfaced with software generating visuals (Quarz Composer or Processing). With this we can do audio-visual Performances (based on Ebay-data/text) in real and virtual galleries and Clubs. For these audio-visual Ebay-performances we plan to collaborate with other visual artists (for example with Lia from Vienna, Marius Watz from Norway and Joshua Davis from New York.

Feasibility:

The core component of the project is the data retrieval (real-time) software and the datamining tool that extracts the relevant data. The texts are then handed over to the text-to-music and speech synthesis application and automatically published on the project-web-site as mp3-files. For the performances/Live-Events either or both Processing and Quarz Composer will be used.

The involved Collaborators (Stefan Nussbaumer and Ericht Thomas) and the Crew (Hans Bernhard, lizvlx, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico) are all experienced in executing a project on this scale (see work samples, projects such as GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself or Amazon Noir and the Generator-Trilogy).

Crew/Collaborators:

Hans Bernhard, Vienna/Austria (Concept, PR, Text, Exhibitions, Administration)
lizvlx, Vienna/Austria (Concept, Design/Web-Design, Marketing, Administration, Finances)
Erich Kachel, Berlin/Germany (code, data retrieving, datamining)
Stefan Nussbaumer, Vienna/Austria (Text-to-Music)

Timeline

May - June 2007, extended concept phase
July 2007, Gfx development, software, speech synthesis, text-to-music
Aug - Sept 2007, Web-Site development, optimization of software
Oct 2007, Release Version 1.0
Nov - Dez 2007, Release Version 1.1, PR
Jan - April 2008, PR post-processing, Documentation

Budget

Curriculum Vitae

UBERMORGEN.COM (Lizvlx/Hans Bernhard) [A/CH/USA, *1999]

UBERMORGEN.COM is an artist duo created in Vienna, Austria, by Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, founder of etoy ( www.etoy.com ). Behind UBERMORGEN.COM we can find one of the most unmatchable identities – controversial and iconoclast – of the contemporary European techno-fine-art avant-garde. Their open circuit of conceptual art, software art, net.art and digital activism (media hacking)  transforms their brand into a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk. The permanent amalgamation of fact and fiction points toward an extremely expanded concept of one’s working materials, that for UBERMORGEN.COM also include (international) rights, democracy and global communication (input-feedback loops). “Ubermorgen” is the German word both for “the day after tomorrow” or “super-tomorrow”. http://www.ubermorgen.com

5 work samples

The Ebay-Generator is the third and final part of the Ekmrz-Trilogy (Software-Art/net.art projects) by UBERMORGEN.COM

And it is an addition to the existing Generator-Trilogy by UBERMORGEN.COM (s. injunction generator, BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR and Psych|OS-Generator)

Ekmrz-Trilogy Project 1.
GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself - http://www.gwei.org

Synopsis: We (UBERMORGEN.COM, ALESSANDRO LUDOVICO, PAOLO CIRIO) generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it! By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.

Ekmrz-Trilogy Project 2.
2. Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime http://www.amazon-noir.com

Synopsis: The Bad Guys (The Amazon Noir Crew: Paolo Cirio, Alessandro Ludovico, Lizvlx, Hans Bernhard, UBERMORGEN.COM) stole copyrighted books from Amazon by using sophisticated robot-perversion-technology coded by supervillain Paolo Cirio. A subliminal media fight and a covert legal dispute escalated into an online showdown with the heist of over 3000 books at the center of the story. Lizvlx from UBERMORGEN.COM had daily shoot outs with the global massmedia, Cirio continuously pushed the boundaries of copyright (books are just pixels on a screen or just ink on paper), Ludovico and Bernhard resisted kickback-bribes from powerful Amazon.com until they finally gave in and sold the technology for an undisclosed sum to Amazon. Betrayal, blasphemy and pessimism finally split the gang of bad guys. The good guys (Amazon.com) won the showdown and drove off into the blistering sun with the beautiful femme fatale, the seductive and erotic massmedia.

Generator 1.
The Injunction Generator, 2001 - http://www.ipnic.org

Synopsis: is there any web-site you wanna take off the web using a highly subversive method? on our server, you auto-generate an "INJUNCTION" [.pdf/.rtf format], a standard court-order, claiming the target-website to operate on an illegal basis. this document will then be sent to the appropriate dns-registrar [dns=domain name service], to the owner of the web-site and to some journalists and lawyers for legal and public processing. all you have to do is to simply fill out a form and send it off, it will take you not more than 15 minutes. if the web-site is taken down we will inform you via email.

Generator 2.
The BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR, 2005 - http://www.ipnic.org/BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR

Synopsis: The "BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR" is an online engine that generates individual bank statements. If you need a positive or negative bank statement, generate it yourself! In doing so, the user is free to determine the amount and type of deposits and credits as well as the degree of design abstraction of the resulting document, an [F]original that manifests itself as an array of pixels on the monitor screen.

Generator 3.
The Psych|OS-Generator, 2006 - http://www.ipnic.org/psychos

Synopsis: The Psych|OS Generator generates diagnoses and creates medical prescriptions. The user can either answer a questionnaire or select a medical condition from the standardized WHO and U.S.A. list of mental illnesses (ICD-10 & DSM IV). The machine then generates a diagnosis and a "prints" a prescription with the list of psychotropic drugs to cure the disease.

Thanks for your support!
Hans, Lizvlx, Alessandro, Paolo, Stefan, Erich