Some time ago I started thinking about putting some kind of tribute (I suppose you’d call it that!) to the Mashed Libraries Middlemash event held at the end of last year. I wanted to do something that used the tweet stream around the event, but tweaked the information in a way that referred to the original event, but not necessarily in an obvious way. So I put an audio visual thing together. It’s a bit “Hmm! I stroke my chin and nod sagely while watching it!”, but I wanted to do something different. 
What did I do?
- Identified the top 11 tweeters/presenters at the event. (the 11th was so close to the 10th that it seemed unfair to leave them out!)
- Fed their individual tweet stream into Tagxedo, using their Twitter photo as the Tagxedo image outline.
- Added the image that had been generated in Tagxedo to Audiopaint to create some digital noise.
- Visually scanned each image for the most dominant words and typed them into ‘Let Them Sing It For You‘. This software creates vocals from the words you’ve entered by using samples from existing songs.
- Created a short video clip for each person using the images and audio that had been generated from their tweets.
- Mixed all the videos together.
It is a bit odd, but it was fun to do – it gives the whole event a mad cyber-info twist, with images of the people built from the words they tweeted! I think most of them turned out well, but my personal favourite is probably Paul Stainthorp’s (with Middlemash plastered across his eyes like the robot in “The Day The Earth Stood Still“). It’s also fun trying to identify which songs are used in the vocals.
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