Reading Kimberly

Total run time: 9:56
HD video, stereo, color
2020

Reading Kimberly is a ten-minute collaborative performance between myself and my favorite text-to-speech bot also named Kimberly. The piece engages with questions of language in digital platforms and the ways we communicate with one another be it human-to-human, human-to-machine, or machine-to-machine. Throughout the piece, Kimberly and I reciprocally teach one another about language. While I live edit my own work within her platform, guiding her intonation and affect, she begins to include her own pieces of “life advice,” helping me craft texts to friends, Tinder dates, and co-workers. She gradually begins to include her own lingo, prompting me to think about the ways we connect with one another digitally digital by putting to words the new communication methods available to us. In light of Apple’s recent iMessage-reaction option, Kimberly says: “just thumbs up the lucky you and heart the last message.” I couldn’t agree more.

Performed at the 2020 Processing Community Day NYC.