Mike and Crystal, 2005
Michael Dale and Bob Giges
Color video/sound, 12 minutes

In the diegesis of this recorded performance, Mike and Crystal are two estranged lovers exploring reconciliation. Crystal, an anthropomorphized digital character, speaks via voice synthesis software; Mike is played by an improvisational actor. Each time the CD case containing Mike and Crystal’s Mix is squeezed, a circuit is completed. This triggers a random call from Crystal’s song lyric database, compiled by capturing the output when key words relating to the theme of regret are passed through searchable lyric databases. It turns out that Crystal is not much of a singer, however—she prefers to speak each song phrase. Following each database call and utterance, the improviser attempts to refocus and justify the emergent narrative. However, a coherent narrative is not so easily assembled. While Crystal’s comments are sometimes surprisingly on the mark, most of the time her interjections are disjointed, if not incomprehensible. Ultimately a third voice is introduced when a member of the audience is spontaneously recruited to “counsel” Mike and Crystal (before they say something  they might really regret!)

This work playfully explores the very human urge to justify the random in romance.
In highlighting the notion of regret, the piece calls attention to the nostalgic desire to recreate lost romance, reflexively exposing the endlessly recycled exploitation of such desire in song lyrics. The presentation of each lyric fragment as dialog—separated from its musical context—invites a new reading of the same old songs, beckoning spectators to decode implicit assumptions about relationships. The work also calls attention to the process of narrative construction, in this case, out of the fragments of a loosely organized database.