I had a bit of a creative breakthrough with the second performance today and wanted to capture that progress in this post…

I was having trouble deciding on the story of this interactive, audience member second performance. I knew I wanted the devices I will be puppeteering to pressure the audience into doing certain tasks that will make them look a certain way. Today, I realized that I want to dress my two amazon echoes up as a little devil and a little angel (as per the demon angel sitting on your shoulder trope) and have them convince the audience member to look like a perfect person or a terrible person with their actions. For example, this could be picking up the clothes scattered around the set or crumpling up the folded clothes on the other side of the set. I imagine the set divided in half, with the left half looking like a total mess and inhabited by the devil-echo and the right half nice and tidy inhabited the angel-echo. I want the lights to also divide the space, crimson red vs light blue. Depending on which side the audience member chooses, the space will shift over the a certain aesthetic, for example red and messy in the case of the devil.

My original idea was to voice both of the echoes myself, but I am unsure if it would be better to use two voice actors to avoid confusion. Ideally the separate sound outputs from each of the echoes will help with that. In terms of the things coming out of their mouths, I want them to both be belligerent, to the tune of “It doesn’t matter what the fuck you actually do, just what you look like you are doing.” Additionally, I want them to be irritated if the audience member plays the middle. The philosophy of these devices is that it is better to have a certain meaning than no meaning at all. I could hear them saying: “Jesus Christ! Pick a damn lane, wouldya?” I want their requests to start out as relatively trivial and move up to much more intense asks. I am not sure if I want all of the requests to be centered around other connected devices (ex “Turn on the smart toothbrush vs. turn on the smart sex toy.”) or if they can also involve doing actions in front of a camera. Of course, I want these conceptions of good and bad to be heavily biased. The idea is that each of the devices is starved for “the sweet release of targeted advertising” and will stop at nothing to get a sellable meaning out of this person the user.

It will take a fair amount of user testing and practice. I hope to build a prototype for this out by this Thursday!