The Twittering Machine

This paper describes the development of The Twittering Machine (2021) for HoloLens 2 and prepared piano, which features a three-dimensional (3D) performance score holographically projected on the surface of the piano keyboard. The score presents a real-time visualization of Twitter tweets scraped during the performance and generated through the application of various Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Various technical aspects of the work are discussed including the NLP processes, network architecture facilitating communication with the HoloLens 2, and techniques through which the holographic score is accurately mapped to the surface of the piano keyboard. The paper describes the work's aesthetic focus and details how mapping process from language to musical notation provides structural form.