The evolution of chat
Cast your minds back to 1997. Picture a dingy, smoke-filled underground film, video and performance art nightclub called ‘Hydra’, at which artist Mikey Weinkove first performed what his brother Dave would later christen ‘Talkaoke’: a mobile talk-show based on a simple green wooden table shaped like a doughnut, with the host sitting in the hole in the middle on a swivelly chair, holding a microphone and inviting people to sit down around the edge of the table and talk about… whatever they want to talk about.
Partly due to how awkward people feel at these events, when Mikey set up the Talkaoke table at Hydra, there was an incredible response. People could not wait to sit down, slag off or defend the performances, flirt, and just talk to each other. All they needed was an excuse. Talkaoke, rebuilt as a bright orange UFO of chat, soon became a favourite addition to film screenings, exhibition openings, performances and street festivals, from Duckie, Summer Rites and The Electricity Showrooms to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
In 1998, Talkaoke met James Stevens of Backspace and began streaming Talkaoke to the Internet. Product design-whizz Mohammed fabricated the ‘gig-ready’ version 3 of the Talkaoke Table, and Electronic art magician Dr Alexei Blinov added on-board mixers, voice-responsive lighting, speakers and battery power for a totally portable talk-show-in-a-doughnut.
In 2004, Mikey and new Talkaokeist Saul Albert drove on a European Expansion tour to Bulgaria, stopping and doing Talkaoke all along the way. They would stop the van when they reached a new town, unload the table, then find the person in the local bars who always needed to be a Talkaoke host, and stick them into the table and see what happened.
People all over Europe loved Talkaoke, or at least we think so. We had no idea what they were saying! Mikey and Saul realised that Talkaoke could be a tool for people to take, modify, and use in their own languages and cities – and develop in their own directions. So with that in mind, they founded The People Speak, to learn from Talkaoke, and create more ‘tools for the world to take over itself‘ .
In 2006, with a wonderful new team at The People Speak, Talkaoke is becoming a popular format for people-led discussions in every context imaginable. We are busy training the next generation of Talkaoke hosts, and Talkaoke Table version 4 – the first table designed for mass production and distribution, will soon be rolling off the production line.
The future of Talkaoke is bright, with new video annotation and visualisation technologies, and a huge growth predicted in online local media, the dream of “10,000 Talkaoke Tables by the year 2010″ is well on its way to becoming a reality. Imagine a global network of local Talkaokies, brimming with scintillating discussion, brought together online in a constantly updated, searchable conversational archive.
We’re working on it.
