@MIF_Memory

@MIF_Memory is a Twitter Bot that generated random tweets using bits from past and present Manchester International Festival (MIF) programmes. Over the course of the 2019 Manchester International Festival and beyond @MIF_Memory churned out a new tweet every three hours. It generated it’s final tweet on 6th April 2023 when Twitter ended all large scape API usage.

The bot is a response to Rafeal Lozano-Hemmer's MIF19 installation 'Atmospheric Memory' which is inspired by computer pioneer Charles Babbage's theory that voices from the past still linger in the air. The bot reflects on past festivals but it is also a playful critique on the language that MIF uses to describe art works and performances. The bots were written in Tracery, a tool for writing generative grammars developed by Kate Compton via v buckenham’s site Cheap Bots Done Quick.