01TRAMOYA
the machinery of a stage
One gig, decided before it starts.
A room gives you its attention once. If I am crouched over a laptop hunting for the next song, I have spent it on the wrong thing. Tramoya is where the gig gets settled beforehand: the songs, the order, the language on the wall, a film behind some of them. By the time I am standing up there, nothing is left to decide, and I can just be in the room. Like the rigging above the lights and the trap doors below the boards, it works hardest when nobody sees it.
Orchestrates BOMBISTA, MURALISTA and PREGONERO.
TESTED IN THE STUDIOmacOSMIT
02BOMBISTA
the one who sets the pace
Works out when each line arrives, and says which ones it doubts.
A line that lands late is a joke arriving after the laugh. A few of those and the room stops looking at the wall. Other tools hand you forty timings with no opinion about any of them, so you check all forty. Bombista points at the three it doubts. Nothing leaves your own machine.
AT THE DESKPythonMIT
03MURALISTA
the one who paints the wall
Decides where the words land, before anyone is in the room.
Words nobody can read are words nobody reads. Every room argues about this: a doorway in the only good wall, a screen hung too high, a window still bright at nine. Muralista settles the argument before I am in the room, deciding which surfaces the words can use and how large. A song gets a place, not a rectangle and a hope.
TESTED IN THE STUDIOBrowserMIT
04PREGONERO
the town crier
The words reach the back of the room, in the language the room speaks.
This is the one that works while I am singing. Pregonero puts each line on the wall as the line arrives, in the language the room speaks, and then gets out of the way. A pedal drives it, or the song's own clock, or the film when there is one. The film is the one I care most about: something I animated carrying something I wrote, the line riding on top, and a room reading it without anyone stopping to explain.
IN USE · BOMFESTIVAL · PC HOEGAARDEN · DE KOERMIT
THE AGREEMENT
what lets them come apart
Three plain files: the gig, the room, and each song.
Four separate programs can only do one job if they agree on something. They agree on three plain text files: one for the gig, one for the room, one for each song. Muralista writes the room, Bombista puts the words in time, Tramoya creates the gig, and Pregonero reads all three on stage. Open any of them in a text editor and read it yourself; nothing here holds your work hostage. Writing the formats down is what let the tools come apart and still work together.
