William Shakespeare Plays

IDEA

(01/23)

All of Shakespeare's plays are abstracted via a set of rules inherent in the work. The spoken text is abstracted in each case. The text used for abstraction is that of one person (or a chorus) speaking in the play before another person speaks, the scene ends, or a scene instruction interrupts the spoken text.

In the set of rules, the abstractions refer to the letters of the name William Shakespeare and to the letters of the work and the speaker.

The individual abstractions of the sentences/paragraphs/monologues are combined into a graphic work which is printed.

The unabstracted, but rule-based coloured texts are combined into a film that enables one to read the entire individual work on viewing.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

TASKS

(01/23)

• Definition of the set of rules
• Selection of the text source
• Definition of the size of the abstraction
• Order of editing

CONCEPT

(02/23)

For the artwork, all of William Shakespeare's plays are abstracted in the order in which they were written1 .

Each play becomes a graphic work.

Each graphic work consists of a rule-based number of individual panels formed from the text of the play. Each individual spoken part of a performer is abstracted until the next speaker speaks. Act and scene numberings and instructions are assigned to the following speaker block, trailing scene instructions are assigned to the preceding speaker block.

The text including the scene instructions, act and scene numbers and role names is abstracted.

Each panel consists of a coloured background and the text in the foreground.

Each panel consists of a coloured background and the text in the foreground.

Each work has one of the basic colours of the RGB colour space defined as background, which results from a relation of the letters of the work title and the letters of the name "William Shakespeare". The brightness of this is adjusted by the relation of the evaluated spoken text block, based on rules.

The foreground colour is rule-based and results from the spoken text in its relation to the name of the play.

The abstraction is done by "painting over" the entire text of the panel, in the dimensions of the text, including the non-spoken components of the text (speaker's name, scene instructions, numbering). Each text block ends with the interrupted spoken text.

At the same time, the text also defines the alignment of the text.

The size of the graphic representation is determined by the number of panels prescribed by the text. The size of the individual works varies.

RULEBOOK

(01/23)

Order

Shakespeare's stage plays are edited in the order according to the chronology by E.K. Chambers2 bearbeitet:

• Henry VI, Part 2 (1590–1591)
• Henry VI, Part 3 (1590–1591)
• Henry VI, Part 1 (1591–1592)
• Richard III (1592–1593)
• The Comedy of Errors (1592–1593)
• Titus Andronicus (1593–1594)
• The Taming of the Shrew (1593–1594)
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594–1595)
• Love's Labour's Lost (1594–1595)
• Romeo and Juliet (1594–1595)
• Richard II (1595–1596)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595–1596)
• King John (1596–1597)
• The Merchant of Venice (1596–1597)
• Henry IV, Part 1 (1597–1598)
• Henry IV, Part 2 (1597–1598)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1598–1599)
• Henry V (1598–1599)
• Julius Caesar (1599–1600)
• As You Like It (1599–1600)
• Twelfth Night (1599–1600)
• Hamlet (1600–1601)
• The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600–1601)
• Troilus and Cressida (1601–1602)
• All's Well That Ends Well (1602–1603)
• Measure for Measure (1604–1605)
• Othello (1604–1605)
• King Lear (1605–1606)
• Macbeth (1605–1606)
• Antony and Cleopatra (1606–1607)
• Coriolanus (1607–1608)
• Timon of Athens (1607–1608)
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1608–1609)
• Cymbeline (1609–1610)
• The Winter's Tale (1610–1611)
• The Tempest (1611–1612)
• Henry VIII (1612–1613)
• The Two Noble Kinsmen (1612–1613)

 

Work

A work is created for each individual Shakespeare stage play. Each work consists of the abstractions of the spoken texts of the work (see text). Each block of text is abstracted in a tile measuring 10 x 10 cm.

The work is square. The size of the work is defined by the number of tiles. The number of tiles results from the number of text blocks. To do this, the root of the sum of the text blocks is formed and rounded up. This gives the edge length of the work.

Rounding up results in a number of tiles that do not contain any abstracted text. These are distributed evenly over the work. The colour of the tile corresponds to the background defined for the base colour of the work.

The tiles are placed flush with each other. The order corresponds to the writing direction from top left to bottom right.

The production can take place in different edge lengths of the individual tiles (3, 5, 10 cm).

Tiles

For the work, the entire text of each play is divided and abstracted into individual colour tiles.

Text

Shakespeare's 38 plays are generally written and set in verse.

For each colour field the part of the text is evaluated that is to be assigned to a speaker of the play before another speaker speaks.

Act numbering, scene numbering and scene directions for the appearance of actors and scenery are assigned to the following speaker. Scene instructions that are to be assigned to the previously spoken text, such as the departure of actors, are assigned to the previous speaker.

For the graphic abstraction, only the spoken text of a speaker is evaluated, without scene instructions.

A maximum of 34 lines can be displayed on one tile of the graphic work.

If the uninterrupted text, including stage directions and blank lines, contains more than 34 lines, the text is distributed over several tiles.

The evaluations for the graphic abstraction are created for the entire text block in each case (with the exception of the alignment).

A blank line has the same height as a text line.

Source

Source for the texts is the website shakespeare.mit.edu

Font

The text is set in the Georgia font in a font size of 6.95 pt.

Colours

The RGB colour space

The RGB colour space3 has six number-based primary colours.

 

 

Background colour

Basecolour

For each of Shakespeare's plays, one of the six defined primary colours is assigned as a basis.

For this purpose, it was evaluated how often the letters occurring in the name "William Shakespeare" (w, i, l, a, m, s, h, k, e, p, r) occur in the titles of the plays (291 occurrences).

The occurring letters were distributed for the evaluation to the colour values R-G-B in such a way that on average three letters occur per work. The default is:

• R: i, l, h
• G: w, a, m, s, p
• B: k, e, r

The distribution results in an average occurrence of the letter group per colour value of 2.5 per piece.

The values which have the highest value in the evaluation group of the play receive the colour value 255, if two have the same value, both receive the value 255.

 

Brightness/Colour adjustment

In the RGB colour space, an additive colour model4 where white is formed from the values 255-255-255.

For the colour adjustment of the backgrounds, the values for R-G-B are evaluated in relation to the evaluated text block and the name "William Shakespeare".

The set of rules differentiates between basic colours with one predefined colour value of 255 (red-green-blue) and those with two predefined colour values of 255 (yellow-cyan-magenta).

red-green-blue

The value preset at 255 is reduced by the letter from the name of William Shakespeare (i.e. the letter sequence w-i-l-a-m-s-h-k-e-p-r) that occurs in the fourth position in the text block examined5
. If the examination for the position does not lead to a valid result (there are less than four letters from William Shakespeare in the text, the letter in the next smaller position is examined (here the third occurrence, if no letter occurs, the value remains 255).

The values preset with 0 (green and blue in the example) are increased individually (from left to right) according to the occurrence of the letters of the first name (w, i, l, a, m) or the last name (s, h, a, k, e, p, r). Here, the adjustment begins with the value that occurs in the second place.

yellow-cyan-magenta

The values preset with 255 are each reduced from left to right by the value of the first occurrence of a letter from the first name (w, i, l, a, m) or the surname (s, h, a, k, e, p, r).

The value preset with 0 is increased by the value of the fourth occurring value from the name William Shakespeare.

Font colour

The colour of the font is determined from the relationship of the work title and the spoken text of the evaluated text block.

For this purpose, it is determined which letter of the work title occurs first in the spoken text. This letter is the value for the colour value R, the following two letters in the text (also in case of repeated occurrence) the values for G and B.

The values form the value for the colour value of the text unchanged.

Text alignment

There are two variables for the alignment of the text in each tile. The horizontal alignment of the font (left-aligned, centre-aligned, right-aligned) and the vertical alignment of the text block in the tile (top, centre, bottom).

For this, the first occurrence of the initial letter of the direction specification for the respective variable is examined. The smallest value defines the alignment. For the horizontal alignment, the letters m, l, r are evaluated, for the vertical o, u, m.

It is evaluated from left to right, in case of a tie, the first occurrence wins.

Abstraction

For abstraction, each line of text is covered at its position in its width by a bar in the defined font colour of the tile, so that the font is no longer visible.

Examples:

 

REALISATION

(started 02/23)

Henry VI Part II

Rulebook

Colour

The applied background colour for Henry VI Part II is 255-0-0 red.

Tiles

Henry VI Part II contains, according to the general rulebook, 796 text blocks (790 speaker based and 6 blocks created by division because the text contains more than 34 lines.

The number of tiles of the work is determined (due to the defined quadratic work) by the root of the text blocks rounded up to an integer. This results in 29 x 29 = 841 tiles. The resulting 45 tiles not occupied by text are created with the basic colour of the work 255-0-0 and inserted evenly at every 18th position from the 18th tile onwards.
The tiles are aligned in the following distribution:

• centre-centre 10%
• centre-left 8%
• centre-right 9%
• top-centre 18%
• top-left 10%
• top-right 7%
• bottom-middle 12%
• bottom-left 11%
• bottom-right 14

 

Realisation

(03/23)

Henry VI Part 2 (06/23)

Henry VI Part 3 (in revision)

Henry VI Part 1 (in progress)

 

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