Hackers On Planet Earth

More Computational Techniques for Making Karaoke Harder

Jamie Brew, Jenn Schiffer

Robot karaoke returns to HOPE! Jamie and Jenn run a live comedy show where performers sing all-new words to classic tunes, generated in real time. Their songwriting system searches an eclectic catalog for phrases that match the original rhyme and meter of each line, creating lyrics that have never been sung before and will never be sung again. Think Quora questions to the tune of “Dancing Queen” or HOPE presentation titles to the tune of “The Rainbow Connection.” This talk covers how they source the data, phonetically annotate the songs, run the show, and develop their core software: the Weird Algorithm.

Friday 2100 Crystal Ballroom

Jamie Brew

Jamie Brew is a karaoke safety researcher based in Brooklyn. He writes for The Onion , was the head writer of ClickHole and cofounded Botnik, an art tech group devoted to absurdly small language models. He co-hosts Robot Karaoke at Wonderville every other month with Jenn Schiffer and at random elsewhere.

Jenn Schiffer

Jenn Schiffer is an artist, web developer, and community expert who has spoken across the globe about JavaScript, ethics, and art. Formerly the director of community at Glitch/Fastly, she is on a corporate hiatus to make karaoke worse with Jamie Brew, and candles cooler through her company Bugs Rock.