The Markov Chain Gang
Download the script for the pilot episode
chain gang theory:
The Markov Chain Gang are t.v. characters trapped behind the show’s wall of fiction, fighting to escape through ruptures in the script’s disjointed writing. Language is being eaten by the myriad stochastic computer processes constantly at work in our culture-system. Television viewers have matured or evolved into cybernetic image consumers capable of digesting smaller and smaller bits of video until content becomes irrelevant. Television sets are no longer windows to another world, but feedback mechanisms integrated into our identity and physiology. The Markov Chain Gang craves the luxury of the observer/viewer context. They ask: “How is it that you know this is a soap opera? Are you a detective, looking for trace structures outside my motivation? Are you a prisoner like me?”
Flipping through different channels and different shows is an artistic act. It’s actually all one channel, all one show. The Gang is subverting composition by applying painterly collage techniques to pre-existing script language. Older notions such as act structure, continuity and temporality fall to stranger development. Horizontal, non-hierarchical themes emerge. There are no tidy conclusions that let you know how everything turns out. The show is a constant state of becoming a new show. Each Markov Chain Gang episode is just a bracketed data set inside a theoretically infinite order. It references and resembles, but the conceptual process’ transformative nature amounts to legal plagiarism; borrowing and reconstituting without stealing. The Markov Chain Gang is a television show not about its content, story or characters, but rather the antithetical story of the decisions of repression and change in the script as it meets the demands of the genre.
how to write it:
The episodes are written by choosing television scripts from different TV shows. This source material should be chosen according to what flavor or mood the writer wants the resulting Markov Chain Gang script to have. Once a few thousand words have been copied from the source material, they are analyzed by one of many computer programs that run Markov Chain algorithms. There are many different algorithms that cut-up text, but Markov’s seems to be the favorite with poets and artists.
The output text will be sentences that have been broken apart and put back together with other sentences and words. It’s difficult to read at this point, so a writer needs to work the cut-up material into a useable script. One can think of a genre as a template. The writer needs locations, characters, situations. Something to differentiate, say, a television script from a novel. When the writer has in mind what that is, they dip into the Markoved source text for answers. There are locations, characters, situations there… they just need to be extracted. The writer should not attempt to control the script, but rather let the script happen on its own. Expect clash, chaos and surprise. With practice, the writer is able to act merely as a catalyst for the scripts creation rather than its author. There is something out there giving us life.
epilogue:
I invented a game. It’s called Quantum Twenty Questions. It’s just like 20 Questions, except no-one has an object in mind when the game starts.
First, you ask a question like, “Is it an animal?” Then you flip a coin and if it’s heads the answer is yes. If it’s tails, no.
You proceed this way until you find out exactly what the object is. Where did this object come from? Obviously from your own mind, right? Is it a television? Heads. Yes.