Inside the Artist’s Studio is a radio program hosted by a robotic Chimpanzee named James Chimpton. Chimpton’s brain is powered by a markup language Jeff Crouse created called ABSML, or A BullShit Markup Language. The result is rather absurd – a clothed robotic monkey, interviewing artists in the Biennial about their work, in a pompous robotic english accent.

The operator/puppeteer, usually Jeff or I, would submit the interviewee’s name, website, and medium into the software. Based on that information, a set of interview questions would are generated and the puppeteer would then use the software interface to trigger the questions. You can here sample interviews below. They are often very funny.

The project came about at the request of Neighborhood Public Radio, who asked Jeff Crouse and I to put something together using the text generating software we were developing called ABSML (then called ASSML or DPML) for their show at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. ABSML is still being developed for a Turbulence Commission, a collaboration with Red76, and other fun projects coming soon.

Sincere thanks to Alex Reben for helping to hack the Wowee Chimpanzee head.

Whitney produced video:

Joseph Delappe Interview:

Friedrich Kirschner Interview:

Julian McCullough Interview:

Louis Schwadron Interview:

Michael Trigilio Interview:

Kent Henricksen:

Joan Wasser Interview:

Stephanie Diamond Interview:

Steve Lambert Interview:

Sarah Cook Interview:

Daniel Lanzilotta Interview:

Eve Mosher Interview:

Julia Schwadron Interview: