For software developers, live product demonstrations are a way of life, and that means that "live product demos gone horribly awry" are also a fact of life. But what if the world's most disastrous software demo was faked, foisted on a set of unsuspecting computer science students as a piece of performance art?
That thought is what led University of California-San Diego student Tristan Newcomb to produce a half-hour of surreptitious theater that he calls "The Last Lecture." Students stare at the stage in disbelief, amusement, and horror as a software developer comes to class with his two assistants and proceeds to demonstrate a new videogame in spectacular fashion—software crashes, lag problems, puppet videos, and falling computers all coincide with the presenter's personal breakdown in which he questions his life's work and worries ceaselessly about his death (a death in which no Kermit the Frog will welcome him to the afterlife).
Only after 30 minutes of increasingly bizarre personal confessions and technical glitches is the gag revealed; credits suddenly begin to scroll up the gigantic demonstration screen at the front of the classroom. The audience slowly realizes that it has been watching not a software demonstration, but a half-hour prerecorded video fronted by three actors.
"Software demonstration as performance art" first occurred to Newcomb back in 2004, when he was working with other students to create an actual videogame. As development proceeded and demonstrations were required, the group came up with an idea to just fake the game and use prerecorded video clips in place of a live demo, all of which would be secretly launched from a DVD; real computers would be brought to class but only for use as props.
The recording began with a minute and a half of a fake blue screen of death. While this was displayed, Newcomb filled the dead time with fake biographical credits and odd cultural ramblings about Muppets in the UK. The more times he did it, the weirder the information became.
People believed every word he said, and why wouldn't they? These were real UCSD classes, and this software presentation had been vetted and introduced by the course professor. To Newcomb, the software demonstrations that were so prevalent in the computer science program began to seem like a "little privileged theater space," a powerful place to communicate "amazingly intense monologist details." In other words, software demonstration as one-man show.
At first the idea was simple comedy. It quickly morphed into something more, something that violated "all unwritten rules of software demonstration" by faking everything from the software being demonstrated to each word that came out of the presenter's mouth. The idea was to have the audience "endure it" as the presenter's life falls apart in front of them, along with his software. The "Valhalla-like collapse" of the demonstration appears to invalidate everything that the presenter says, and it shows him up as a total incompetent or (worse) as a pathetic fraudster.
Professors are in on the scheme, providing Newcomb and his assistants access to UCSD computer science classes. The piece has been run several times, each time further developing the character of the presenter, a self-absorbed loser who encapsulates everything that can go wrong in a career as a software developer.
Newcomb plays the role of presenter, apparently relishing the uncomfortable situation in which he is placing the audience, but he always makes sure that they understand the stunt at the end. When the presenter finally worries about the uselessness of his life and that fact that he will see only his socks at the foot of the bed when he dies, end credits begin to roll on the screen behind him. The audience generally pauses, trying to "reverse engineer everything they've seen for 10 or 15 seconds" before they figure out just what it is they have been watching.
"This has now been stamped as fiction," says Newcomb, adding that the audience is most often "incredibly relieved" that the demo wasn't real. It's uncomfortable to watch someone experience such a crisis right in front of you, and in a public setting, especially someone who appears to be a "genuinely tortured" person. The reveal therefore comes as something of a relief; Newcomb describes it as "people stepping off a roller coaster," and he hopes that they enjoyed the ride.
The hoax element of this approach won't work for long, of course. Word gets around quickly. Newcomb is now considering a plan to take the "failed software demo" idea into the traditional theater, where audiences know exactly what they're in for. He hopes to further develop the character, possibly turning the failed software demo into some type of (fake) infomercial.
He has recorded "The Last Lecture," offering it freely online and recognizes that it has very limited commercial possibilities. But even if he can't profit from the entire crazy experiment, that's okay; to Newcomb, it's one of the "last little punk rock things that are left to do" in life.
reader comments
59