Hyperessay Technical Realization: Box

Behind-the-Scenes

The main components of Phantom of the Machine would involve:

Software
2x Adobe Connect

Hardware
1x Mac Screen
1x Mac Mini
1x Keyboard
1x Mouse
1x Webcam
1x Mic
1x Box
1x Speakers
1x Extension

Box
1x 570mmx550mm Plexiglas
2x 100mmx570mm Plexiglas
2x 100mmx550mm Plexiglas
1x Laser-cutter

Box-making Process

1. Put the hardware together

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2. and measure the dimensions.

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3. Some ugly sketches to note the dimensions:

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4. Travel and spend at the other end of Singapore.

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5. Assemble.

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6. Sir Randall

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Performance and Interaction

Phantom of the Machine sets out on an expedition the dynamics within one’s consciousness with the environment. Proceed to Hyperesssay Conclusion for more.

Hyperessary Role of Viewer: Objectual Conciousness

In the following thought experiments, we would presume with the idea of objectual consciousness and its performative aspects while contemplating upon the role of viewer. Notice that as an experiment, a contrived role would subject to change but nonetheless far from arbitrary.

Firstly, we think about the characters involved.

 

The Artist

Untitled 1972 by Donald Judd 1928-1994
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1972

As a ghost in the machine, the artist would perform textually a stream-of-consciousness. What does it meant to be still? The manifestation of its speech would be dependent of the states that the artist is in:

1. Present

2. Absent

3. Passive

4. Active

 

The Viewer

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Locational environment where to work would be installed.

Audience would be considered as a the public that was geographically located in a college with largely populated with Singaporeans. In that regards, consider the cultural behaviour that may dictate the action-reaction.

1. People related to the artist prior to the experiment

2. Intentional participants with no relations to the artist

3. Non-intentional public without knowledge of the artist and the artwork

The Relationship
Now discuss the probability of what is going to happen.

Activities

1. The object constantly replays its consciousness.

Present
When the artist is (tele)present, seduction would run its course in in text writing from stream-of-consciousness.

Absent
When the artist is not, seduction is generative and automatic. The object speaks in machine language.

2. The audience’s engagement with an object

Passive
Where the artist is passive in its identity, the machine listens and attempts to conduct a session encouraging transference.

Active
Where the viewer is active in its engagement, the identity of the artist in its object becomes active.

Form and Format
The materialisation of the objectual consciousness of the ghost in the machine would be established in Project Hyperessay Technical Realization.

Hyperessay Concept: Phantom of the Machine

Phantom of the Machine: The Ghost in the Machine

Concept

Phantom of the Machine is an exploration of human’s reception to intelligence of a machine. It is contrived in experimental spirit to study the interactivity between non-human being and object. This is done through playful public intervention, inspiring experiences with an emotional machine. Where the intelligence is of human, there is, however, negation of noticeable physical presence. This installation aims to disrupt he audience everyday interaction involving computers.

Prior Art

Since the culmination of Project Virtual Awkwardness last left of in OSS, the investigation of spaces was running along the discourse of the third space. Whereas the humans who are governed by the fear of God ties in with physical death, the being whose fear of social media challenges the existential notion of intellectual engagement in space-time continuum ranging from the real, virtual to the third space.

The artist’s fear of social media would render the physicality of a human body irrelevant and would live as close as to  minimally on consciousness. This implies that the object would have to live on collaborative interaction between itself and its environment. For the artist, that stream-of-consciousness would be the only way to indicate her presence. Was silence then relevant How could silence be perceived? The mind and its data visualised in textual form and silence as glitch?

In Internet Art & Culture, we have dealt with concepts such as the collective artwork,  data visualisation, glitch aesthetics and more. At the end of this experiment, more would be elaborated as we look into our findings.

Objectual Consciousness

In 1965, Amerian artist associated with Minimalism, Donald Judd, wrote  one of the most significant texts of the movement known as “Specific Objects”. Judd emphasises the physical, phenomenological experience of objects rather than representing any metaphysical or metaphoric.

Objectual consciousness, as a term would help unravel Phantom of the Machine’s idea of a concrete with its consciousness emancipating in a stream. Additionally, a layer of performance filmed the box and to complicate matter, interactivity is involved in the experience.

Judd believed that art should not represent anything, that it should unequivocally stand on its own and simply exist. Contextually speaking, it was ousting painting’s representation of space and abandoning plinth of a sculpture. Strict rules are set against illusion and falsity. 

In Phantom of the Machine, an objectual consciouness is alchemised with a machine installed in plexiglas. The evaluation of its consciousness in performance and interactivity would be ensued in the Project Hyperessay Role of Viewer, we determine the role of artist and its viewer, how the interaction would be, and the rituals involved.

 

 

Violence & Beauty | 暴力与美感

Cai Guo-Qiang, Illusion II, (2006)

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Cai Guo-Qiang’s ephemeral spectacle beholds its viewers while stirring cognitive dissonance between violence and beauty. This representation of duality is especially saturated on the internet. Having this beautiful work of art installed in Singapore Art Musuem 8Q is our pleasure. As intense as it it, a wave of melancholia swathed over, in remembrance of the Anhalter station that used to deport 50,000 of the 17,000 Jews to concentration camps during World War II.

蔡国强使用了火药,形成了美丽的烟花,却让观众对于暴力与美之间顿时产生了矛盾的认知失调。对偶这种双面的表示,是我们现今使用互联网的经历所能感受到的。
能够把这幅作品装置于新加坡艺术博馆8Q是我们的荣幸。激动的能力来袭之时,也感受到绵绵的感伤,吊念着二战期场地安哈尔特站50000之17000被驱逐到集中营的犹太人。

 

The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 hours in Kiev (2014) — Data Narrative and Lev Manovich, a Realist?

The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 hours in Kiev (2014)

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Click on image for higher resolutions.

Alchemised by Lev Manovich, The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 hours in Kiev is the first to analyze the use of Instagram during a social upheaval. Using computational and data visualization techniques, here is an exploration of 13,208 Instagram images shared by 6,165 people in the central area of Kiev during 2014 Ukrainian revolution (February 17 – February 22, 2014).

“When popular media covers exceptional events such as social upheavals, revolutions, and protests, typically they just show you a few professionally shot photographs that focus on this moment of protest at particular points in the city. So we were wondering if examining Instagram photos that were shared in the central part of Kiev would give us a different picture. Not necessarily an objective picture because Instagram has its ownbiases and it’s definitely not a transparent window into reality, but would give us, let’s say, a more democratic picture.”

– Lev Manovich

Manovich’s macroscopic point of view mirrors that of Infocomm Development (IDA). Manovic clairvoyantly pointed out that “after seven or eight years of social networks, there is a need for studying the social and the cultural through analysis of people’s data, in addition to the commercial use of consumer preferences.” IDA has $1.2bn is set aside for tech products, alongside the willingness to release data while crowdsourcing for ideas for innovation. Discover government data at OneMap and data.gov.sg.

Why Open Data? Open data is a massive yet untapped library of information that is available to the public. With the correct use of open data, significant benefits can be reaped such as improved measurement of policies, in-depth analytical insights and sharper business decisions.

(Source via Asia Data BootCamp)

Prof. Randall Packer pointed out a question that would be of interest to artists traversing different mediums in our time. The key to unlock storytelling with social media would be data visualization. Narrating data visualization does not have a name.

Edward Segel and Jeffrey Heer wrote on Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data that most sophisticated visualization tools focus on data exploration and analysis.

In Net Appropriation: Sexy Data, Prof. Louis-Phillipe Demers challenges our experiment on Net Appropriation. “Data mining requires interpretation and analysis, but this is data scavenging,” said Demers. Co-founding partner of DataCraft, Mike Anderson who specialises in data analytics and IT architecture suggested that this is a mean comment. However, designer Petra Valdimarsdóttir describes an artistic process to which, incorporating strategic design. 

“I was browsing the internet for archives on american culture I was actually looking for material related to cowboys. Out of no where came this beautiful archive of these native american tribe portraits. When you find something like that you just simply can’t let it go- so I started saving all the images and dissecting them, and finally translating it all into a book and an installation piece.”

– Petra Valdimarsdóttir 

Read article on project Data Scavenging here on how “she scratches at copyright boundaries by re-appropriating information and images to reveal the raw humanity that belies it”.

So, how do we tell “data stories” effectively?  Gershon notes that it “requires skills like those familiar to movie directors, beyond a technical expert’s knowledge of computer engineering and science”. Lev Manovich explained his choice of Instagram allows us to get a view of a different place of reality then what the journalists would get during times of protests.

Juan Camilo Gonzalez, whose research involves data visualization has great advisement. For the lack of better word, find Juan’s telepresence (very, very cool) and documentations here and check out his multiple award-winning film, SiSiSiSiSiSiSiSiSiSiSi (2011). In his sharing, Juan finds resonance with Robert Wilson’s mathematically conceived structure to allow for ideation process to be wild and free creatively. From his vast knowledge in the field of research, John Cages’ Notations was also pointed out to be an interesting extension in the idea. For which John Cage and his legacy, Prof. Randall brought up the use of I Ching in John Cages’ composition of music, writing and visual art.

The basic principle is to remove one’s own intention from the work and hand that over to the oracle. Intention is always to some extent circumscribed by one’s own tastes and personality, whereas non-intention moves beyond like and dislike and becomes something more resembling an act of nature.

(Source via Yijing Dao of Biroco: The Art of Doing Nothing)

As such, we have come to contemplate upon the idea that to build a narrative for data, a structure is necessary. There are insatiable amount of methods that a structure may be initiated, and that could highly be personal as to be impersonal. “… it’s the interplay between the structure and also the randomness of particular images,” says Lev Manovich.

“To me I think it’s a successful metaphor for how to speak about society today, when you think about all the traces you leave on social networks. I am trying to find the static visual forms to represent our new sense of society from seemingly random acts of individual people. So what I am trying to do is, ultimately, behind this kind of methodological, scientific veneer, I am an artist who is trying to find visual forms, which would represent what I see as central structures or central themes, relationships between individuals taken from random behavior.”

 

 

 

 

Net Appropriation: Sexy Data

#NSFW

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Sexfinite: The Monotonous Life of a Sexbot

Tantric Voyeurism: Meditative Upskirt

#OSSNTU

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Violent Video Game: My Classmates Are Appropriated Into Jellies

I Saw My Classmate in a Sex Video: Merje Hosted Flashing Flesh

Jennicam: Not Safe for Work

Jennifer Ringley, Jennicam, (1997)

My name is Jennifer Ringley, and I am not an actor or dancer or entertainer. I am a computer geek… I don’t sing or dance or do tricks (okay, sometimes I do) but not very well and solely for my own amusement, not yours).

“This will replace television,” said David Letterman.

With Jennicam, the ignition of reality television sparks controversial discussions. In view of voyeurism in its celebration, Hal Niedzviecki writes that “the Peep celebrity is indicative of just how entranced we are by the media machine’s ability to create the star-celebrity; we are drawn to the person-product who seems to fit so effortlessly into a society organised around the principle that people can and should be reduced to hits, ratings, views, box office gross.” A fan-mail for Jennifer Ringley states that his observation Ringley staying home on a Friday night comforts him. This judgement validates with her popularity speared from Jennicam’s 100 million hits a week.

Jennicam and NSFW

David Letterman added, “… They are lonely and desperate.”

Freeing what we watched redefines our culture and as a result justifies our inherent voyeuristic desires on certain level. Jennifer Ringley is an attractive young blonde woman that burns the heart of straight men and charges raging hormones. While an incentive like this is hard to ignore, the larger part of our collective emptiness envelopes us in the world of Jennifer Ringly, bordering between the real and virtual in Jennicam. The “third space” (a popular term coined by Randall Packer) explores limitless possibilities in cyborgian engagement.

Thank you, jenni.

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Jennifer Ringley plays with her boobs.

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Jennifer Ringley seduces with her boobs.

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Jennifer Ringley and her ass grabbed.

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Jennifer Ringley shows one nipple.

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Jennifer Ringley masturbating while reading a book.

Many years after Jennicam, the reminiscence remains to be most upworthy in hits features nudity and sexual nuances that keeps discussions lingering. Albeit not the most academic, there is value in pioneering everyday live cam. Jennifer Ringley may have recede into sea of data, but she will always remain as a key icon for what she does and whom are inspired.

Read Jennicam and Project Virtual Awkwardness for first installment.

“… I’d always had a desire to sneak into a girl’s apartment and watch her through the night. I had the idea that while I was doing this I’d see something which I’d later realize was the clue to a mystery. I think people are fascinated by that, by being able to see into a world they couldn’t visit. That’s the fantastic thing about cinema, everybody can be a voyeur. Voyeurism is a bit like watching television – go one step further and you want to start looking in on things that are really happening.”

– David Lynch

Glitched Aberrations: GLITCH ON GLITCH

DISCOVERY & DECONSTRUCTION

All glitches happen by no accident. Human’s attempt to compensate for inadequacy in expectations could only refer to debug and restoration. In this virtual glitch as anecdote, it is a hearty revenge which that perhaps consoles with a little sense of control.

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This glitches Iphone 5c demonstrates my ultimate fear of non-fear for self-multilation. Smartphone, a piece of prosthetic functions dearly as a data bank in digification of every piece of memory. I feel nothing when it fell on the ground and crashed, glitching and performs non-functional aesthetics. I cut myself and I do not bleed. How bad is that a deal?

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Now with a piece of broken meat, I find pleasure in burning every life lines and electronic veins. They have not gone colorless but darkness in the absence of light.

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Chunks of data of the rack. A Chinese national removes kidney from his body in exchange for an iPhone. A Singaporean Chinese removes data from her .txt for glitch aesthetics.

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All that have gone wrong never felt so right before.

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I refuse to remember except residual bytes and make-beliefs. I remember the new face but that is quite okay. Plastic surgery is celebrated so just not Michael Jackson’s nose.