January 2019

There were 2 posts published in January 2019 (this is page 1 of 1).

18\19 S2 Micro-Project 2 – Crowd-Sourced Art.

Ellie, Emma, Jiaxi and Hami.

“Draw anything to represent your current mood”- a collaborative art piece captured at 7:10PM.

What is the content of the work and who is creating it?

In this piece of work, we created a live canvas(https://aggie.io/), asked our friends to draw anything to represent their current mood by using the platform whatsapp. It was initialised by me, Jiaxi, Emma and Hami, but it was created by various participants, mostly our friends and classmates. Note: Each participant does not know each other, the process is completely anonymous.

 

Where does this work take place?

This piece of work took the online space, which is the website called aggie. https://aggie.io/

How does this work involve social interaction?

This piece of work was created by sending invitations to various whatsapp chatting groups. We sent them a message with the link, asking them to draw whatever they want to show their current mood. At the end of this procedure, there were 44 layers. When each person started to draw, a layer was created. They can only edited their own work, they cannot erase or change others.

However, my personal concern is that I prefer instagram story as a platform rather than whatsapp. But my fellow artists don’t use instagram that much and they may not want to involve school projects with their personal accounts, we chose whatsapp in the end. My personal thought is, for instagram story, the participants, which are your followers, can have the freedom to choose whether they want to participate in this work or not. If they do want to they will click the link, however, if they don’t want to do so, they will just swap to others’ stories. For whatsapp, we need to ask them to participate in this work, which is more like asking for help or asking them to do favour. If you send them a message, they feel that they need to help you, rather than they can choose freely. I think in a way, the chose of platform restricted the freedom of choices in some extend.

Another discovery of the procedure is how individuals are easily influenced by others. Initially, there is just a line, after the first line, some people followed such a trend, and turned out to be a lot of lines on this canvas. Similarly, when the first participant drew a face, those who came later than him saw the previous face, they tended to follow them and drew faces as well. This applied to the Chinese characters and English names as well.

 

My reflection about this art work is that it reveals some moral questions. The size of the canvas was set, some late comers may not have enough space to draw. Since it is completely anonymous, although they cannot erase others work, they can still cover it up with colours or white colours. There were also some people who directly drew on others’ work. If it is not anonymous, I don’t think this would happen. I found that every groups’ works were more or less anonymity involved, and in the end they all lead to moral questions. Such as Eugene’s group, whose work requires strangers to tell a darkest secret. It turned out that people on instagram, those people who are your friends, would make something up or tell a very not tiny thing as secret; whereas for people on an anonymous website would yell out some really outrageous, ridiculous or serious secrets. It in a way shows that anonymity brings immorality as well, but also freedom at the same time. It makes me question, does art have an educational role for the society? In a way, art reveals human, that’s why it belongs to humanity, is it true? At least one can sure be my conclusion, which is, anonymity plays an important part in collaborative work.

 

How is your crowd-sourced project different from one that is created by a single artist/creator?

It is more unpredictable compared to single artist, and it can be more spread out to the audience as the four of us all have different friends.

18\19 S2 Micro-Project 1 – Creating the Third Space

1. Why did you choose this space or object to photograph?-Because it creates memories, which is emotional and memorable. My friend told me that he is going to leave soon, I cried at this table the whole afternoon, to me, the memory contains sweetness and bitterness at the same time.
2. What are some of the characteristics of this alternative virtual space you had created collectively?-The most obvious characteristic is the commonness of this alternative virtual space. Firstly, Instagram is a platform that everyone is using everything, which first brings familiarity with this place. Secondly, another characteristic is that this place is where we are all staying for our studying, we all have our memories in this place. Thirdly, the emotion and feeling about this alternative visual place are private, unique. The emotional feeling about the physical space when we “moved” this place online, the physical space interacts with the social media. The social media also contains one’s personal life, which can create a mixed feeling for individuals. Each person’s feeling is like a piece of furniture, together they decorate the whole house, which creates an alternative virtual space.
3. Under what circumstance will this alternative virtual space change? The time the people enter the space, and “who” enter the place. People’s memory might get blurred through time, and also different people have different perspectives of seeing
things.
4. How does this project relate to what we discussed in the lecture regarding co-creation, the concept of Do-It-Yourself (DIY), Do-It-With-Others (DIWO)?-This alternative virtual place was created by all the students who take this module, therefore it is a collaborative work, it is a co-creation. The DIY and DIWO part is that everyone contributed to this piece of art, which in a way, it is reasonable to state that the DIWO consists of DIYs. The DIWO is something in common, the DIY is about the more emotional aspect, which is idiosyncratic and unique.