Experimental Interaction – G1

There are 6 posts filed in Experimental Interaction – G1 (this is page 1 of 1).

Final Project / Ten Courts Of Hell

Link to the presentation of our Final Project: https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/bcheng005/final-project-glitch-singapore-haw-par-villa/

For this final project, our group decided to bring our participants to Hell. My other group members consists of Fizah, Minjee and Clara.

Making use of Haw Par Villa as our location, we created a board game based off the Ten Courts of Hell in Haw Par Villa. In our game, virtual players are stationed in ADM while they roll the dice and move on the board game. However, they are connected to their physical players through Instagram Live, who are stationed at Haw Par Villa itself. To advance in the game, both the virtual player and physical player in the team have to communicate through the third space and work together to complete the missions at the stations they land on. The first team to get to the last court of Hell wins.

Overall, our game went pretty smoothy and was quite a success. The process of getting there however, was not an easy one. Firstly, we had a number of idea changes. When we initially got the project brief, we wanted to do a ghost idea where there is a box in a open area. We’ll then invite strangers to enter the box and interact with one of our members who is acting as the ghost. For that concept however, we’ll need to consider the location as we’ll need permission to set up the box. We considered several locations such as Scape, East Coast Park and Chinatown. We also looked at storylines such as the Ghost of the Yellow tower at East Coast Park. Still, we felt that our concept was not tied in strong enough and it might be difficult to execute. We tried to brainstorm for more ideas, yet still wanting to keep the theme of horror and demons. It was then where Haw Par Villa came up, known to be a theme park of Chinese folklore and paranormal stories.

We then decided to visit the site to get more ideas. Once there, we found that the place kind of resembles a maze and would be great for a game course. That’s where we got the idea of making a board game and connecting the players through Instagram live.

Once we confirmed our idea, we set out to work on its elements. We had a lot to prepare since there were ten stations, meaning ten different games. In each game we also had to find a way to bring together the virtual and physical player and that made it more challenging. We also only had less than a week to prepare and even find players so we were really rushing against time. Nonetheless, we decided to just do what we could.

We came up with some of game ideas while on site and the rest we thought of them in school. We also tested out the games in school to see if there were any loopholes. As for the props, we made scrolls, paper turtles etc, there was even a tomato mash. For logistics, we made the boardgame ourselves and had a facilitators guide book so that we’ll have something to refer to. We also got cameramen to film the whole game process and brought everything that the players could possibly need-umbrella,wet wipes, even their transport was paid for. All in all, we really went into the nitty gritty and considered for everything that could go wrong. To our surprise, the game was a greater success than we thought. The connection of Instagram live went smoothly, the players had a lot of fun and even us facilitators got so engrossed in the game, it was almost as if we were the players.

Looking back, I am really amazed by the amount of work that we managed to prepare over such a short period of time. I think one of our strengths was that we came up with game ideas and the logistics for them fairly quickly. Overall, I’m really proud of our game, our group and I think it was a great experience to have planned such a project where our players had so much fun.

Symposium Hyperessay / Social Networking

The 3 day symposium was one that connected the audiences to the performers and speakers through the use of third space. As I watched from the screen while the events unfolded live, it was hard to deny the sense of openness the symposium had demonstrated.

Quoting Marc Garrett and his D.I.W.O concept, the symposium reminded me of a point we’ve discussed in one of our earlier classes. Then, we asked ourselves-what makes a project D.I.W.O?  One of the characteristics we agreed contributed to D.I.W.O was an ” open-to-all” concept, where the artwork is available to everyone so that they could see it and add onto it.

With Adobe Connect, the platform provided that very open perspective. It allows anyone to see everything that is going on live, no matter which part of the world they’re in, what timezone they’re on. All they need was the symposium link and to log in, then the third space opens up to them.

As part of the guest audience, we didn’t just watch. We get to make use of the comment section to ask questions live and get our answers back almost immediately.  It also allows us to hold discussions with one another, either audience to audience or presenters to audience, sometimes even presenters to presenters-while everyone catches everything. This is the kind of “open-to-all” magic that a many-to-many space enables.

On the first day of the symposium, we listened to Maria X’s presentation on third space, then came the performance headed by Annie Abrahams where multiple collaborators from different parts of the world came together and gave a coordinated show. Here was when third space came into full use. It was fascinating to witness their performance as we know that they’re in different places, yet as they were on screen, they were essentially sharing the same space.

I recalled when the performance started, the comment section went into a frenzy. The audience started discussing and speculating on what was going on, some people started live commenting, typing out everything that was going on at the moment.

The comments as the performance took place on Day 1

Even towards the end, when one of the performers seemed to have lost the cue to exit, the audience took to the comment section to comment ‘Helen!’ simultaneously, making it one of the most delightful moments of the night.

As mentioned, this is only achievable due to the “open-to-all” nature of the symposium, allowing the audience to join in and contribute live.

This can also be said for the next two days of the symposium, especially on the last day, where we watched performances all the way from Chicago. After the performances, we as audiences could clarify our queries and get responses live even though we were miles away from the venue and it was nice to see the interactions between those here in Singapore and those around the world.

Questions for the performers on Day 3

The symposium was definitely a new experience for me and was a very interesting take from the normal classroom curriculum where I was able to learn through the third space.

 

References:

Garett, M. (2014, February 12) ‘DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): Artistic Co-Creation as a Decentralized Method of Peer Empowerment in Today’s Multitude.’ Retrieved from: https://marcgarrett.org/2014/02/12/diwo-do-it-with-others-artistic-co-creation-as-a-decentralized-method-of-peer-empowerment-in-todays-multitude/

 

Research Critique 3 / Micro-project 5

The Final Video: https://youtu.be/16l7RQVbDsE

This micro-project was done along with Celine and Joey. For our act of destruction, we questioned what it means to destruct. Apart from physically destroying something, how else can we showcase destruction in a non-literal manner? We brainstormed and asked ourselves-what else can be destructed?  A glitch is said to be a kind of destruction and according to Menkman,R’s “Glitch Art Manifesto” ,he says-

The glitch has no solid form or state through time; it is often perceived as an unexpected and abnormal mode of operandi, a break from (one of) the many flows (of expectations) within a technological system.

Therefore, to destruct can mean to simply break the flow or to do something that is out of what is expected. This brought us to our idea, to film a series of clips and break its sequence, therefore showcasing the destruction of flow.

We went around ADM taking videos of the seemingly normal surroundings. We switched things up by filming in a unusual way. Instead of stable videos, we shook or moved our cameras around so as to create this sense of chaos. We also agreed to go completely random so as to create a even more unexpected result. After we were done filming, we decided to edit our videos separately and combine them together after, without discussing on how we were planning on edit the clips we took. This would create even more differences and distortion, which is what our idea of destruction was. We basically welcomed all forms of inconsistencies and accidents.

When we were done, we finally pieced all our clips together and the end result was truly interesting to see. Although we filmed in the same place, our videos had different styles and varying forms of distortion. My part of the video played with different visuals that was edited to make no sense. Celine’s part of the video played with speeds and reverse. When it got to Joey’s part, there was special effects and added music and the whole video became quite surrealistic. When pieced together, the final video was rather intriguing and enjoyable to watch. This reminds me of Jon Cates’s ‘Hyperallergic’ article where he said-

“Those systems might be broken, they might be glitched, and they might be imperfect and noisy, and that might be what attracts us or me to those systems. But still they are functional or functioning in one way or another systematically. So they are connected to one another as assemblages.”

Similarly in our project, we broke the sequence of a usual film, however I also believe that we’ve brought a rather interesting new perspective to the video we’ve created, making it quite a unique video.

 

Research Critique 2 / Micro-project 3

Link to Facebook live video:

https://www.facebook.com/amanda.oh.5283/videos/1996232647296283/

In this project, I worked together with Celine where we used Facebook live to interact with one another despite being in two different places.

To me, the third space is about creating a new place which make use of both the virtual and physical spaces. For example in our project, Celine and I sat at two different tables, but only through using Facebook live, it brought our locations together and allowed us to interact within this new space that we created.

The boundaries were collapsed in this third space because we acted as though we were sitting side by side. The main object in this project was a can of Milo which we were able to pass to one another throughout the video despite us being in different locations physically. We also constantly reach out to one another; giving high fives and pats on the head which helped to further enhance this “illusion” that we were in the same space.

I felt that intimacy was achieved in this project due to the visual perception that we’ve created.

“And from this ubiquitous state of shared presence we have come to inhabit an entirely new way of seeing via a fracturing of perception.”

-Randall Packer, The Third Space

 

Physically we were in different locations but on the screen, it seemed as if we were together and were able to touch one another visually. That helped to perceive our interactions as being close.

We were able to virtually touch objects by understanding how the split-screen works and  coordinating our movements. For example, when I wanted to reach Celine, I would stretch my hand out towards Celine’s side of the screen till it goes off screen, and from her side, she would use her own hand to connect with my out-stretched arm so that it looked like one whole arm.

 

 

” The objective of the project
was to demonstrate for the first time how artists based in distant physical locations could meet and perform together, in the same “living image.”  -Maria Chatzichristodoulo, Cyberperformance

 

In this project, Celine and I collaborated by planning our actions beforehand and choreographing our movements to make it seem like we were sharing the same table. For instance, we knew we wanted to make it seem as if we were drinking from the same Milo can, so we bought two identical Milo drinks prior to the project and during the Facebook Live, we tried to choreograph our actions such that when one Milo can appears on one side of the screen, the screen on the other person’s side shouldn’t show a Milo can, this helped to give off the illusion that we are sharing the same Milo can.

 

 

Micro project 2 / Research Critique 1

This micro-project was done along with my group members, Karen and Jiajun. Held in the classroom, we invited the class to interact with Karen, who has low self esteem about her body. Karen sits in the center of the room, holding a sign that told the audience to write what they thought of her body on the corresponding body parts.

In this case, Karen acted as the canvas as the audience wrote on her. The underlying message we were trying to convey was about body image which was inspired by Karen’s lack of self-confidence.

This is an art piece which fulfils several characteristics of D.I.W.O.

As quoted from Marc Garret’s article,

“It challenges and renegotiates the power roles between artists and curators. It brings all actors to the fore, artists become co-curators alongside the curators, and the curators themselves can also be co-creators. The ‘source’ materials are open to all; to remix, re-edit and redistribute, either within a particular DIWO event or project, or elsewhere. The process is as important as the outcome, forming relationally aware peer enactments. “

 

In our art piece, there was a sense of openness as the artwork and material was open to all in the room. Both the artist and audience became co-creators as the audience’s contribution was greatly needed to form the final piece and the process was important to see the how Karen’s body filled with comments over time.

If we were to compare this to traditional art, the audience paid a huge part in this piece as the artwork wouldn’t have been completed without the audience’s participation. On the other hand, traditional art can be done single-handedly by the artist himself at his own time.

There are similarities in our art piece to those discussed in the crowd-sourced examples. In Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut’ piece, the viewers each came forward to cut a piece of Yoko Ono’s garment and everyone who was in the room could see the art happening live. Similarly, our art piece allowed the audience to come up individually and write on our friend, Karen while everyone in class could see the comments live as they were being written.

The difference, however lies in the type of medium used, and the message that was given out. Our artwork spoke about body image, which was influenced by Karen’s self-esteem. Therefore, the medium and message differs as it is very much dependant on the artist’s own experience and narrative.

The process of our crowd-sourced work can be viewed here: