in Hyperessay, My Work

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/