A reality cooking show



Dion and the boys presents to you

Split Chef…

. . . A fun and engaging reality T.V cooking show hosted by Bryan, Dion, Joel and I. Each game requires one person to draw while the other person shops for groceries and cook, all while communicating through Insta-live! Audience comment, judge and laugh as our participants show us their goofy antics and silly mistakes. May the best team win.

Here is a short clip featuring the sneak peek to our show, featuring team Jacob and Tiffany’s process of buying mushroom and butter. Look out for how our show runs and how the simple process of buying mushroom and butter becomes a chaotic mess. A highlights section features the gag reels of the episode.


Ideation Creation

This show started out with a quick brainstorming session within the team. We were throwing ideas around and we realised we really loved the concept of having hall pantry as our main theme- We all lived in hall. (Note: Bryans my roommate) The initial idea was to have a cooking show, but the cooking show would rely on people getting ingredients from neighbours, and relying on third space communication to get instructions to cook. It was a raw idea.

After further discussion, we finally agreed on the idea of non-verbal communication, which was the method of speed drawing and guessing what it was, similar to pictionary. We finalised the ideas and agreed that the process should entail a pair, where one draws while the other buy ingredients and cook, while broadcasting the process through Insta-live.


Sell the trial, Char kway teow

We began our trial run a week plus after the ideation process, attempting to remove any obstacle before our actual shoot.

A splitchef trial- Final Project Test Run (my perspective)

The trial rundown was important as we found out a lot of problems hidden within the process. We did solve it through an urgent skype meeting, trimming away all the fats.

A week 11 update (SplitChef)


Moving Flow, Cooking Show

Jumping into the enthusiasm of our finalised ideas, we started our process of setting up our show. We arranged for our friends (in order of appearance): Tiffany, Jacob, Alena and Hannah, to be our guest players of the day. Tiffany and Jacob would be the strangers team while Alena and Hannah would be the friends team.

We discussed and decided on our roles for the day, with Dion and Joel going with the drawer’s side (Artist) while Bryan and I would assist the cooker’s side (Chef). Individually, Dion and Bryan would be the moderators liasing with the players while Joel and I would be the filming team. I would eventually edit the clips according to the theme of the show our group have decided to adopt.


Team Noob, Duck Soup

A comedic duo that was suppose to be the team formed with strangers, featuring Tiffany and Jacob. Tiffany did mention that she can cook rice, but was surprised that she has to cook something else other than that. Kudos to her for not chickening out. Jacob’s drawing was hilarious and brought a lot of laughter to the audience that we newly factored in.

Team Pros, Crunchy Toast

The team that made an unbelievably beautiful quesadilla that was picture perfect. This team was made up of friends who we assumed would have no problems communicating, which they have proven with their camaraderie, buying every item and cooking every item to the T.


Setup, Buttercup

Bryan made these beautiful posters that we broadcasted to all our friends a day before the actual shoot to reel in a crowd for the live show. It worked as our friends we really enthusiastic with joining in for the show, helping out the players in making difficult decisions.

 

Also, these professional forms to inform the players what they need to do.


 

 

 

 

 

 


The final screen recording of the live process can be found here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17uHWtycB1Ya8mjii2Mp1j9QG9Kph2dEr/view?usp=sharing


Reflections, Bo jackson

(Team Tiffany and Jacob )

  • Miscommunication – There were a lot of miscommunication for this team as neither of them were good at what they were doing. Jacob wasn’t particular good at illustrating and Tiffany wasn’t particularly good at cooking, this resulted in many miscommunication that started from the beginning of the game play. This snowballed into things like buying peanuts for chicken as well as buying a eggs for butter. (Right: Butter drawing, Left: Chicken mistood for peanut)
butter

 

chicken profile
  • Cooking Inexperience – There weren’t any problems with the instincts of the chef being played here as Tiffany wasn’t adept at cooking at all. This resulted in her having to follow the instructions completely step by step. This created problems like her following instructions to a T, where she placed cheese in a pan without oil, waiting for the next instruction. She also had many dangerous moves that we were forced to assist like burning the surface of the pan as well as her way of chopping the nuts and garlic. She would have known how to cook mushroom or garlic otherwise.
dry frying
messed up pan

 

  • Audience participation – This team was particularly popular with the comments (maybe because it was earlier in the day) as the drawings as well as cooking were humour-inducing. This caused a lot of commotion with the audience, commenting relentlessly, trying to participate in the game. Kudos to Tiffany and Jacob for being cool with the laughter.
banana
  •  Stranger Connection – This team was originally suppose to represent the strangers team, which was the team that were intended to be bad at the game because they lack the kindred communication between friends. However, we soon realise that there were no relations between how bad the gameplay was with the real communication of strangers. This was because Jacob and Tiffany had no problems communicating, it was how inefficient the execution was, mostly deteriorated because of their ability to draw or cook. Hence, we decided to change the experiment hypothesis to how your ability to draw or cook can affect the game drastically.

Final Product

scrambled eggs with semi-cooked mushroom, topped with cocktail peanuts, sausage and garlic with skin

taste test

It was salty.


(Team Alena and Hannah )

  • Skills – Hannah and Alena were definitely better in the skills needed for this game as every aspects  of their game were smooth running.
nugget flipping
  • Communication – Communication within this group was definitely better, although it was more or less inclined towards how good Alena and Hannah were as artists and chefs. With the same drawing of a box representing butter, Hannah could understand that the image meant butter instead of eggs, which Tiffany bought. We could only assume that this was because Hannah had more experience as a chef as no other form of communication was made during this time to Hannah by Alena. Hannah could also understand that Alena was drawing a pack of tortilla wrap instead of an orange.

  • Audience – The gameplay for this team took place later in the night as we wanted all factors of the game to remain similar, thus having the game back to back. However, the audience did not had the patience to sit through a 4 hour cooking show and we loss our audience count through the night, albeit having a loyal few who stayed on and off. However, our players were able to entertain themselves by playing with the Instagram’s filter ability, using the dog filter to joke around through the 3rd space.

Final Product

quesadilla

cutting the final product
eating the food

Fun fact: Alena is a vegetarian.


G!ith Sngap#r3

                            Crowdsource

Crowdsourcing happens when our players utilises the opinions given by our live audience and use this information to their advantage. Sometimes the player might be too overwhelmed with the task at hand and might not be able to comprehend the drawing, even if it is a cuboid like what Tiffany saw. With the information given by a clear head, she might be able to understand and take the hint.

                                                                             DIWO

DIWO takes place when we enlisted the help of our friends to play the game. With the fresh perspective of Tiffany, Jacob, Alena and Hannah, we are able to execute this idea without any prejudice and play along. This idea was apparent especially in the trial run where Joel and Bryan had to play the game. Dion and I had to withhold much of the recipe and gameplay alterations as possible so as to ensure the sanctity of the game is upheld. We are also only a 4 member group and we might not have the necessary skills or lack of skills to achieve the character needed for the game, such as a good chef or a bad chef.

                                                    3rd space

With the usage of Insta-live dual screen playing system, we are able to use the split screen to communicate between the two players.  This helped us to achieve our goal of the communicative element of the game through visual stimuli only. This element is different in real life as we tend to want to over do on the communication part and using only 3rd space communication really helps to create a controlled environment. The 3rd space also helps to enable an effective audience participation without having a set of live audience that might create unnecessary pressure for our players. The 3rd space helps to foster a physical border that actualise our test of visual cues as communication devices. It also helps to connect people of different location into one centralised kitchen or drawing room.

Glitch                                                                             

The glitch aspect for this game was the most apparent aspect as it can come in early on in the game. For Tiffany and Jacobs team, the glitch was more evident. During the grocery phase, Tiffany accidentally bought nuts and cucumber for the chicken and quesadilla, which kills off the entire recipe within 30seconds. This glitch happens when she overlooks the initial function of the recipe and ingredients, which is to make a chicken quesadilla, but instead look at the ingredients as basic units to a whole dish. When she overlooks the designated function set by us, she saw new and unrestrained potential in the dish, creating the sensational scrambled eggs shown above. This glitch aspect is snowballed throughout our game as there is nearly no way of trying to overturn it, instead one should just embrace this glitch and try to make the best out of it.


Videopackaging

Since I filmed the entire cooking process while Joel filmed the drawing process, I got the chance to edit the trailer for the final project. However, there were still maximum participation from all team members in terms of how we envision the video looking like and how we wanted to package the video, checking back with them every now and then with the video edits.

We wanted the trailer to look intense, as if it is a real cooking show with fast tempo beats. However, we did not want to include too much reels of the gameshow as it defeats the purpose of a trailer- which is to entice the audience into buying our show as a idea. We also want the glitch aspect to be apparent, thus adding in words that helps guide the audience into understanding our show as it is. We even have our own opening sequence that features glitch graphics.

In our highlights video, we featured a short clip of how Tiffany and Jacob interacted with their purchasing of mushroom and butter. This was important as these items are contextualised as a success and a failure. It was important to understand what was a failure and success in our show. The video is played one frame at a time as we did not want to confuse audience with  too many screens, which they will be able to see through our Insta-live show.


Resolutions

this project could be better with a stronger managerial procedure as we are not trained to handle a game show of such complexities. If able to, we would have a stronger processing procedure, documenting from all angle, including the perspective of audience who are watching our show.

We could also expand this project into an app, as suggested by Desmond, and link up with a food app that allows students to download recipes and we provide the ingredients. This ties in with us as fundamentally we wanted to achieve the relationship between food and hall life.


 

A week 11 update (SplitChef)

Progressing towards the end of semester, we expedited the process of our final project: Split Chef. We took to the 3rd space to discuss how to proceed with our project, fixing the tiny glitches we encountered during our trial run.

After much discussion, we cleared our doubts and set the date to 9th April to carry out our final project.

Points:

  • Instincts like bee stings

Previously discussed in the trial run, we mentioned that some players tend to have instincts with cooking and this instincts can be sharp enough to pick out certain clues. For instance, ludicrous instructions like frying for 20 seconds might not seem to be too little but to some it doesn’t seem like a problem at all. To maintain the sanctity of the project, we decided to uphold a strict level of instruction following, where the cook has to accurately present or execute the instructions by the drawer.

  • Hi-five for wifi

During the trial run, we had problems with the wifi and data as the pantry we visited had very thick walls. This time round, we borrowed a pantry within the same area for efficiency sake, but we tested out the wifi connectivity beforehand. There were even electric plugs located in the pantry in case our phones run out of battery.

  • Chicken and equipment

If you watched the video, you would realise that we did not have a chopping board or a frying pan that was useable and we had to make use with what we had. This was uncomfortable for the cook as well as the moderator. We have to bring enough equipments for the execution day itself.

 

Look back at the previous Split Chef post for more information!

A hyperessay

 

Hyperessay: Sensationalising and departure of performance art

through network space

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W_SjgHP8t1-cew8ppZC-GqNdZD4c752n/view?usp=sharing

Reflections/ My Question

As the Networked Practice Symposium came to an end, we had to collate our thoughts and jot down our experience into one hyperessay.  Overall the symposium was a wild one with many eccentric performances, but it made me question one thing, which was how different can old performance art and new performance art be? New performance art being practices that incorporates network practice into the process, giving it a multitude of layers and depth. The above PDF highlights my Hyperessay.

However, since the essay is 500 words, there were some questions and thoughts in my head left unexplained. During the symposium I asked a question in attempts of being “participatory”, which was “Does the usage of an assistant/ extra person for the second part of the performance lose the power of the shamanistic experience, in comparison to other performance artist like Joseph Beuys who experiment with sort of ritualistic animals?”

My perspective

From my perspective, this question stems from my understanding of Joesph Beuys as a performance artist who enjoys the usage of silence, animals and rituals in his performance narrative. In “I Like America and America Likes Me”, he stayed with a coyote for three days alone and interacted with it while living in a tent. Coyotes were special because they represented the atavistic powers of Native Americans. This compares to Sifuente’s usage of leeches in his performance in “igaies”. In ” How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”, he was a healer trying to speak to a dead rabbit. This compares to Sifuente’s “igaies” where the lady beside him was the healer bringing him back to life after he collapses. In both context, there is a healer and there is a ritualistic element, almost power asserting postures utilised, but its only in “igaies” where the healer is not the artist, who is Sifuentes. Furthermore, the element of silence is more apparent in Beuys’s works.

How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare
igaies

Hence, my question comes in where/ whether the presence of an unnamed assistant who is dressed completely different from Sifuentes’s almost shamanistic/bomoh outfit would affect the visceral power audiences have for the artist, since the artist himself have been “performing in a ritualistic manner” to assert power from the audience (The part where he dances around with a stick and suffer the sucking of the leeches). With an additional figure present to heal him, it completely takes away the shaman imagery audience have of him, since he was seen being sucked off blood by leeches. The lady who initially places the leeches on him then comes in to heal him by cleansing him up, resulting in my question of how the authority or hierarchal structure is based in his performance.

 

This compared to Beuys’s work, which doesn’t include an assistant, gives a balance dynamics between the coyote and the artist himself. In “igaies”, there is a trinity of power assertion, that gives rise to the contention of networking, which will be explained below.

Comments and feedback

Fortunately, I was given feedback and comments of my question, and Katie 2 mentioned that, quote “draws attention with the ecological nature of interconnected life forms: human/animals, human/internet, and internet/animals.  Sifuentes himself commented that he enjoys the terms of an interconnected relationship between the animal, human and internet.

Since this symposium is based on the idea of networked practice, I do understand the changes of relationship for individuals within a networked performance art such as this, and there is a strong interconnectivity between animals/human, human/internet and internet/animals. However, my question stemmed more towards the art direction of involving another human party instead of one main “human” source directed towards an audience, which would have/may not, be of equal aggression. In other words, the presence of a human/human relationship on camera, which denounces the idea of a visual silence that is disrupted by the presence of two humans,

Afterthoughts

I believe, although it is just my opinion, that it would have been more visually dynamic without the usage of an assistant, as an audience, I have built up quite a visually daunting imagery of Sifuentes as leeches are placed on him, which he could have placed on himself. It would have been even more participatory if audiences could have had a chance to place the leeches on him themselves, or even have a networked participation where leeches are placed on Sifuentes according to the Internet audience’s command.

 

 

A splitchef trial- Final Project Test Run (my perspective)

 

Disclaimer: Do look at all our OSS for the roles and perspectives  of all the different players and moderators involved!


 

For our final project, Dion, Joel, Bryan and I wanted to utilise an idea of a 3rd space cooking project to fulfil all elements we have learnt from Experimental Interaction. We call it Split Chef.

Essentially, this project entails two group of people: the moderators and the players. The players will further split into two sections: one being the cooker who looks at the drawings while the other one is the drawer. The moderators will be the one ensuring the process is running smoothly and ensuring the project is not compromised in any way.

The project starts with the drawer drawing out the ingredients needed and showing it to the cooker through Insta-live. The cooker will have to identify and guess, afterwhich proceed to buy all of the ingredients. This applies for the later section where the drawer will draw the recipe and the cooker looking at it to guess how to execute the cooking process.

DIWO applies where we use many people’s action to snowball into a final product. Glitch applies when we see an ingredient out of its conventional usage or capability, since the cooker would not know what the ingredients are for. 3rd space is used through the completely “handicapped” Instalive drawing communication without linguistic cues. We also hope to use Instalive’s comment section as a crowdsource opinion/helpline.

 

If you haven’t seen the video on any of Dion, Joel and Bryan’s OSS, here are the videos of the test run.

As a moderator, we wanted to ensure the sanctity of the project is run through, which was to create a dish through non-linguistic communication via a 3rd space, and without prior notice of what the dish. It was tough ensuring that there were not any loop holes that would tarnish this purpose.

Set-up

The set-up was difficult as we had to think of a recipe that would involve several elements, and we couldn’t ask Bryan or Joel for opinions since they were the players for the test run.

The recipe we are going to use have to avoid all of these potential problems:

Number one, the dish couldn’t be too easy to replicate or have too little fundamental steps of cooking. Pasta would be too easy since its boiling noodles and adding a heated sauce. There weren’t dexterous steps that can be complicated with non-linguistic cues like drawing.

Number two, we have to select players according to how we want our final project to be. Essentially there are players who have stronger cooking instincts as cooking is an process drawn on experience, and that experience can change how the players approach this project. For example, Joel was experienced enough to understand that some ingredients selected was theoretically “correct”. He picked out lime after seeing the previous ingredient of tobasco sauce.

Number three, we have to ensure a strict budget in case the players assume that there is an ingredient needed that wasn’t on the intended recipe. For example, Joel bought a bag of dumplings thinking that it was the key ingredient, where it is in fact, shell pasta.

Shell Pasta- Dumpling

Number four, adding on tho the shell pasta. It is not actually a key ingredient, but in fact it is an ingredient used to throw the players off a linear thought. This is done so because we did not want the players to assume that they are cooking a specific dish because they are seeing some key ingredients, such a as the tortilla wrap they had bought prior to this.

Tortilla Wrap

Number five, if you have seen Joel’s OSS, you would know that a small chicken was bought in the process of grocery shopping. As a moderator, this snowballed a chain of wasted time since the chicken took a longer time than expected to defrost and this would be a problem on the actual shoot day since we would be asking people out of this team to perform the SplitChef routine. We would have to dissect this problem of time consuming glitches without interrupting the sanctity of this project.

A last minor problem, the lady at the supermarket wasn’t very happy that Joel and I were filming inside the supermarket. But at that point of time, we were mostly finished, so oh well.

Cooking

The cooking process itself was involved with a lot of trouble shooting.

Number one, the pantry we borrowed was ideal as it was near the supermarket. We had followed Lei’s advice of choosing a location near the market in case the players lose their mojo of cooking since we do not want the excitement of the project to lose its momentum. However, we did not know how thick Hall 2’s walls are as the walls completely blocked out our phone’s data and wifi. This created a heap of mess as our 3rd space communication was impeded, and that was a problem since this communication is what builds our project. We had to borrow wifi from a student living beside the pantry, but that wasn’t ideal also since the wifi itself was 1 bar and barely sustaining.

glitched out so bad

Number two, as moderators, we did not prep the area well as we lacked in a lot of equipments. We did not have enough oil or even a  chopping board, which was quite a comical sight.

chicken on the pantry
panning the pans

Number three, we had to familiarise the environment. Even though we brought pans (courtesy of Joel’s house), the induction cooker there was crazy and didn’t work well with his pan. This resulted in only one working induction and this might be a problem on the actual day.

Number four, as moderators we do not know how extensive we want to be with our rules and regulations. In this project, we function on the idea of non-linguistic cues as highlighted before. However, when we see the process of the cooker and drawer “communicating”, we can more or less tell if they are heading for the right direction. In cases where we can tell that certain decisions wouldn’t end well, we do not know if we can allow the cooker to proceed out of the drawer’s direction. For example, our friend Zhen qi who helped us draw, drew a “20s”beside a chicken. This created an assumption on Joel’s part to cook the chicken for 20 seconds, which was ludicrous. He asked if he can continue cooking beyond the 20seconds and we didn’t know how to proceed from there.

This snowballed into a lot of problem as  we realised that we had to be strict with our rules in case the project falls out of its initial intentions.


Lastly, since I was on site with Joel, the cooker, we experienced a lot of problems communicating with the drawers, Bryan and Zhenqi, as well as the other moderator, Dion. We realised that there were a lot of set up issues in accordance to the camera angle and time spent waiting. Breaking this into two points: Firstly, it is a process thats bent heavily towards a strictly timed process, we tend to forget that and waste a lot of time idling or waiting for things to happen. Secondly, this time wasted maybe unprofessional on the day itself when we invite people to play Split Chef with us.

 

Overall, it wasn’t that bad of a test run as it allowed us to see the minor defects in the process. There were small hiccups here and there but overall the ideation was clear and smooth. Looking forward to the actual shoot.

A room of lights: Micro-Project 7 Video Selfie

Project 7 pushes us to seek out our own online identity by using a short clip to express ourselves. With a camera, a location, some soundtrack and numerous retakes, we attempt to create an identity we want to become.

The location I chose to shoot my video in would be my hall room, which is just a representation of anywhere that I find comfort in, where I can be myself and squirm away from the terror of everyday life. Identifying a place where I can be myself helps to generate the alter-ego I want as it is often the side of you where you hide from the rest of the world.

Video timeline:

In this video, it starts off with a blank and black page. Then a flicker of light shines as the soundtrack of SuperMario plays. My alter-ego, being myself, on the white faerie light in line with the increasing beat. Then as the beat gets stronger, I switch the colourful faerie lights on. Thereafter, as the rhythm continues, I on a colourful lamp, switching the shades according to the beat of the soundtrack. As the rhythm descends, I off the lights one by one in sequence of how I on-ed it.

This video identifies my alter-ego as an art student, I love to explore colours and light as a medium. In graphic work, colours play a role in pushing characters to the foreground. In form crafting, lights help to give soul to the sculptures. In photography, colours and light are trapped within a frame, forever petrified.

Hence, I enjoy having a work environment where there are lights and colours as they are visually stimulating, pushing my art alter-ego to the surface. The video shows the actual arrangement of how my desk is typically like everyday.

Music choice

I chose Super Mario’s soundtrack as it is upbeat and it has an intrinsically colourful visuals. It has a strong implicit memory and nostalgia for students my age as it was the game to play growing up. It has a colourful theme and design, shaping how I see the world.

Influence

This video is similar to the one I did for last semester’s project, linked as : https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/bren0022/a-coffin-project-4-poetics-of-time/

This video stems from another perspective as it describes more of the way I think or function. Colours and light are visually stimulating, thus helping me to brainstorm better.

An add on to the James Turrell influence explained in the OSS post highlighted above, I find light and colours able to speak more about a space. Colours and light help to identify the characteristics of a space, telling its story to the audience, which is what I strive towards as an art student.

Answering the questions

This video helps to alter identity as in a physical sense, the audience have never travelled into my environment of comfort, such as my desk full of lights, hence it is a character never before seen. It is a persona only perceivable, but not touchable. This means that communication only runs in on direction and that is from my alter-ego, to the audience. This creates a strong sense of control as an artist, pushing out an identity I want to be perceived by the audience. Doing so, identities can be concealed as I show what I want to show.

The lights around me contribute to building a character as without it, it is only a blank and black screen. The lights help to blow up details and highlight features. Not only is the light physically functional, it is also symbolically specific to me. On the foreground, the lights help to make the visuals of the video interesting, hence making my alter-ego pop out against the dark walls. Within the psychological construction, audience understand that the lights are there for a reason, resulting in colourful flashes shown in the video.

A research critique 3

In micro-project 5, we embarked on the art of destruction, referencing to glitch art and the Ant Farm style.

 

(https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/dion0011/micro-project-4-the-art-of-destruction/) 

Our project (the bucket) explores on three main themes, consisting of: functionality, death of functionality and rejuvenation of said functionality. These themes fall in line with the theories we have learnt from the multi-directional approach of glitch art and the flexibility of Ant Farm teachings, which I will explain below.

Breaking visual expectancy (problems?) -> Functions

“The bucket” explores on the themes of problems and accidents with the directions of the glitch art manifesto, which mentions that glitch art deconstructs the complex assemblage of technology, tricking audience into a flow of expectancy and breaking it afterwards. We are using this flow of expectancy audience withhold regarding a bucket of clean water, thereafter breaking its visual imagery of being clean by dirtying, then breaking that flow again by “cleaning” it with tissue paper and soap. We are embracing the bucket of water’s loss of functionality as a problem. This leads to the situation of being dirtied becoming an opportunity to break the metaphorical state of a useful function. The audience would not expect the claim of using tissue and soap to “clean” the water, breaking visual expectancy. This shock tactic would not be true without the contamination of the bucket of water.  Dirtied water tends to be ignored once it no longer serves the purpose of cleaning.

Transformation of functions

The bucket undergoes two transformation in infinite cycle, from its original state, to being dirtied and then “cleaned” again- over and over. This transformation is done through the physical contamination of the water, thereby destroying its sanctity. We are denouncing the functionality of a dirtied bucket of water, as well as the physical capabilities of tissue paper to “clean” dirtied water. Through this act of destruction, the bucket of water becomes a metaphorical symbol of change. The audience’s expectations are placed upon the clean bucket of water, fully aware that its capabilities of cleaning are no longer available once its dirtied, but by adding tissue, we are rejuvenating its functions. This draws reference to Marcel Duchamp’s style of using found objects. Like “The Fountain”, we are replacing the function of an object we found with an idea that we claim that can work. The function of the urinal as a high art, parallels to the function of the dirtied water being clean, as well as the tissue cleaning the water. In reality, the tissue paper becomes soggy upon touching water, and said action of cleaning is only comprehensible with the artists’ explanation. However, the said items does transcend its physical state into a metaphorical purposeful showcase.

Redirection Art Direction

Glitch and destruction functions as forms of art with its capabilities of redirection, it utilises the inherent connectivity that objects have to its function, mentioned by Jon Cates in his Hyper-allergic article. There are a thousand ways of interpreting a situation, in glitch terms, nothing is ever “broken”. Glitch and destruction is a form of artistic expression as it seeks to find an elevated way of thinking. Using our project as an example, the artist intentions stands on the metaphorical understanding of functions, mainly the water and the tissue. Using the audiences’ expectation and breaking it after, we inculcate a shock tactic and denunciation of forms that can be seen in famous artists like Rene Magritte and Jackson Pollock. This idea of redirection of the norm stems from the fundamentals of art history. Chuck Close breaks the conventional way of painting hyperrealistic works by using woodblock units to build up a portrait, which denounces techniques of realistic work done Gustave Courbet. Picasso challenges the understanding and portrayal of perspectives, denouncing the methods of Michelangelo.

Chuck Close
Gustave Courbet

 

A super super participation

This project aims to engage a group of audience with our self-constructed social identities, it commences- 7 March 2018, 1239Hs.

 

The link below leads to the facebook page that housed our experiment.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1073658579438522/videos/

My first post featured a vlog explaining my nightmare, kickstarting the chain of videos and photographs I would post later through the day. I thought It was important to show my face for the first video for the audience to know who the social identity revolved around.

 

Throughout the entire day, I posted predominantly videos instead of photographs as I wanted to engage the audience as much as possible, since videos involved sight and sound, I tried to change location as much as possible to create an interesting narrative.

 

_____________________________________________________________

The timeline of my day was as follows

12noon: Wake up and telling people about my nightmare

1p.m. Head to School

2p.m. – 5p.m.  Interaction with friends, featuring Naomi and Nokwan from Monday Class, and Clemens the Camp chief. Inclusive of a Live story telling by Clemens

6p.m. Head to Artfriend, montage for proof

7p.m. – 10p.m. Head to Pioneer Junior College for photoshoot

11p.m. Went back to ADM

12mn Head to Extension Coffeeshop for photoshoot and some supper

1a.m. – 2a.m. Have supper with friends

3a.m.- 5a.m. Miscellaneous activities in Hall.

Sleep

11a.m. Breakfast. (End post)

______________________________________________________________

This project aims to craft a social identity and it was interesting as I had to record footage from previous days, while wearing the same shirt I would eventually wear on the Super-participation day. This was because I wanted to employ most of my time with activities that people would find interesting, instead of just myself talking. Hence, the usage of the same outfit tricks the audience into thinking that I am within the same time and space as when the post was made, creating the illusion that the 3D space can be live time, which is false. Doing so, I create a social identity I want the audience to see.

Also, apart from my own social identity, I took to my advantage of including people around me like Naomi, Nokwan and Clemens. This inclusion of other people apart from myself helps to create an interesting narrative, as if watching a TV show introducing new characters to the storyline. Each of them have their own identity on the superpaticipation timeline and helps to make the postings more interesting be it conversations, games or features.

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/clemens.davidtan

An interesting easter egg would be the clothes of my friends, as they were not informed to wear the same outfit. Do spot when those videos were taken.

https://www.facebook.com/nokwann

 

Reflections from this activity is heartfelt and genuine despite the nature of social media presentation. I found this exercise to be tough as it was difficult keeping track of posting and timing, even on a genuine posting terms, having to constantly update my life on social media was not my cup of tea. I even found trouble managing the activity when it was past 3a.m., asking Bryan if he were doing the same. *Which occurs to me after that that I could have included an audience poll for whether if i should sleep or continue updating, but there would not be people awake at that time to do so.

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A glitch

Glitch occurs when there isn’t a clear motive or direction for a collaborative piece of artwork. In this case, we started the photo-editing in the style of the game “Telephone”, passing on the bare minimum of information for the others to work on. The intentional lack of communication in this collaborative work functions (or doesn’t function) as a computer receiving data to portray an image, without information this creates misinformed graphics. This relay eventually leads to different perspective of how the artwork should look like, having little or large inconsistency that can be taken as a form of glitch art, seeing the perfection in imperfection.

In the photographs shown below, each transformation has its own identity as it was made with different intentions. The first transformation was done to create a distinct layer between the foreground, background and subject matter. The second transformation adds in a variety of geometric shapes to separate out the organic form like the hand, also adding a tint of glitchy pixelated effect. The third transformation creates a more abstract plane with more distorted form while the last edit enhances the vibrancy of the composition.

Foreground, background, subject
geometric shapes and pixelation done by Jiaying
abstract forms done by May Thu
vibrant colours

A 3rd space (Micro-Project III) with Research Critique 2

The Third Space exists as the interaction between two individuals, unbounded by the limitations of time and space. As we attempt to dwell into network culture, we investigate this relationship through Facebook Live split screen feature, played out by a few people.

Posted by Joseph Tan on Monday, 5 February 2018

(Begins at 1:30)

In our work, we attempt to visually represent the interaction of different individuals in cyber space. At every moment, there will be one person in the screen, taking turns to jump in and out of the screen. This is as if the individuals are communicating within a network forum, leaving their cyber footsteps behind. At the same time, different individuals can transcend through multiple 3rd spaces, interacting with one another. The closeness and intimacy of the 3rd space can be shrunk by doing actual physical contact, such as doing activities of progressive intensity. We can collapse the barrier of 3rd space by creating an illusion of one identity jumping from the screen. This can be done through a process of wearing identical clothing, masking our face and also doing the same actions.

Process

This project was primarily difficult as we had technical difficulties making the Facebook Live function work. We had initially arranged for the project to be done in a secluded area to minimise the background understanding of our project environment, since our targeted audience is ADM population. This unfamiliar environment would create the necessary effect of jumping through space and time since they cannot visualise the distance between the two environment.

We mitigated this issue by moving back to ADM for this project, which has a stronger WIFI connectivity.

The coordination of this project was also a hassle as we had three members to coordinate the jumping scenes. It took 4 tries before we finalise the arrangement and achieved the desired outcome. However, the extra members did give us an additional manpower to create the effect that we intended to feature. We realised that communication was key in this concept, where we would look at the screen to initiate the command of jump sequentially by a left-right jumping direction.  We finally achieved a level of coordination we thought was ready to be uploaded as our final video, although speckled with a few glitches.

 

Boundaries of Third Space

In the exploration of the different questions posted to us regarding the third space, I went haywire in the research and went into some additional but somehow relevant information. In the questioning of boundaries within the Third Space, I felt that net neutrality and specialised new media company is worth mentioning. Net neutrality is essentially the action of making internet data equally accessible without control or restriction. Since this has been a highly debatable topic revolving around the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal and John Oliver’s vigilante fight for internet equality through Youtube. (A debatable net neutrality supporter) In relations to the Third Space, net neutrality would kill off the sanctity as it creates a specialised tiered data service that limits the freedom to explore within the Third Space. Specialised new media company like Netflix can profit off of net neutrality by paying for the tiered service, driving up competition, prohibiting access of the Internet. This effectively scales down the infinite space of the internet down to what the organisation allows you to.

Digital Divide

I also explored on digital divide, the concept of inequality in the data distribution around the world. This is highly contended especially in the artwork “Guilty Landscapes”, where the artist connects  to the audience live via the Internet to execute his artwork. This artwork could be stumped if the location he was carrying out in had really slow internet connection due to a weak Internet services provider, or even any providers at all. Essentially, digital divide creates a cyber landscape that only hovers around the developed countries, making the Third Space non-existent to the less developed countries. This can be salvaged through sharing of information and resources. The investment of MNCs in such less developed countries could drive up the need to have strong Internet in such places and in terms expand the Third Space’s connectivity.

Essay

A diwo (Micro-project II) with Research Critique

This week we explored on the concept of Do-It-With-Others (DIWO), referencing to many artworks and artists to understand the complexity of this theme. We strive to learn more about its logicality and function, thereafter apply it to our own mini-DIWO project, and provide some after thoughts.

Fear-Love

With our understanding of DIWO, we narrowed down a few pointers that we envisioned for our DIWO project, being: extensive participation of audience that can affects the final artwork, social interaction between audience and artist as well as negating the importance of aesthetic quality.

We came up with our work “Fear-Love”, which is an experimental artwork where we invite audience to draw out the first thought they have when given the themes “Fear” and “Love” separately. The drawings are done in black and pink ink;”Fear” drawings done in pink ink while “Love” drawings done in black ink to reverse the colour psychology. The goal of this artwork is for audience  to comprehend the fundamental process of psychological functions like fear and love, and comparing it to one another when they see each others’ drawings.

Outcome

With the final work presented above, we split the themes into two panels. The post-mortem review for the audience would indicate the effectiveness of the artwork, whereby audience can look at one another’s deepest fear or love, thereby making interaction with the fear/love as a conversation starter.

Drawbacks

In the spirit of being truthful to the purpose of art as DIWO intends, we have many improvements to be made for our experiment after the first trial. Firstly, there should be a controlled environment to prevent audience from interacting before the execution of the artwork, thereby making the final work biased as the project aims to be spontaneous in nature. Secondly, the aforementioned biased discussion would take away the artist’s control of the artwork due to a unintentional curating through the audience’s discussion, this would be discussed in my essay listed below. Lastly, there is no anonymity when audience are taking turn to draw out their greatest fear/love, preventing the impact of the post-mortem review.

(Controlled environment to negate shifting responsibility of artist and curator)

 

sheep
Possible solutions

After the readings on various artists, we have seen many examples of DIWO, and that provided a great inspiration on how DIWO projects should be ran to eliminate problems and expedite effectiveness. We can reference to the “Sheep Market” (http://www.thesheepmarket.com/), where the drawings are uploaded to the web to include anonymity in the participation, as well as garner effective labour instead of asking the audience to draw one by one. This solution eliminates all the issues mentioned above.

Afterthought

In the after thoughts of making our own DIWO project and understanding its roots as a participatory art movement, I have gained insights of how labour-intended artworks proceed. This is especially because our work required the involvement of other people to draw for us, which is similar to the “Sheep Market”. After reading Marc Garrett’s essay, we were exposed to the idea of trickle down authority over the art industry and this led on to the monetary facade of the art world. This prompted the thought of how DIWO can be an outlier off-shooting from the main economy of commercial art.

spots “by” Damien Hirst

In this sense, there is a difference between how Damien Hirst or Andy Warhol hires people to execute their artworks for them. Andy Warhol (who explored mass-produced art in the 1960s) explored art with his friends in this art studio called the Factory. Damien Hirst, a contemporary artist, who is famous for his spot paintings, hires other people to paint his most famous art pieces. According to Business Insiders, out of 1340 paintings, he only made 25 pieces himself. In this situation, how does one Do-It-With-Others art piece differ to another if there is monetary transaction involved, even if the people painting the works are so called volunteering,  especially for a notable artist like Hirst, where even an internship possibility could mean a career boost?

I would assume that the only difference in the artworks in relation to DIWO stems from a perspective argument. DIWO is a highly saintly process that inculcates a more holistic approach to art-making compared to the economic drive in Hirst’s works. If and when we approach our audience with money to draw for our project Fear-Love, the work itself should and no longer be categorised as DIWO as the sanctity of volunteer-based participation is corrupted.

Overall, it was a diwow.