ART – belladaiyunlang

April 22, 2018April 22, 2018

Third Space Fallacy

A Third Space Fallacy is an experimental interaction performance on third and first space that combines the responses collated on the third space through Instagram polls and stories to curate the next move in a friendship conflict between two girls, Bella and Daphne. To make the entire performance as real as possible, both girls had to put up an act in the span of 1 week in the first space, when questions arise from the people around them. Also, to stage that this is not part of our project for Experimental Interaction, our group have created another Instagram account @abracadabrrun, collating uninformed decisions made by our followers, which is part of the narrative of the death of Bella.

Conceptualization

Initially, I had an idea of having a social media game at Changi Airport, however, we rethink after receiving the comment of my critique on the online Symposium, Are We in LOVE with the Connectedness? from our professor Randall Packer.

“Very interesting how you expressed your thoughts on interaction in such personal terms: how we engage emotionally in the third space. This has been one of the key ideas we have discussed this semester, how meaningful interaction can be achieved despite geographical separation. Wasn’t this proved when you elected not to interact in the chat for Annie Abrahams’ performance, and found yourself removed and disconnected. This implies that is direct interaction that creates the quality of engagement in any form of interactive art. Perhaps it would be interesting and helpful to your thesis to applied this to Blast Theory’s work: how the players and performers engage in something dynamic, arresting, and challenging in both physical and virtual spaces. ”

– Comment on Are We in LOVE with the Connectedness? Randall Packer

Randall Packer mentioned that the emotional engagement in the third space has been one of the key ideas we learned in this semester. It got my group mates and me into thinking. How can we emotionally engage our audience? The answer is DRAMA. Some people love drama because it is something that might not really happen in real life or the exaggerated version of the real-life event. It catches people’s eyes, trigger their emotions, and sometimes it is just entertainment.

We chose Instagram as the main media for our piece. We decided to use our personal account in order to make the drama seems real, and let people participate unconsciously. Thus, we could receive real emotions from our audience, or while interacting with them.

Firstly, we scripted the characters and the rough/possible storyline. The two characters, Bella (acted by Bella) and Daphne (acted by Daphne) are the bullied and bully in this friendship drama. They are old friends from Secondary School. Daphne had been taking advantage of the kindness and dependability of Bella since they met. Then, they happened to be on the same course and university. The conflict started with Bella exposing her toxic friendship on her Insta-story. The rough storyline is that Bella expressed her anger towards the friendship, and asking for solutions online, while Daphne got annoyed by clingy Bella and also started ranting and asking for help on her social media. The ending of the drama could be happy, sad, tragic, and etc. depended on the choices our audience made.

Execution

We only had two weeks for this group project, and we started building up the tension on Instagram a week before the critique day.

I posted the first story to complain about the toxic friendship and 45 out of 145 viewers voted for this post. The opinions are make it clear and just let it go. Participant Including strangers as my account is public.

Also, people were replying to this post. 4 people were showing concern, 1 was curious and 1 was giving the constructive solution to my situation. Then we decided our next move base on the result we obtain.

Daphne also posted emotional stories and ask her followers to vote for her.

The social media rant lasted for days until my followers voted me to find her in real life. I found Daphne at Jurong Point by stalking her Insta-stories. We got into a fight there as her followers voted her to confront me. She left me there with hurtful words as she was angry that I kept following her and contacting her.

In order to make it more convincing as people were doubting that our drama is our Experimental Project, we made an Instagram account and used our initial idea to create a fake game. Also, the blind decision people had made actually led to my suicide and the way I suicide.

Our social media drama reached the climax with my last emotional posts. I left social media for 18 hours, as I committed suicide in the third space. I received 5 replies that showed concerns and other messages from friends.

The game ended with the launch of our trailer video on youtube and our message.

We received emotional replies from our friends after they found out the truth. One friend actually told me that she did not participate in the voting but she actually followed the whole story.

Discovery & Exploration

This piece of social media performance is experimental, as it is only 30% staged. The audience has the most control over the narrative. Our intention is to test the impact of social media, how it affects our life emotionally and create the awareness that our behaviors on social media could lead to serious consequences. We were surprised that how powerful Insta-story is. The image and text we created were able to convince people around us even our closed friends who see us almost every day. It is interesting how easy we could shape our digital identity that is totally different from our real personality. Also, people actually brought the third space drama into the first space to engage more people. They talked about the story and also tried to have their opinion towards our situation. Daphne and I needed to be in our characters in real life.

To conclude this project, we applied what we learned in this semester into this social media performance. We exposed our emotions online and created our new digital identities. We engaged our audience unconsciously in both first and third space. Everyone DIWOed this piece of performance, as we, the artists only created the outline and platform. Lastly, I think the role of artists is to make the world a better regardless of our area of disciplines. Furtherfield helped refugee through the power of Internet, raised the awareness of the environmental issue, Media Burnt was conveying the issue of mass media, and Hasan Elahi spread his story of discrimination online. As young artists, we also like to raise the question of how we should use social media, and how we can avoid social media tragedy to happen in the future through this project.

April 11, 2018April 11, 2018

#DDDSG ZINE DESIGN PROCESS

FIRST DRAFT OF MY ZINE

The first draft of the zine was printed out on the normal paper. The theme is celebrating design at HV neighborhood based on the new research and observation at the annual event at Holland Village during the Singapore Design Week.

However, the first draft is lacking in the “celebrating design elements”. Also, it seems to be a zine for children instead of design lovers. Moreover, the design style is not consistent, and the pages seem to be stand-alone posters. Thus, I worked on the narrative and style for the second draft.

SECOND DRAFT OF MY ZINE

Photos OF #DDDSG

I started to filter the photos that I took at the event to find the focus of my zine. I decided to pay more attention to one of the houses that opened for the exhibition. That house was opened for EYEYAH!, which showcased works including t-shirts, painting, and installations of over 30 artists. At the second floor, there is one room where the visitor could use the VR googles to find the logo of the exhibition around the room. I was able to capture a moment that a little girl was playing with it.

I decided to use the VR google in my zine cover to make it fun and eye-catching.

I also used the elements and colours on the street for the zine design.

Further, another room in this house has walls of artworks done by artist and the visitors are free to draw and write on the wall. It gave me inspiration for the style of my zine design.

INSPIRATIONS

Combinophy is a photography series made by Romanian graphic designer Cristiana Costin. After having captured daily life scenes, she combines her analog photographs with digital illustrations, transforming images into surreal settings

MY ZINE DESIGN process

The pattern is created for the location Chip Bee Garden. I used the elements from the chip, bee, and garden (flower).

TEST PRINT

I test printed the first four pages on different papers with different printers.

The Marble White 120gsm paper seems to be the ideal paper out of all. It gives the metallic effect which matches the theme of the zine design.

Feedback

The title of the cover page is not interesting enough to match the zine design. I might think of a new one instead of putting the name of the location. Also, I will explore more different handwriting title font to get the one that matches the text font. Moreover, the style will be spread into the rest of the pages. Lastly, adjust the composition to achieve the visual hierarchy.

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018

Zine Research – Holland Village

REFLECTION

I had trips to Holland Village during the day and night. I planned to create the atmosphere of Holland Village using abstract forms. However, I only capture the general ideas of Hollan Village which are known by the majority, and uninteresting. Thus, I decided to explore the street party event at Holland Village and find out the unique side of Holland Village.

February 19, 2018February 19, 2018

DArtWO – Make the World a Better Place

Furtherfield is a non-profit organization and community that was found by Ruth Carlow and Marc Garrett in 1996. It was created to reach out a wider audience without the constraints of the physical gallery spaces at London. Furtherfield was a small website where the artist, technologist, and academics have the freedom to DIWO (DO IT WITH OTHERS) to share the resources and contribute to the human knowledge through the integration of first, second, third or multiple spaces. It was expanded around the world later on. Furtherfield also has physical space, the Gallery, and Lab in the London’s Finsbury Park. It is a platform in the urban park where people can explore the network culture.

Screenshot of the Adobe Connect Lecture With Marc Garrett

We had Marc Garrett to be our guest speaker on Adobe Connect lecture with our professor Randall Packer on 16th February 2018. Marc Garrett gave us a better insight of Furtherfield, Maker Culture, and shared with us some projects that are supported by Furtherfield. The major idea of Furtherfield is making art for a better society.

For example, an ongoing project supported by Furtherfield, called ‘Seeds From Elsewhere’ by They Are Here which gathering young asylum seekers and refugees, and others. Each of them has a piece of land to grow plants or food from their own homeland. This project is creating an environment that embraces, maintains and produce the diversity of the residency status in the current society. Further, this project started less than a month after Brexit, when the majorities are against migrants in the UK. ‘Seeds From Elsewhere’ is demonstrating that the DIWO culture should not just exist in the small garden community, yet it applies to all scales of activities even beyond the scale of the government. The garden itself has multiple functions. Firstly, it could be a comfortable place for the young refugees to hang out. Secondly, it might provide job opportunities in the future. Lastly, it could be used to address anti-immigration.

“The parallels in the rhetoric surrounding foreign plants and those of foreign peoples are striking … The first parallel is that aliens are ‘other’ … Second is the idea that aliens / exotic plants are everywhere, taking over everything … The third parallel is the suggestion that they are growing in strength and number … The fourth parallel is that aliens are difficult to destroy and will persist because they can withstand extreme situations … The fifth parallel is that aliens are ‘aggressive predators and pests and are prolific in nature, reproducing rapidly’ … Finally, like human immigrants, the greatest focus is on their economic costs because it is believed that they consume resources and return nothing.” – The latter quotes biologist Banu Subramniam, noting that these criteria ‘resonate unfortunately with xenophobic anti-immigration language in the United States and Europe’

HARVEST by Julian Oliver https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest

Moreover, another artwork that Marc Garrett shared with us is HARVEST by Julian Oliver, a work of critical engineering and computational climate art. The two-meter high wind turbine transforms wind energy into the electricity required to meet the demanding task of Zcash, A decentralized and open-source digital currency. All the profits the HARVEST earned goes to the non-profit climate change research organizations to support the studies. In 2017, HARVEST was exhibited for two months in the museum. It supported three non-profit climate change research organizations at the end of the exhibition.

Last but not least, the Adobe Connect lecture ended with the Q&A session with Marc Garrett. As an art student living in the 21st century, I was not sure if my role is simply creating the painting, sculpture, and objects that are aesthetically appealing to the viewers or there are more responsibilities on my shoulders. Therefore, I asked the following question:

Marc Garrett answered that the consciousness of the environment is essential for artists. Technology is deeply influencing people’s behaviour nowadays, yet we must be aware of nature. As technology cannot survive without the survival of nature. Randall Packer added on that artist should be engaged with the society, connect with the issue, and invest in the process of working with others like what Furtherfield had done. Such as the ‘Seeds From Elsewhere’ project mentioned earlier. All in all, the role of artists is not just making this world more beautiful tangibly but probably a place where we can live with others peacefully.

REFERENCES

https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest

Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, Do It With Others (DIWO): Participatory Media in the Furtherfield Neighbourhood

January 30, 2018February 1, 2018

The Mother of Facetime

On a November evening in 1980, a remarkable performance art, Hole in Space was held on the two sides the United States. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz had their two life-sized screens installed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and the department store at the open-air Shopping Center in Los Angeles. The audience at Los Angeles and New York City could see and speak to each other through satellite technologies. The audience was extremely excited to interact with people across the state. As it was not easy to travel 2789 miles (est. from east to west in the United States around the 1980s. Even now, it will take estimated 5 hours to travel from Los Angeles to New York City by air. Also, video call was only common for consumers in the early 2000s.

The travel distance between Los Angeles and New York City https://www.google.com.sg/maps/dir/New+York,+NY,+USA/Los+Angeles,+CA,+USA/@36.349707,-114.2788323,4z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c24fa5d33f083b:0xc80b8f06e177fe62!2m2!1d-74.0059728!2d40.7127753!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2c75ddc27da13:0xe22fdf6f254608f4!2m2!1d-118.2436849!2d34.0522342

On the first day of the performance, the audience was unsure about what was going on with no instruction or signs were provided. They started to interact with strangers on the screen to clarify their thoughts. Interestingly, from 04:50 in the video above. We can see the change in audience’s body language that they moved closer to the screen. They were trying to imitate the physical interaction, and chatting casually with each other, although they might be complete strangers. A middle age male audience even questioned the interviewer if the people he saw on the screen are actors.

On the second day, the audience went to the installation to participate in the performance through the word of mouth. A male audience wearing sunglasses declared that he heard it from his friend. I think this performance art had encouraged the interaction beyond the performance to the certain extent. On the last day, most people decided to come after mass media announcement to meet their friends, family and loved ones, just like how we Facetime our friends nowadays. The reaction of the audience likely reached the climax of the whole performance. They were laughing, screaming, and shouting at each other. You can see the audience jumping and kneeling on the floor to express their excitement near the end of the video attached.

In my opinion, this performance art is a success, as it encouraged audience engagement. Where the audience were fully involved in this piece. The setting of the performance is the key to encourage people to be interested in participating.

“The sculpture gives form to a social space that is at once displaced and intimate. People are enthusiastic to make contact with others in a much more uninhibited manner than could be found in the normal urban environs of New York or LA.”

Firstly, there is no description and instruction which created curiosity among the audience. Secondly, the performance was held in the public space with its life-sized scale screen to attract attention. Lastly, it was able to create emotions, such as happiness and excitement when the parents saw their daughter on the screen (from 10:25 in the video). The artist’s’ role here is to create the space for the audience to participate in the performance instead of letting the audience watching the artists chatting using satellite technologies. Last but not least, this performance was probably erasing the geographical boundaries, and pulling people closer, even strangers through the “third place”.

References

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/hole-in-space/

http://www.ecafe.com/museum/history/ksoverview2.html

The Third Space

Foth, Marcus. 2012. From Social Butterfly To Engaged Citizen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.