February 8, 2018

There were 3 posts published on February 8, 2018 (this is page 1 of 1).

ive 90t g1itch-ed.

I’ve Got G1iTch

 

Original Picture

Touch up by Rei

Touch up by Bala

Touch up by Shu (Final)

In class today, we learnt and discovered about collective art and glitch. For in class project, we took images of our classmates and used photoshop to glitch them up!

Glitch, disturbing, provoking and horrifying. Beautifully Dangerous.

I echo Rosa Menkman’s description of glitch. It is noise compiled together, piles of neon colours, the mismatch of colours that draws our attention solely because of its oddly satisfying destruction. Looking at my final piece finished up by Shu, although I can no longer easily sift out my facial features, the final product is as Rosa Menkman would describe as “a creation of something original”.

When embarking on this glitch experiment in class, I have no idea how the final products will look like, but looking at all of them in class and on OSS, I understood the uncertainty in glitch art, in creating them.

..fight genres and expectations

Moving away from standard photo editing applications, we were challenged to go onto Photoshop to glitch up each other photos then passing it on for another make over. As I was handling my friends’ photos, I had no agenda. No motive of making it look aesthetically pleasing, or whatsoever. I went with my gut feeling, go as the cursor goes and tried on any filter, any action button that could modify the image. As it got passed on, from one classmate to another, the modifications piled up, glitching the entire image, some still recognizable, some were beyond recognition.

Conclusions

Afterall, the experience taught me the non-default, random, constantly changing nature of glitch. Embracing the flaws, just like Wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy of accepting imperfections, and going beyond the conventional, cookie-cutter filters, to explore the unlimited possibilities of a new paradigm of aesthetic.

Telegarden // A Change in Perspective

When we hear the word “gardening”, it usually involves physical soil space, a hand trowel, seeds, watering can. What the Telegarden team have created in 1995 has totally changed our perspective of gardening, replacing our hands with cursors and mouse clicks. Each action in the Telegarden, totally controllable at the comfort of your home, through a screen.

This web-interface allows netizens to control a robotic arm to manoeuvre around the soil area of the Telegarden through the lens of a camera attached onto the arms of the robots. Netizens are able to plant seeds, water the plants and observe the growth of the plants.

Below is a brief overview of the entire Telegarden project:-

The Ultimate Contrast

What the entire Telegarden experience gives its users is the stark contrast of speed using the internet and gardening. On the internet, it is almost immediate that your demand is made, merely with a click on the mouse. On retrospect, the act of planting a seed does not guarantee the sprouting of leaves and stem the next moment. It takes real, human time, days, and weeks, even months. You simply cannot rush gardening, not even when it is done online.

“Gardening” Attachment

It is beyond absurd to know that “gardeners” over the internet do get attached to their plants planted in the Telegarden especially when they might never get to see them in real life. As seen in the video attached above, some got a little over-protective when another “gardeners” started planting their seeds near their plants. I would have thought that “gardening” in the Telegarden was merely another form of play and side activity for the netizens.

“Il faut cultiver notre jardin.” Voltaire

We must cultivate our garden.

Telegarden-ing fulfilled the paradox of online gardening created by two different activities – surfing the internet and gardening. One stagnant and idle, another that requires physical strength and patience, this experience is fresh. With the rise of internet users, Telegarden is a subtext for people to not neglect what we used to do without the internet. It is a Third Space for the social interaction of the “gardeners” who go online to check out on the plants at the Telegarden, while “gardening” together on an online platform.

“The Telegarden creates a physical garden as an environment to stage social interaction and community in virtual space. The Telegarden is a metaphor for the care and feeding of the delicate social ecology of the net.” — Randall Packer, San Jose Museum of Art, April 1998.

Almost like a mass gathering of green fingers from all across the world, Telegarden not just created a totally different experience of gardening, but also gave a different outlook on the internet. Like what Randall Packer said, “a metaphor for the care and feeding of the delicate social ecology of the net”.

Additional Readings

The Distant Gardener: What Conversations in the Telegarden Reveal About Human-Telerobotic Interaction

The Telegarden

Let’s Hang Out Together, Alone! // The Telematic Embrace

Connected to Adobe Connect together as a class, we were all immersed in our devices, busying signing up and starting up the application. That marks the end of our human contact. Migrating all forms of contact to the Adobe Connect application, this is the beginning of us hanging out together, while being alone!

Let’s Finger Touch!

Our attempt at letting our index finger touch with the person beside us.

The get-together as a class at the Third Space brought us closer as individuals than merely seating in class learning about the Third Space and not experiencing it ourselves. The following two tasks we have to do allowed us to have interactions with our classmates without physically being close to them.

The totally arbitrary line-up of the screens gave us all a partner to work with to have a complete Index Finger Touch as a class. For me, I worked with Jocelyn with the Index Finger Touch! In fact we were seated a few seats away for that particular lesson itself. We might not necessarily be the closest in the class, yet we experienced a closer connection in class through the activity in the Third Space.

Our attempt at making our fingers touch with the person above or below us.

Similarly, for the second task, we attempted at making our index fingers touch with the person above or below us on the screen. I was paired with Felicia. Although we were actually seated beside each other for that particular lesson itself, the experience was different altogether.

Let’s Find Something Pink/Blue!

Our attempt at finding a pink object.

Our attempt at finding a blue object.

As a team effort, we all had to find an object that is pink then blue and attempt to make the entire screen pink and blue the next. We all had to find an object of the colour or risk being left out. When given the task, we all frantically tried to find an object of that chrome.

For these two tasks to be executed well, we had to find commonalities between all of us. We went playful with it, and had to negotiate on a colour more common that we can work with. The Third Space has allowed us to DIWO (Do It With Others), creating a new platform for play to happen. Ostensibly extending the area of play from brick and mortar to the virtual Third Space.

Let’s Embrace Telematic-ally

All in all, this micro-project done in class showed me a new paradigm of collaboration on the Third Space and creating a new platform of play for this technologically savvy generation of ours. With such platforms, no doubt our quality and quantity of communication has increased, with more human connection without the physical touch.