This is a screenshot of my desktop – observe the mess (and the multiple screenshots)
In my defence, I have everything I need on my desktop itself, notes, reminders (on the memo pads) and screenshots I need for my OSS posts for other modules. Everything is readily accessible and I do not have to go back and forth my finder to search for the applications. Likewise, this shows that I am always ready for whatever I am doing, bringing with me more things than I actually need. I always find myself having more things than I actually need in my bag. (waterbottle, jacket, tissues, etc)
Everything is put against a pale yellow (my favourite colour) background to allow me to stay focused. I know how and when to be focused and when to have fun. So when it is time to focus, I know what gets me in the mood to be doing work.
The many Google Chromes at the bottom right is for different things that I am doing or researching. One on OSS and school research, the other is on YouTube and my personal stuff! I often categorize my things. Similar to my phone, I group my applications based on their functions. At home, my dresses are placed together, my T-shirts and shorts are placed together. Hence, I am a person who will categorize my things.
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.
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.
Tele-Stroll: a walk, talk and sharing of two spaces in two disparate locations.
3, 2, 1 and we are live!
A social broadcasting project, Tele-stroll: Series of Acts shows two girls accompanying each other home through going live on Instagram and putting up a media performance for their viewers and for each other.
“See you on the other side”
The “third-space”, a virtual platform, brings people from different locations together. This project highlighted the “third-space” where the two girls created a stage for a series of acts.
Acts and Synchronization
The 13 minutes long social broadcasting experience consists of 4 acts together with the synchronization of actions throughout.
Act 1: Hand Dance (01.21 to 01.43)
Ideation
An unconventional dance movement that involves mainly the hands and fingers has become increasingly popular. Taking one screen per person, Zhen Qi and I learnt the hand dance moves for the first act.
Below is a video of the tutorial we followed for hand dance act:-
With large difficulties in aligning the screens and synchronizing with each other, we scraped a large portion of the hand dance and incorporated countings to be in-sync with each other.
Act 2: Humming and the Invisible Piano (04.50 to 05.05)
We hummed along to the chorus of The Saints Go Marching. Since it is a walk home from school, we thought singing tunes would kill the boredom and mundane walk. Adding a little spice to it, the split screen function allowed us to create an arm, playing the invisible piano to the tune. That concludes our second act.
Act 3: The Invasion of the Bird (05.09 to 05.39)
Ideation
Living in a green city, we often hear the birds in the trees and we thought we add that into our walk home. Act 3 uses our hands to form a bird like figure on the screen. Whistling to mimic the sounds of the birds, we cued for the “bird” to take over the screen, as if to take over our social broadcast.
Act 4: Emoji Face! (13.00 to 13.17)
Ideation
With emojis getting so much limelight, even the creation of emoji pillows, we thought how can we not include emoji faces with the split screen! We then created a series of emojis,
Lastly, with two friends, how can we forget the heart emoji! Then we created our own friendship heart gesture, simply by tilting our hands downwards from the last gesture, bidding goodbye.
Synchonization came into the picture throughout, like placing the opening the doors of ADM at the start and completing an image of a zebra crossing albeit from a different location altogether.
Conclusions
Despite the numerous dry runs we have to make and having to deal with the lag time of the live, the overall experience was something new because prior to this assignment, I have yet to try going live on my social media platforms. Tapping onto the split screen nature of the live stream to create a totally different experience with the collaboration of both parties live was a fresh experience.
Going live on Facebook is not necessarily the first thing I expect out of the first lesson of Experimental Interaction. Nonetheless, it was spontaneous. I did my live broadcasting in a vlog (video blogging) style. The content was the one I was worried about, what am I going to say? What am I going to video? Will it be interesting for the audience? I went ahead talked about what was going on at the moment, for example the barbecue that was going to take place.
Seeing it on the Broadcast wall
Seeing all our videos on the broadcast wall after we were all done with the live broadcasting was a whole different experience. Prof Randall talked about The Third Space, a space (virtual) that converges two different spaces into one, which is something that did not occur to me, yet clicked so well after hearing it. The Third Space is so relevant in today’s globalised world that keeps us connected, despite the distance.
