Tag Archives: DIWO

Final Project: Split Chef

Introducing Split Chef

Split Chef is what the name suggests – a chef split into two. It is a game that is played by these two splits, where one will take on the role as the Artist, while the other takes on the role as the actual Chef. Their goal is to work with the other to prepare a dish, although not without some twists – both players will not be in the same room at any point of time, will only be connected via live-streaming phone screens and will not be allowed any form of verbal communication in discussing the recipe. How the game works is that the Artist will have to draw the received recipe/instructions within limited time, of which the Chef will then have to execute based on his/her interpretations of the drawings.

Roles

Apart from the players, we have four moderators – Brendan, Bryan, Joel and myself. We occasionally switched our roles, so at the end of it we all moderated or filmed in some way.

With the Chef
Brendan: Cameraman
Bryan: Moderator (Assist player if in need of help/ensure smooth flow of game)

With the Artist
Joel: Cameraman + Timer
Dion: Moderator (Provide recipe/instructions)

DIWO

The game focuses on an artistic co-creation, where the making of the final dish is a result of both parties’ inputs. Laying it out, the Artist interprets the instruction, draws it for the Chef, the Chef interprets the drawing, and executes the instruction.

Additionally, an audience on the livestream increases the DIWO aspect where their added interpretations of the drawings help the Chef make decisions on his/her execution, therefore also being ‘co-artists’ of the final dish.

In a Third Space

Instagram has recently allowed for two accounts to share the same live stream, much like Facebook Live, which we used to have information be relayed from one person to another. We decided on Instagram as our third space as it was the platform that we are most active and have the most followers on, hence allowing for the highest possible audience engagement during our live show.

Glitched

Glitch occurs in several ways throughout the game.

A dish is normally believed to be prepared by one chef, or at least if there are several, in the same kitchen. However, the planned procedure of preparing the dish in this game is already glitched, in the sense that the dish is being prepared by two people, in two separate rooms that are no where near each other.

On top of that, the miscommunication that occurs throughout the game where the Chef interprets the wrong instructions through the drawings makes more glitches to the dish, turning the planned dish into a whole other dish.

 

A Cooking Reality Show: Split Chef

Recipe

The final recipe that we decided on was a Chicken Quesadilla, which was the same one from our test run, just with a few adjustments. We initially expected this to be quite an easy dish to complete as it only involves one cooking method, however, our three runs (incl. test run) have shown some very contrasting outcomes on the very ends of the spectrum. 

From our test run, we also decided to keep in the aspect of throwing in three random ingredients (bananas, macaroni and lime) into the shopping list so as to throw off our players in trying to predict what they will be preparing. This worked really well, because one of our Artists didn’t even realise what the dish was until it was near the end…

 

Round 1: The Noobs

Artist: Jacob | Chef: Tiffany

The initial idea was to compare a round between strangers and friends (this pair being strangers), to see if relationship matters in a situation like this. We scouted for players with the basic skills of drawing and cooking, but were very surprised when we found out how much Jacob can’t actually draw or Tiffany* cook. After seeing the drastic outcome of this first round, we decided to compare skill levels instead.

*Tiffany: She had told Bryan that she was able to cook rice, traditionally in a pot. Bryan thought that if she could do such a thing then she probably has some basic cooking skills. On the way to Giant to start the game, she told Bryan, “I only know how to cook rice”.

Highlights of Round 1

 

Drawings in order:
An onion, bananas, BBQ sauce, a chicken

Items bought by Tiffany:
Garlic, bananas, sausages, peanuts

Tiffany had identified the onion drawing as an onion, but had bought garlic instead. The bananas look like a stool. It didn’t occur to Jacob how important the symbolism of a bottle was, so his drawing of skewers made the audience and Tiffany think he meant sausages. No one could see that Jacob was drawing the side view of a full chicken (quite a good drawing, actually), and everyone thought it was a plate with a peanut and a carrot… and thus our main ingredient for the dish became peanuts.

A few of the comments that were trying to help Tiffany with Jacob’s drawing of tortillas, along with some very unhelpful but entertaining comments of Naomi scolding Jacob for his skills, and Nok Wan just being… Nok Wan.

Here is Tiffany looking at the drawing of butter and being utterly confused. Someone in the audience had actually mentioned butter, and I even prompted and asked if she’s read the comments. Apparently she did, but she got eggs instead.

It was her third time ever cracking an egg!

Slicing, salt and peppering peanuts instead of chicken. What we realised here was that, the chefs had to remember the ingredients that they bought according to their respective drawings, so that they would be able to re-interpret the cooking instructions. (i.e. She bought peanuts instead of a chicken. Remember that the chicken drawing = peanuts, so when the Artist tells her to slice the chicken, she can slice the peanuts accordingly).

The moment where Joel and I on ADM’s side found out that she had bought garlic instead of an onion, sending us to laugh our heads off… But then we realised she didn’t know how to chop up garlic at all, and we were so scared for her hands. There ended up being full cloves of garlic in the final dish.

Pan Burning #1: Here, you can see what led to the first crazy burn of Joel’s very expensive pan. She had not been instructed to put all the ingredients into the pan yet, but she did, including the cheese. On top of that, you can see how she decided to only add the oil after putting down all the ingredients. She fried for way too long, what I think happened was that she was waiting for the moderators to cue the next drawing when instead we were waiting for her to give us the OK cue to move on to the next step. Therefore the burn… And as though that burn wasn’t enough,

Pan Burning #2: She went ahead to fry more cheese, eggs and sausages on top of the burn!

And voila, this was the final outcome – A stir fry made of ingredients not even part of the recipe.
Eggs, sausages, garlic cloves, tomatoes, half-cooked shiitake mushrooms, and peanuts!

 

Round 2: The Pros

Artist: Alena | Chef: Hannah

Hannah can cook, and Alena can draw. Since we initially wanted to compare friends vs. strangers, we wanted Hannah to be the Artist while Alena be the Chef, so that their skill level would be equally as good as Jacob and Tiffany’s (back when we thought they had basic skills). However, seeing how skilled Jacob and Tiffany actually were, we decided to let Hannah and Alena take the role of their strengths.

Round 2 went amazingly well, with almost every ingredient bought being correct, and the dish turning out to be oh-so-delicious. The only reason why any of the ingredients were wrong/not bought was because they were sold out.

Highlights of Round 2

With Hannah’s natural instincts as a cook, she was able to identify ingredients much better than Tiffany was able to, even when the drawings were not fantastically resemblant.

While Alena ended up drawing exactly the same thing as Jacob for butter, Hannah was able to identify what it was unlike Tiffany who bought a carton of eggs.

Hannah was initially confused with the drawings of the lime and tortilla, looking at oranges (she got a lime in the end) for tortilla and tortillas for lime. The confusion between the two came as somewhat an advantage, because that was when she realised she mixed the two drawings up and was actually still getting the right ingredients anyway.

Unlike Jacob’s full chicken, Alena was smart to use symbolisms, drawing an easily identifiable drumstick and fillet. Hannah understood this as chicken fillet, but there was no stock left, so we instructed her to get the closest alternative. The only fillets left were salmon which was too expensive, so she decided to get chicken nuggets instead (which she then accidentally bought fish nuggets without checking, but they tasted good anyway!).

Here, we can observe Hannah’s superb cooking skills! Despite the lack of a proper chicken fillet, she was able to adapt the instructions to her fish nuggets very well – slicing them up very nicely, same for the mushrooms. Despite her lack of experience in making quesadillas, she was still able to instinctively prepare them without going against any of the instructions given. For instance, the instruction was to place the final tortilla wrap on top, but she went ahead to use her hands to press it down so that the whole thing would stick together properly.

   

And the real voila! A BBQ fish nugget quesadilla! It tasted as good as it looks.

They were very happy with the results, and so were we, because we hadn’t had anything to eat for the past few hours while running the game.

Also, this wasn’t part of the actual game, but check out Hannah’s nugget flipping skills:

 

Reflection

There were overall many things that happened, and many things to learn.

In respect to DIWO, third space and glitch:
I personally feel that the concepts were brought out really well through the game, and was actually what made the game keep going. Without the audience who gave altogether some helpful, some not and some entertaining comments, the game would have been much more ‘dry’ where the Artist (and moderators) would not have anything to be entertained by other than the Chef’s doings. It was also nice to see that the interpretations by our audience could affect the outcome of the game, because one change in ingredient choice would change the entire dish at the end, and that’s where glitch comes into play.

The glitches that occurred in the transferring of instructions from the Artist to the Chef was what made the game unique to itself, and also entertaining. One mistake made by the artist, leads to a mistake in interpretation, leads to a mistake in the cooking process, leads to a mistake in the final dish. As observed in the first round, one mistake could snowball into 100 other ones, and that’s what kept up the entertainment in the game, because we were all watching the start of a disaster to its end. Comparing the two rounds, it seemed as though the second round was much more ‘boring’, because of how well Hannah and Alena were doing. It’s like they were having their own, perfect cooking show, which could of course serve as entertainment, but seeing things go wrong still manages to capture people’s attention better for some reason.

Through the process of this final EI project, my biggest takeaway is in its preparation.

We were highly unprepared for our test run (view post here), because rather than having everything set out before the test run (i.e. settle recipe, location’s connectivity, equipment etc.), we decided to do it all at the same time, resulting in the waste of a few hours. There were also many unforeseen circumstances as discussed in previous posts. From all these, I’ve learnt that it’s always better to be over-prepared than under, AKA it’s always better to be kiasu. If need be, come up with an entire rundown of the day’s worth of events, much like how film productions do. By planning out every single thing that we are going to do in that day, chances of missing something out that could hinder the whole process would be much lower.

I’ve also learnt that not all mistakes are bad, and that some could actually make things better (other than the glitches discussed). By not properly checking the skill levels of our players, we ended up changing the concept of our comparison on the spot, only after realising that our players were not how we planned them to be. While this could be bad planning, our mistake allowed us to end up with a much more hilarious process, as well as a clearer comparison between the two groups, because I don’t think the fact of being friends and strangers affected the outcome much.

All in all, while Interactive Media/ Events have never really been my thing since getting some experience of it back in poly (as I’d much prefer just sitting down behind a screen), I’ve really enjoyed the process of this final project because I actually managed to see the taught concepts come to live, and they happened so organically.

So, thank you Lei, for the pizza, and this great year! 🙂 🙁

 

 

Symposium Hyperessay

Art of the Networked Practice: Online Symposium

Having never attended an event through third space before, the online symposium hosted on Adobe Connect was a rather intriguing experience for me. It was surely interesting to see how artists around the world practiced the concepts that we have only just picked up through the semester, including DIWO, third space and glitch art. The performances provided were no doubt abstract, and while it was difficult to come to my own conclusions about how I felt about the performances, the live discussions that took place during the live performances definitely did open my mind up to different interpretations.

Overall, this essay will analyse how the use of third space to bring across messages to audiences from around the world can be seen as both facilitating and obstructing.

DAY 1 SYMPOSIUM: ENTANGLED BY ANNIE ABRAHAMS

On the first day of the symposium was a live webcam performance put up by Annie Abrahams along with seven other performers from around the globe, titled “Entanglement”. The piece was essentially about investigating how humans can be together, while being separated, through  the online world. In order to practice DIWO, the performers had to accept the glitches that came together with the use of a third space such as time lags. Through Abraham’s blog, I have learnt that not all of these artists had even met before in real life, nor have they all performed together before.

The whole performance consisted of constant changing of random objects on screen by the performers, along with prepared phrases relating to the individuals’ own idea of politics as well as voices to create a sound environment.

Screencap from Entangled

As discussed by Marc Garrett and mentioned in my first research critique, DIWO “examines the grey areas of creative control, the nuances of power exchange and what this means for independent thinking artists and collectives working within collaborative contexts, socially, culturally and ethically”. DIWO is practiced strongly here, as we can see how each individual holds equal power in the creation of the performance where their choice of object shown, phrase said and sound made is what builds the environment.

Some phrases mentioned include:
“You are our only hope now. Resistance fully supports you as our leader.”
“Tactics, comrades. Tactics.”
“Take me to your leader.”
“The machine repeats what its told.”
“Many of my favourite are not artists”

I personally found this performance intriguing as the phrases mentioned and objects simultaneously shown had no correlation at all, or at least towards anyone who was not the performer. It seems as though this was also a practice of glitch art, where glitch is defined as “an interruption that shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse” in Glitch Studies Manifesto. Perhaps, towards the performer, the object could have held meaning that related to his/her choice of political phrase, yet towards everyone else, it seemed more like random choices of objects and phrases being put together. It was interesting to see how political contexts were being ‘discussed’ in such a manner, where revolutionary contradictions and affirmations of ideas could have been made simply through these independent thinking artists putting together an abstract collaborative performance through their webcams. The time lag definitely did play a part in the performance, as the overriding voices made it become unclear of which phrase belonged to which performer.

From this, the performance comes as a clear example of how third space can facilitate the idea of connecting people from around the world by breaking physical boundaries – and perhaps, also allowing for wanted anonymous discussion. Yet, at the same time, this third space can also prevent genuine human connection due to the glitches that come along, causing unintended effects that may lead to other forms of results in communication, such as an unintended anonymous discussion.

DAY 3 SYMPOSIUM: XXXTRAPRINCESS

The third day of the symposium managed to capture my attention for a much longer time, with the different acts that took place – specifically, the ones featuring 愛真 Janet Lin and Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (XXXTRAPRINCESS) as well as Roberto Sifuentes.

XXXTRAPRINCESS as Snapchat Personas

The performance by XXXTRAPRINCESS consisted of a duo, dressed up and decorated through Snapchat filters so as to take on the personification of princesses. Live, their performance took place through both the Adobe Connect stream and Snapchat videos. They also generated hashtagged social media streams, where the local Chicago attendees, as well as live viewers could use to spread the discussed topics to other social media platforms such as Twitter where there was possibility of turning information around (i.e. glitching). Topics discussed mainly revolved around societal issues, especially those relating to gender, such as feminism.

The performers had made use of the online third space environment to create online personas, so much as to constitute to an ‘alternative social world’ where these personas could only exist, and not in physical space. Perhaps, discussing such trivial topics while adhering to their created personas that seem to ‘mean no harm’ could possibly be their method of gathering people’s attention to serious topics, without triggering sensitivity. For instance, if XXXTRAPRINCESS were to be their serious, real women selves discussing feminism, would the reactions of those sensitive to the topic (e.g. those who are against feminism) be the same? These people might have instead tuned out of the stream, rather than stick around to listen to what these ‘princesses’ have to offer.

On the other hand, it can also be argued that their wild online personas could instead be a distraction towards the seriousness of the topics that they were discussing. Would viewers be able to take such characters decorated in Snapchat filters, discussing trivial societal issues, seriously?

Another idea that was also discussed in the live chat was about the use of various media platforms to discuss the topics.

Taken from Chat Transcript Day 3

In summary of the comments by Daniel Pinheiro and Alan Sondheim, is the use of multiple platforms for discussion of such trivial topics a boon or a bane?

On one hand, the Internet/social media allows for a very fast, spread of information as well as discussion that can not possibly take place in real life across people around the world. As such, it can be argued that XXXTRAPRINCESS’s use of several platforms along with the hashtags helps to have their discussions reach out to wider audiences, therefore allowing them to raise more awareness about the topics.

However, could the ‘capability’ of the Internet/social media become radicalised? Information is spread and topics are discussed so quickly that miscommunication, where information becomes wrongly translated, becomes inevitable. Furthermore, the use of cameras on both Adobe Connect and Snapchat makes it so that what viewers see is controlled and curated – what we see is not actually genuine, which could affect our perceptions on the discussed topics.

XXXTRAPRINCESS’s performance was therefore an example of how third space can act as both supporting and opposing tools at the same time.

DAY 3 SYMPOSIUM: ROBERTO SIFUENTES’ LEECHES

Finally, we have the performance by Roberto Sifuentes along with his assistant that resembles what seems to be very much like a spiritual ritual, with the involvement of blood, suspenseful music and red lights.

Assistant placing leeches on Roberto Sifuentes’ face

Throughout my two attended days of the symposium, I felt that the use of an online third space to broadcast this particular performance stood out to me the most. This could possibly because this performance did not have any use of words, which were highly involved in Annie Abrahams’ Entangled and the performance by XXXTRAPRINCESS, which thus led to there being a very wide variety of interpretations of the performance that could then be instantly discussed on the live chat by viewers.

For instance, many viewers including myself related the performance to something of a ritual.

Taken from Chat Transcript Day 3

On the other hand, some other viewers seemed to have very different thoughts, such as Alan Sondheim and Devyn Mañibo who thought about ‘typical’ gender roles being played around with in the performance, where the female assistant instead becomes the one in control (of the leeches) while the male loses his power.

 

Taken from Chat Transcript Day 3

Then, there were those who brought up the significance of leeches: Was it the man who was suffering, or the leeches? Who was the real leech?

Taking a look at all the different interpretations, the idea that resonated with me most is about the roles played by the man and the leeches. Could it be that, rather than the man suffering from being leeched on as symbolised by his bleeding, his willingness to be leeched on comes as symbolism of how we willingly let ourselves be consumed by the Internet despite its harmful effects?

Performance context aside, this was where the allowance of live discussion through third space became most apparent to me as I was thoroughly confused throughout the performance and actually needed the instant interpretations by other viewers. Instantly after the performance was also a proper discussion by the host(s), which would not have been possible if not for third space that breaks the boundaries of physical distance. Had this performance not been streamed live with hosts, would I have had to wait for a write-up on the performance?

OVERALL

I believe that there will always be pros and cons to any situation, with the use of third space as a form of streaming performances, as well as having performances being available to only physical audiences not being an exception.

Only having a live-physical-audience means that no one else in other spaces can participate in performances or discussions.

While the use of third space resolves that, information may then become glitched.

Final Project: Split Chef Weekly Update

This week, we decided to take things to a third space discussion.

The discussion consisted of rectifying all the issues faced in our trial run (as discussed in my previous post), as well as planning for the actual runs.

We decided on our two pairs of players, where one will be friends while the other will be strangers, so as to see if there will be any differences in the outcome. As such, the other variables will have to remain the same, where they have to have basic standards of drawing and cooking.

We also decided on using a kitchen with better connection so as to prevent any pauses in our livestream. Our first option was Hannah’s (a friend) hall, which is Hall 2, at a different kitchen from the previous one. The next option will be to use a kitchen from one of our own halls, and if all else fails we will resort to going to someone’s house to carry out the game.

Next, we thought of including audience in our livestream instead of using private accounts and keeping the stream to just the players. This is to play more with the idea of DIWO, where the audience can play a part in trying to guess the drawings as well. The chef may then refer to the comments if he/she faces any difficulty in making a decision.

To ensure that we manage to even have an audience, we plan to broadcast an announcement across our Whatsapp group chats as well as on Instagram story on the respective livestream accounts, one day and before the actual run.

Seeing how we were so unprepared with equipment the last round, we made a list of things to prepare this time and made allocations of who were to bring what.

We then decided on making sure that the chefs use as little of their instincts as possible(i.e. doing a step that’s not what they’re told to do) , so as to keep the comparisons between the groups as fair as possible.

Since we plan on using a tripod to hold the live streaming phone on the instructor’s side, we would need constant sound throughout so that the other side can be sure that we have not lost connection, hence the decision of having some background music. The background music may also provide some excitement for the instructor while he/she draws, instead of just being stuck in a silent room and having to draw within a time limit.

As of this meeting, we have not yet decided on a date of when to carry out the actual runs without being too rushed, hence we have not found our players.

Stay tuned to find out what happens next in Split Chef!

Micro-Project 2 – How is G04 Feeling Today?

introduction

This week’s Micro-Project II came about through the exploration of the complex yet simple concept of DIWO. Here’s what my team (Kai Ting, Ying Hui and myself) came up with:

We were inspired by the literal suggestion of the term ‘DIWO‘, that is, doing it with others, to create a work that is essentially created by the audience as artists themselves.

As discussed by Marc Garrett, DIWO “examines the grey areas of creative (idea) control, the nuances of power exchange and what this means for independent thinking artists and collectives working within collaborative contexts, socially, culturally and ethically.

“It also asks, whether new forms of DIWO can act as an inclusive commons. Whereby it consists of methods and values relating to ethical and ecological processes, as part of its artistic co-creation; whilst maintaining its original intentions as a de-centralized method of peer empowerment in today’s multitude?”

––

How is G04 Feeling Today?

Due to time constrain, we focused on the aspect of inclusive commons where our audience could come together to create a work of involvement and peer empowerment, rather than challenging the collaborative contexts as mentioned above. For example, unlike Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’, ‘How is G04 Feeling Today’ does not involve the need for consideration of any social, cultural or ethic context such as how ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ a viewer would have felt and affected the way he or she cut away certain pieces of Yoko Ono’s clothes.

(*This project was originally intended to be crowd-sourced from the entire ADM, therefore being “How is ADM Feeling Today”. However, the limited time of doing the project in class led us to crowd-sourcing from our classmates only. Should the time be based daily, our audience would be ADM instead.)

description

“How is G04 Feeling Today” is a ‘survey’ where the class is given a range of emotions that are tied together with a specific colour, where they will choose the one that best fits their mood of that day:

 

Simultaneous to the live survey, a large screen will project the colour that comes in average as every vote is made. For instance, let’s take a look at the results for how G04 was feeling that day: The first few audiences to vote had been feeling ‘sad’, hence the screen projected blue. With the addition of the ‘neutral’ white, the projected colour turned lighter. However, as more ‘restless’ votes come in, the screen had slowly shifted over towards a teal/turquoise and eventually, the average of ‘restless’ took over and therefore the final projected colour became a light green.

 

Votes made:

 

Screen Projection:

critique

At the end of the day, the viewers have become the artist where their individual selections of colours have contributed to the final colour, therefore creating a collective artwork. While this may seem as an equal collaboration amongst viewers, the artist still holds some control over the entire work. The controls that the artist still holds are the selection of colours that have been made available to the viewers, as well as the fact that the outcome will only be one colour.

Tying it back to the quote by Marc Garrett, the way that the viewers may feel empowered by this work is the simple fact that they have made their own contribution. Furthermore, viewers will be able to see how the people around them have been feeling that day, which may or may not take them by surprise should the colour turn out to be the same, or not the same as what they had voted. For instance, Joel and Lei had voted for ‘happy’ (yellow), and were surprised that majority of the class was feeling rather restless in comparison. The rest who had voted for similar emotions (i.e. restless, sad) may then be able to feel that they are not alone in feeling that way that day, and may even be empowered by peers who had voted for more positive feelings, since the results are available to all.

While the micro-project may be done manually without the web, it may become too hectic for the counting of votes should the project be brought to a larger scale (i.e. not limited to G04). If more time could be invested in the project, it may even be coded so that the projected colour will be able to adjust on its own in accordance to the survey.