Tag Archives: micro project

Micro-Project 7: Video Selfie

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

To create a one minute video of yourself that constructs your selfie as an “artistic alter ego:” the artist or designer you want/choose/aspire to be!

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You would normally expect a person’s alter ego to be represented in a more positive setting and atmosphere, seeing as what someone aspires to be would usually be something good, and therefore positive. I, however, decided to play things a little differently.

“When the tough gets going, the going gets tough.” – Joseph P. Kennedy

There are three significant elements present in the video: myself, the rain, and the view, respectively symbolising myself, the tough, and the going.

Shot from the other side of a window, the raindrops that land in front of the camera recurrently distort the image of myself, standing in the heavy rain outside. Sometimes it seems as though I’m being pulled into two, sometimes into threes, sometimes I’m completely wiped out, and other times I’m left completely undisturbed. This comes as symbolism of the internal conflicts and struggles that occur during times of distress, where everything becomes a blur.

 

MY ALTER EGO

Despite the rain, I keep my vision focused on the view, thus symbolising who I want to be
– someone who’s able to keep her vision ahead even when things get tough. 

*1) Pulled into two, 2) Pulled into threes, 3) Wiped out, 4) Undisturbed

On top of this, it seems as though what I’ve created is rather the opposite of what my alter ego should be. Most people refer to me as someone who’s very ‘happy-go-lucky’, where I tend to turn many situations into humour. Could it be that I’m already living the ‘positive alter ego’, and this is my hidden (and therefore, still alter), internal ego?

Here, I ask you to watch the video again but this time, without sound.

I feel that watching the video without sound brings a whole new experience, because now it seems as though you, the audience, are watching something that’s personal and hidden inside of me – and you cannot hear what’s going on, yet you can still sense the struggle and desire to look forward purely through the visuals.

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How can the video selfie be used to alter identity?

A video selfie comes in the form of curated content. Whether or not the video is edited, curation allows for any form of ‘lie’ to be represented by the individual, which is the only thing that will be able to be seen by the audience, therefore creating an alter identity as the audience is kept in the dark of what went on, or goes on behind the camera.

How might video be used to conceal identity?

The content creator may choose to leave in or out whatever information he/she wants to about him or herself. This is very much like the ‘daily vloggers’ on YouTube who create videos about their ‘daily lives’. A full day lasts 24 hours, yet most videos only last about 10-20 minutes as usually, only the ‘good stuff’ are left in the video for the audience to see, thus allowing the perception that these vloggers have ‘perfect lives’.

How do the objects that surround you contribute to your sense of identity?

The objects (or rather the rain and the wide view) help to serve as symbolisms within my identity, as explained above. It’s more so the symbolisms that are important, as without them, I could very well just be someone who’s standing in the rain and watching the view.

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P.S. I was very cold after filming this.
The rain was also being blown in my face and hurting. my. eyes.

Micro Project: Super-Participation

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24-Hr SSJD by Si Hui, Si Qi, Jia Ying & Dion

The four of us had settled on a random Monday for our super-participation.

Throughout the day, I noticed the different kinds of information that the four of us were sharing through our posts, allowing for an understanding of how different individuals react to having to take super-participate in an online activity.

Jia Ying and I shared more about what we were doing at the different times of the day, Si Qi shared more on her random thoughts, memes and once in awhile what she was doing, while Si Hui was the one who shared the most random things, including the things she was doing as well as about her continuous partake on Habbo Hotel.

Personally, all the posts that I shared were personal as they all came from the baseline of sharing what I was doing. Overall, the things I shared generally include: when I woke up, what I was eating for my meals, whether I was doing work, watching FRIENDS, playing Habbo, going out, dancing, when I received news that I got my insurance claim from the school for breaking my finger on campus, and when I was going to sleep. The information that I shared were representative of what I was really doing, including several selfies that were definitely not ‘glorified’, and therefore there was not any form of persona or image trying to be created. I would say that this is the same for Jia Ying, seeing as we shared the same types of posts.

*I even asked the others to help me name my pet pig on Habbo… very personal there.

 

Si Qi’s and Hui’s posts on the other hand, may allow us to infer other things.

Majority of Si Qi’s posts were very random, apart from the occasional updates of an interesting place she was visiting, having Subway for lunch and having a not-very-nice-breakfast. She posted random memes and images with short captions that did not allow for much ‘analysing’ by readers:

 

 

From this, I inferred that she could perhaps be portraying the persona of someone who is more private and less comfortable with sharing her everyday life on social media.

Lastly we have Si Hui, who posted non-stop throughout the day because fun-fact: we had TWO Si Huis! One in reality and one in third space. On one hand, Si Hui shared a few posts that included real-life photos, sharing what she was doing. There is definitely no form of trying to portray an online persona here, since it is a proper ‘life update’.

 

 

However, third space Si Hui shared more ‘intrusive’ or ‘fun’ updates…

 

(WARNING: This is going to be a rather confusing paragraph)
I realised that essentially, Si Hui’s ‘third space self’ is still Si Hui in the end, given that the posts are still made by the real her. By creating a persona that was intended to be separate from her actual self, the two personas have actually combined to create one digital identity of Si Hui.

Understanding that third space Si Hui is still Si Hui, the posting of all these random, fun events on Habbo while pretending to not be the real Si Hui creates the idea that Si Hui herself is a fun person, while also private in the sense that she would rather share all these things in a fun, non-personal way (Habbo) rather than as her ‘real self’.

 

 

Micro-Project 5: The Art of Destruction

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In this project we are investigating destruction and functionality of art.

Here is a bucket of clean water.

In the context of a bucket of water, its societal functionality is to cleanse dirtied objects. However, we change the context by dirtying it with our hands, thereafter provide an  irony by throwing tissue paper into it. The irony exists by throwing cleaning devices like soap or tissue into the dirtied buckets.

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IS IT STILL CLEAN?

Step 1: Clean your dirty hands with the water.

Step 2: Restore the water to its clean state with cleaning devices.

Step 3: Destroy the water with diluted Starbucks.

Step 4: Restore the water to its clean state with cleaning devices.

 

BEFORE

 

The process of destruction and restoration:

 

AFTER

Micro-Project 4: Exquisite Glitch

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The process of glitching Tom, my biologically glitched (broken) pinky:

Glitched by myself, Joseph, Kai Ting, and myself again.

The original.

Glitched with Adobe Audition CC by myself, creating ‘TV-like’ noise and glitches.

Glitched by Kai Ting with Adobe Photoshop.

Image is distorted/warped, tonal values have changed and the quality has also dropped.

Glitched by Joseph on Adobe Photoshop.

The original self-portrait of my finger is completely glitched out with a colourful, wavy abstract pattern. The tones of the image are completely different from what the image originally was – now more neon and eye-catching.

Coming back to Adobe Audition, I added back more ‘TV-like’ glitches – reversing, silencing, echoing, generating noise, speech and tone in certain sections.

The process of collective image creation and decomposition goes through several steps of how the image takes on a glitch transformation.

Each individual taking part in the process is given complete freedom of how they would like to manipulate the image that they receive, therefore there is no possible control/pre-made decisions in how the final edited image will turn out.

In contradiction, each person who receives the image previously glitched by another is unable to undo what they had done, and is therefore out of control of what has been ‘controlled’ by the previous person therefore makes the collective image creation become a glitched transformation.

Research Critique 2 – Third Space

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A third space is a created ‘world’ where human connection can be made and felt without the need for any form of physical presence, where time can be bent and dilated, regardless of physical location. A third space, therefore allows for a collapse of boundaries between people who are not in the same physical space.

This is better described by Randall Packer, where a third space is “perhaps akin to the fourth dimension, a hyperspace where spatial trajectories have no boundaries, where temporal relations are amorphous, where wormholes reveal pathways that are instantaneous and geographically dispersed“. This is much like the movie Interstellar where the wormhole allowed for a bend in time, allowing for connection between Future Cooper and Present Cooper.

 

 

In my opinion, the way to intimacy is through a person’s five basic senses. With that, today, the most basic form of intimacy that can be created between people in different locations would be that of a phone call, since both parties are able to hear the voices of the the other. This is followed by a video call, since two senses are touched on – hear and sight. Of course, this was what Hole-in-Space by Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz managed to achieve back in the 80s, where the project “suddenly severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection”. Therefore, the ideal would be to increase the number of senses that are touched on between interaction of people in different locations, such as how Telematic Dreaming by Paul Sermon managed involve even the sense of touch – that, to me, is the closest form of intimacy.

Tying it back to micro-project 3 where Ying Hui and I created the first perspective of a “third” body in a third space by using half of ourselves, we were able to connect by literally trying to connect our two halves into one through a split screen, through non-verbal communication. Our main form of communication was then waiting for each other’s ‘cues’ of when the other should move next (e.g. she takes one step, I take the next). Therefore, by taking away our simplest form of communication (verbal) and forcing ourselves to still communicate in other forms to literally connect ourselves, we were then able to connect with each other in this third space.

Micro-Project 3: Tele-Drift

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Posted by Dion Chew on Wednesday, 31 January 2018

 

1:18 – Walking down the staircase,

3:10 – Walking,

3:57 – Washing hands,

9:40 – Typing on a screen

 

description/objectives

Ying Hui and I focused on creating a first-person perspective of a being in a third space through a split screen, conducting several different actions that includes walking, walking down a staircase, washing our hands and typing on a screen.

location

We walked on different staircases and floors on the second floor of ADM. Ying Hui was on the staircase near the 2D studio/handicap elevator while I was on the staircase at the end of the bridge leading to the classrooms. We then continued walking on the floor.

As for the hand washing, we initially intended to have one person wash in the toilet/3D workshop and the other be in the 2D studio. However, due to terrible connection, we were both in the 2D studio at different sinks that had different backgrounds – one facing a window, and one facing a wall.

Finally, we both filmed the screens of our own laptops to type.

outcome

Due to poor connection, our synchronisation was… pretty bad. This can be seen by how we were sometimes walking both feet at the same time, or when I had finished walking the stairs while Ying Hui was still on hers.

We felt that there was no other way to communicate other than speaking to each other since we were filming a first-point perspective and our feet/hands definitely couldn’t communicate on their own. The typing, however, was easier to ‘communicate’ as it was easier for Ying Hui to see when I have finished typing so she could continue the sentence, as compared to waiting for me to finish taking my step at a normal walking pace.

Overall, I have learnt that a person in a third-space involves a lot of communication and synchronisation. This micro-project came with a lot of problems along the way, but still turned out to be a fun learning experience.

Micro-Project 2 – How is G04 Feeling Today?

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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?”

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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.