Category: Open Source Studio: Internet Art and Culture

Hyperessay #1 proposal: “Magic Show” (Zhou Yang and Fabian Kang)

We are interested to broadcast a street magic, close-up magic event.

We will be walking around ADM to perform a series of tricks.

We will invite as many spectators that we can get for this event.

We hope to let everyone witness something spectacular!
“现在到了鉴证奇迹的时候!”

 

Obviously we have not much of a talent for real magic. So what we will be bringing is magic with a twist. This is somewhat inspired by the actually talented duo, Penn and Teller. Although they’re wonderfully gifted with actual skills for magic, they frequently create shows that subvert our expectations of the usual “a magician never reveals his tricks” as well as to perform tricks that critique their own practice.

The main aim for our Hyperessay is is for audience in the First Space to actually see the gag executed in its entirety but for audience in the Third Space who are bounded by the lens of the broadcasting device to possibly see the magic for real.

This is also stemming from Prof. Randell Parker’s The Third Space (2014) where he speaks of how “the fusion of physical and remote” creates this “pervasiveness of distributed space”. Hence we are interested to see how audiences in the First and Third space view the illusion event and to what degree is the suspension of disbelief going to work out in these spaces?

We are also very interested in making this social broadcasting event in a similar vein as Videofreex to attempt at calling people to the spaces we are engaged in. To start conversations. And to show other stories running alongside, in simultaneity to the framed Third Space.

And of course, not forgetting, some inspirations from this guy:

 

Micro Project 5: Bought this New Game

 

This event was live-screened in ADM’s game lab. I was showcasing the game-play for a new exploratory game that I just bought on Steam, and nothing much happens in the game, until …

 

*Reflection / Spoiler Alert* After an hour of being unable to resolve the Facebook Live split screen issue, Zhou Yang and I set on a rule-breaking adventure to connect the First and Third Spaces and even the Real-world and the Fourth-wall. We learnt later on that it was just a matter of downloading the right plugin or something like that. We were thankful, though, that Facebook Live made us so exhausted because we decided to do it in one-take without rehearsals. Zhou Yang plays games, unlike me, so he did a wonderful improv in the walk-through. The part I really like was when our cinematographer, Win Zaw, came into the frame at the very end.

We realise earlier on that the viewers will have to situate Zhou Yang and I within these spaces and that they would want to place me in the first space and Zhou Yang in the third, despite the fact we both are in the third space. So we had to clearly figure it out for ourselves before we could proceed with executing the performance. We wanted to speak about the convergence of all the worlds at the very end, hence the swapping of positions of Zhou Yang’s body and my body from our initial first/third spaces, and of course, the classroom full of the livebroadcast and the projector.

Our takeaway from this is that experimentation can only happen in film and performance when close to nothing is scripted and when ideas are acted upon and realized from accidental incidents. We also reflected on the locality of the first and the third space in relation to our being and came to some sort of an agreement that it really is up to the content provider, the participant, the viewer to perceive and decide their relationship with these spaces. They are all at once with geographical separation yet without boundaries, existing in simultaneity yet having, even if ever so slightly, different time frames. Schrodinger’s debate ensues. When encountering any first/third space conundrum, it is therefore important to situate oneself.

Pirate Broadcasting II – Boy & Bee

I was just re-watching some Paul Thomas Anderson films when the little critter came buzzing in. After failing to chase it out of my room, I decided now might be a good time to do the Pirate Broadcasting mini project. So I tried to reach out to my friends to watch the events that would soon unfold.

This was very spontaneous. I had no clue what I’d do exactly. So I had some background video playing on my laptop.  Blasted my music. And tried to interact with those who were commenting online.

The music blasted in the background is by Gun. They are a late 60s band and part of UK’s heavy metal scene. Very short-lived, only 2 albums, but really accomplished. Image result for the sad saga of the boy and the bee

I really like The Boy and The Bee from this album as through a simple narrative of The Boy and The Bee getting embroiled in a conflict, so to speak of the duality of life and death. It is really poetic and the arrangements in this track are so riveting.

I was always fascinated with how a bee’s sting is really its ultimatum. It leaves not only its menacing stinger, but also a good half of its abdomen as well. Ripping itself apart to exact the deadliest attack it can onto an aggressor. And, yes, you can go into anaphylactic shock from a bee sting if you are allergic.

This second iteration of the broadcasting project made me feel like it is difficult to find an audience because I really do not use instant social media at all. For example, anything I present on Instagram is a rather curated version of my life. But I guess it is also the difficulty of find content I want to broadcast, because what I find cool and meaningful to perform might not be that all popular.

So I guess what I really did learnt from these 2 mini projects is that if I want to create a live stream I should perhaps put more thought and planning into it. But still, those 2 spontaneous sketches were good fun. Maybe in the future I will actually do a regular live-stream to introduce my friends to the music I listen to.

 

 

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I did a cut for the version presented in class as it was too long.

For the full video you can find it here:

 

Pirate Broadcasting – a-not-usual-usual-morning-run

I did my stretching. Tied up my laces. Using Facebook Live, armed with my umbrella, I embarked on a-not-usual-usual-morning-run.

So yea I usually listen to a whole side when I run. It clears my mind and allows me to appreciate the art. Indeed, I have actually used tracks I can replay in my mind to pace myself for runs when I cannot blast music.

This time round I was listening to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) by Genesis. They are one of my favorite bands from the UK. The track in the one minute shown in this post is Broadway Melody of 1974.

This album is rather interesting as it was a transition album for them. I really enjoy the whole narrative of it, where a protagonist, Rael, who is somewhat of an alien, gets himself mixed up in a nightmarish and possibly an alternate universe of New York, in order to save his brother, and ends up having several surreal and (dis)connected adventures.

Image result for the lamb lies down on broadway copyrightI have really been feeling like that lately, because weird things have a way of finding themselves into my life. Like the from bad end of the spectrum. Stuck in a blue funk. Not quite catching my breath. And I kind of need to trudge on. Maybe everything will fall into place somehow. Although I would not want to meet the “ku-klux clan who serve hot soul food” while “the band play In The Mood” in any of my adventures.

It took me twice the amount of time with half the distance covered :p (and yes my phone’s default language is in Chinese)

So looks like you really shouldn’t exercise with distractions.  But I really enjoyed this experiment to get to introduce some of the music I hear. Though, hopefully my rendition overlayed didn’t spoil it haha!

 

cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full link here, by the way, existing till which point it expires:

Posted by Fabian Kang on Wednesday, 12 September 2018

Research Critique 2: The World’s First Collaborative Sentence

Douglas Davis:
The World’s First Collaborative Sentence
Launched 1994, Restored 2013

donated to the Whitney Museum  in 1995

“The Sentence has no end. Sometimes I think it had no beginning. Now I salute its authors, which means all of us. You have made a wild, precious, awful, delicious, lovable, tragic, vulgar, fearsome, divine thing.”
Douglas Davis, 2000

The Exquisite Corpse  on epic scale

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Moon (2013) by Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson. launched at the Falling Walls Conference, Berlin, 9 November 2013.

Interactive website for collective universal doodling. You do not need to board the Apollo 13, the space race is over. Just leave your mark on a virtual moon.

the link is here: http://moonmoonmoonmoon.com/#sphere

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The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) by Dziga Vertov. The making of cinema.

Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake

web-based video collaboration to reinvent Dziga Vertov’s masterpiece

the ultimate digital internet montage

the link is here:  http://webenact.rhizome.org/man-with-a-movie-camera-the-global-remake/20160217142125/http://dziga.perrybard.net/

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At this point of my foray into understanding internet art, I feel that the internet has created a new meaning to the Aura of the artwork in the digital age, far evolved from Walter Benjamin’s ideas of reproduction.

The images in this post went through these steps:

  1. projected onto the screen from the school desktop

  2. captured on my smartphone

  3. sent to myself on whatsapp

  4. downloaded on whatsapp web onto my laptop

  5. posted on to OSS

So even in the making of a simple post like this, there are multiple transmission channels and mediation happening. And this is what the internet can create for us digital artist. A tool that will continue to break all that we know about the media apparatus (Jean-Louis Baudry).

The only way to make sense of it all, is to find a way to be in-situ on the vast net.

Video Double – Musician in the ClØset

Persona: Artist who is stuck. Unseen, unheard. Thinks he is talented and unique (or maybe not at all? not in a hundred years?). But does not have the strength to venture out.

 

some thoughts:

Well, I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Although it is kind of fun in hindsight. This is not what I envisioned the first project of the semester to be.

I shall post this to YouTube before I regret it, though.

My mom is wondering what went down in the store for so long?

She threw out the Headphones! Okay, not because I was doing weird, unexplainable art at home, but because they were flaking.

Was wondering how long someone could watch this and not get uncomfortable?

Anyway you should play this while plugged in to your headphones too, for the full effect.

I hope your impression of me is very different from this alter ego.

I guess that is what many YouTubers think of? Their own personality versus their curated and projected self showcased onto the Internet. Food for thought. Perhaps some of these emerging questions will find answers in this course.