The current plan requires a space to allow projection onto a largely clear surface to simulate a memorial plaque. A laptop computer wil be present to allow viewers to input their contributions into the plaque. It could be anything from a phrase to a paragraph.
Also below the surface the projection is screening on, there is another space where a flowerbed will be. This is to simulate the space of offerings for a memorial.
Memorials come in many form. They can be solid material.
Intangible light.
Or projection on solid surface.
This work will involve audience participation in order to achieve the idea of a memorial mourning for the meme. An instruction will be given to request any audience to offer anything into the flowerbed. It could be an item, a phrase (print out), or simply flowers.
To achieve this, I will need a projector, laptop, materials to build the enclosure (for both the plaque and offerings), and maybe some flowers or soil (optional).
Anything the audience leave behind is something they wish to pass onto. From death comes new beginning. A meme is something that is pass from one person to another. Through this work, a space is created for people to send off a meme of themselves, so that others can receive the meme.
Haw Par Villa, built in 1937, is a defunct theme park that aims to traumatize little kids into giving up their innocence.
Rumoured has it that the place was cursed ever since the Aw Brothers (the founders) built the place at the request of the king of hell they met in their dream. Despite the large amount of visitors, the place suffered several financial problems. It became a free to enter park (sans all the performances it used to have) since 1998. Seeing the state it is in right now, it would not be too far-fetch to consider the authenticity of the rumour.
(The above photo is shot on scene and yes, it’s bloody.)
Meme spreads virally. But that does not mean it’s a virus. Rather, I consider meme a cell. A cell that replicates rapidly in the Third Space. As far as meme goes, it evolves like a cell as well. It can turn from something simple, to something grand. Similar to how a super low budget game indie hit like Flappy Bird turn million dollar profit overnight unintentionally.
There are tons of video on Youtube discussing Flappy Bird’s success. But any subsequent attempt fail to replicate its success.
Despite being a carbon copy in terms of concept and art style. It fai to garner as much attention as Flappy Bird.
Take a look at all the other most successful meme. Lolcat, Nyancat. LittleKuriboh, Rebecca Black, Rageface, etc. What is their common characteristic? There are all the “first” in their time and any subsequent imitations fail to reach as high popularity. The second common characteristic they share is that they are all unintentional. Lastly, they are all fundamentally different thematic subject matter that it is impossible to find the “success” formula to a sure popular meme. (Nyancat and Lolcat are virtually different kind of memes despite about “cats”. One is a picture of a cat smiling and one is an animation of a poptart rainbow cat creature running in space.) In conclusion, there can never be an intentional meme and there is no way to find a sure-win formula. It’s entirely arbitrary. They are practically like living beings in the sense that there is no way you can predict what comes up next!
Fundamentally, what constitute to the success boils down to the viewers. Us, the surrogates. We humans help the memes to grow. We are like bees to flowers’ pollen grains. Without surrogates (us), memes cannot populate and survive in their natural habitat (internet). As much as the material use in the work, the viewers are as much the medium as the materials themselves.
A work such as Telegarden can be consider a work that involves viewers as surrogate guardians for the plants. In my case, viewers play similar role for memes.
As a poetic representation of the concept of memes as cell. My idea undergo a cellular evolution as well.
Previously I propose the idea of memetic portraits. But those alone does not justifies what memes are. So I look into creating a physical Third Space where the audiences are literally plunged into it to come into physical contact with memes.
The viewers — aka the surrogates. Will become part of the work. They will be the “new medium” in my project that I have yet to resolve a direct solution to. The current idea is probably to introduce holograms projection screening memetic imageries — anything that is possible to make the viewers feel like they enter the “internet”. And they have to perform some sot of activities before they can be released from the Third Space.
To put it simply. It will likely be a interactive installation that requires light projection, a screen, active viewers. In other words, a physical third space where the memes are in their “natural habitats” and we the surrogates have to perform something ther natural habitat to facilitate their cellular growth. The viewers can be anyone and they do not need any specific qualification. They simply need to be there as surrogates.
“Phototrails (2013) is a research project that uses media visualization techniques for exploring visual patterns, dynamics and structures in user generated photos.”
-http://phototrails.net/
Thus, this is a research post about a work that is about research. RECEPTION! (Okay it’s a bad joke…)
The Phototrails collections are series of vibrant visual compositions created by Lev Manovich. Using appropriated images from various social media, Manovich creates a variety of distinctive and stunning imageries in various form that narrate different ideas.
” I definitely think of some of these visualizations as “film,” and my “films” are made up of downloaded visuals, in which you can then make multiple “films” out of. Depending on our visualization strategy, when compared with traditional documentary filmmaking, is that the kind of narrative you can get is very, very different. “ -Painting with Data: A Conversation with Lev Manovich by Randall Packer
While Manovich may have intended political and social undertones in Phototrails, what piques my interest the most is how he create narratives. According to Manovich himself, he definitely sees his artworks as a medium to tell stories like a film. It is a unique way to of “film-making” considering most of his visual medium are literally “found objects” and are all non-moving images. Thus, such technique contradicts the convention of cinematic films. However, this is not the first time an artist employ still images (photography) for narrative films.
La Jetee (1962) is a film that used photographs, voice-over, sounds, and music to tell the story of a dystopic future.
The peculiar element of Phototrails lies in its irregularity and unpredictability. The artist did not hand-pick the photographs individually but rather a cluster of similarly theme images. It’s like hitting something into Google image search and collecting all the consequent results. He do however, juxtapose certain images that he was particularly fond off in order to suit his work.
“I am an artist who is trying to find visual forms, which would represent what I see as central structures or central themes, relationships between individuals taken from random behaviour.”
All the photos were arranged in specific way to generate forms of helix, radial, etc. Aesthetically, they resembles whirlpools and vortexes of photographs of various nature (intimate, public, urban, rural, selfies, groupies, etc). It could subliminally suggest the current situation of our social media tendencies — we are excessively engrossed in our cyber world that we have more “life” online than in reality. Visually, Phototrails could suggests that we were all sucked into the virtual black hole and have been stagnant as a singularity of anti-privacy ever since.
As explicit as the photos could spell out commentaries of the current social or political situation of specific places. The possibly hidden message of this work could be the fascinating (or depressing, depends on how you look at it) fact that we, users of social media, have imprisoned ourselves in cyber cells. How many of us can “survive” a week without using the internet? How many of us can even survive an hour without checking on Facebook?
Even soldiers in the middle of bullet hails don’t hestitate to post a video of their antics on Youtube. Priorities?
Is this one reason why we human are becoming more jaded towards on another outside of the social media? Could your vibrant activities online suggest a stronger imprisonment within the cyber black hole? Only the users themselves will know. I personally are definitely serving life-sentence in cyberspace. I have a get-out key with me that allows me to get out anytime I want. But even if I do leave, I’ll definitely be going back in again.
My video is inspired by the following music Fluffy Clouds by The Orb. It’s a chill-out music with electronic twist to it.
I search for both cloud and sky and upon playing I switch between the both results.
When the video is playing, I arbitrarily adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation.
Same goes for the sound. I increase and decrease the pitch to get different effects.
I am using a PC so I had problems recording the video as a separate file so I use a 3rd party software CamStudio to record it instead.
Software issues are expected for glitch and internet art. Despite having problems working with Max (due to it being made for Mac), I am able to solve it using the PC method. Encountering unexpected issues are all part of the experience.
“A memeis an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.”
–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
Who are we? And why do we exist? I often question whether each of us is truly unique. We define ourselves through the way we dress, the actions we perform, the friends we make, or the way we think. Yet how much of this self-definition actually caught on to the people around us? A criminal who is a loving family desperate to make ends meet. A hero who is secretly a tyrant. A girl who is actually a guy. There are always two sides on a coin. But only one side can be visible at any one time. Whatever goes on behind the scene is hidden to us. It is impossible to define everyone for who they truly are. Thus, we define people around us with what we know about them and vice-versa. In other words, our very own existence define by memes.
Internet meme is one of the most popular term in Third Space. Internet memes tend to be cheeky images or catchphrases that serve to only entertain. When we discuss internet meme we thought of Nyan Cat or the Forever Alone Guy. But memes can also refer to the concepts of subliminal messages, open sources scripts, shareware, adverts, or personal avatar. Memes practically define what the internet is. As long as we are using the internet, we can never escape from exposure to memes. Memes are what help us identify the websites we are visiting, the people we met online, the program we use, etc.
You know this video is going to waste your time thanks to meme.
Without meme, the internet will be a blank dimension. Without meme, each of us will be walking without faces.
My idea for the collaborative project is for everyone in the class to define each other using memes. We will use images, videos, codes — anything we can find in the internet to define our peers. Each of us is going to be cyber Da Vinci. Our canvas is the internet, and our paint brushes the memes. The product of this project will be a gallery of portraits in the Third Space.
Some artist choose to use rap music and abstract ideas to identity themselves.
Performance art is pretty much a social science experiment as it is an art form. Life Sharing (2000) by couple artists Eva and Franco Mattes can be considered as such. And this particular experiment strikes deep in to the notion of “peep culture”. Suppose you have an irresistibly attractive neighbour living next door. Then one particular day he/she neglected to drawn the curtains when changing and you happen to chance upon it. How many of you would turn your head away instead of embracing you inner voyeur? (Not many I guess.) That is the point of many art work involving the privacy of the artists themselves as medium. Can you control your desire to “peep”? Most of us have a certain degree of moral decency. We know that actions like hiding in the changing room to drool at people changing is wrong and will likely land you in jail. But this “peep culture” within our society is not something we can reject with our moral sense. Especially in the third space called the internet where we have the shield of “anonymity” to protect us from being discovered, the “peep culture” runs deep into our very cyber-vein. Life Sharing (2000) proves just that. The artists lay bare their activities and private life in their computer for all to see. It’s like someone streaking in the street asking for indecent act to be perform on him/her. He/she is asking for it. Does it make you right to go ahead and actually do it? Same goes for this work. Even if the artists ask for it, is it okay for any of us to practically intrude their private space? To many people, it is perfectly fine. Simply look at the statistic posted in the main site: http://0100101110101101.org/life-sharing/ In contemporary context, we have our social network to thanks for perpetuating the “peep culture”. The phenomenon of life sharing has become so common today that people literally post everything about their life sans bank account or password. So the question is how much can we share before we thread the sensitive zone. Life Sharing may not be as relevant as it was back in 2000 AD where social media barely thrived. But it strikes a chord because the artists revealed details that most cyber users would not dare to. And it is inevitable that malicious individuals will exploit those revelations. Some people simply do it because they can. A girl neglected to set her birthday event to private. And a random guy who chance upon it thought it was a great idea to invite 3000 random people to said event. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2206919/Riot-Facebook-party-attended-thousands.html#v-1854693716001 Even the untimely death of some arbitrary young boy or a young girl can become the brunt of ridicule and jokes. People were hurt, reputations were tarnished, and they are irreversible. The risk of artworks like Life Sharing can potentially be of catastrophic level for the artists. Is it worth it to run into such risks for the sake of proving some point? As I mentioned earlier, performance art pieces are pretty much social experiment. They produced results that grant us a “peep” into the human condition. And chance are, we’ll be peeping at Medusa riding a wrecking ball instead of Venus de Milo.
Some uses abstract grafitti.
