Category Archives: Research

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Research

Research 06: Cyber Black Hole

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“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.”

phototrails_01

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.

Research

Research 05: Your Privacy is Invalid

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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.

Research

Research 04: HUE HUE HUE!

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A glitch is a fault. A fault that reveals the vulnerabilities within the program. Therein lies the fundamental of the “peep culture” — a pervasive yet subconscious voyeuristic attempt in discovery the forbidden zone. The glitch is also the blueprint for “dirty new media”. A medium glorifying the raw yet spontaneous  flux within the cyberspace.

Shredder 1.0 (1997) by Mark Napier is a simple browser game as much as it is a net art. This free source browser allows us to “shred” a given website to pieces. By unscrambling the code of the site (with no direct consequences to the victim site) and rearranging them in random patterns, we have what we can considered the Jackson Pollock of the internet. Thus, creating an intentional glitch.

That is what glitch is all about, revealing the naked skin of a program. When a glitch happens, we the audience gain a peep into said private space, albeit not the most saucy nor interesting one.

Shredder 1.0 (1997) is a peephole. A boring peephole (unless someone feels excited about seeing messed up codes instead of hidden sensational messages), but an interesting piece of toy. And as Jon Cate said, glitch is attractive because it is functioning even if it is broken. It reveals to us that any intricate, complex website are made up of nothing but strings of words, numbers and symbols regardless of what they are. The fundamental of the cyberspace is that it is nothing but a repetition of patterns. It is a “dirty new media” — a product of raw automatism. Just like how an individual humans are, a repetition of genetic codes. In essence, we are not so different than the computer program we dissect everyday.

The concept of glitch has turn up constantly in the pop culture.

An episode from Adventure Time dedicated to glitch.

An sensation subculture due to the video games.

Why do people love glitch so much? Because it can turns an otherwise conformed subject matter into something utterly ridiculous and hilarious.

At the end of the day, we human simply love to destroy take things apart and mock the resulting mess.

 

 

 

 

Research

Research 03: Kiss Kiss

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What is a Third Space? Or rather, what is the Third Space? A virtual realm where two parties can interact without being physically present — is too much of a superficial definition for what the Third Space is. I sent someone an email. The person who received it read my mail hours later and responded to it. I returned later and received said respond. Are we communicating in the Third Space then since both of us are not physically present and are interacting virtually?

The Third Space is more than just a virtual realm for communication. For a Third Space to exist, there has to be a direct, spontaneous and intimate yet non-physical contact for parties involved within. Speaking on the phone with you friend — you can hear his/her voices (as they sound in real life) and what he/she says on the other end will transmit directly to you ears without delay. It is as if both of you are speaking to each others in real life sans the physical body. Telematics is neither art nor science. It is human progress. And contemporary technology bring this discipline of telematics to advance an even higher form by allowing you to receive more than just the voice of one another.

The Kiss (2007) by Annie Abrahams is an installation artworks that allows two parties to “kiss each other on the lips” via two camera projections on screen despite both party being at different locations. It feels as much as like a real kiss sans the tangibility!

Similar to Hole in Space, Sherrie Rabinowtiz & Kit Galloway (1980), Telematic Dreaming made use of primitive online relay system to create a Third Space. But in The Kiss, the Third Space also becomes a space of private intimacy. The lips is where we have the closest *non-so-explicit* contact we could have with a partner (if any). The Kiss pushes the “touch” factor of the Third Space, planting the audience directly into a physical epitome of intimacy and comfort.

“You think sitting in front of your computer on your chair is comfort? Try laying your lips on mine!”

Now, we can even be in the Third Space with guest from 6 feet under.

Holographic performance (2012) by Tupac (dead in 1996). Granted all his actions was pre-recorded or animated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9vINyFgnrQ (NSFW)
Be in the third space with a passing love one at www.seemerot.com! (less talking and more watching people rot though). Unfortunately such website is a hoax. Maybe a real one exist some one deep in the bowels of the internet. Who knows?

It’s great to meet someone without having to actually meet someone. Especially if a love one or friend is on the other side of the globe or are too busy to meet in person. Maybe even learn a language or two!

But such luxury,the advent of the Third Space, has brings an issue of pushing actual physical contact to obscurity. Complacency is a human condition that all of us have. And the convenience of the Third Space may have made us less incline to meet up physically. 1 out of 4 people spend more time on the virtual realm than in real life.  Why bother meeting at McDonald’s if we can meet in our Macbooks right?

Furthermore, the Third Space can be altered and manipulated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3yyirAvuiY|

Third Space– indeed a place full of joy and laughter. Thus we have so many cases of online dating scams.

If the movie Catfish (2010) proves something, it has to be that online persona can be easily stolen or fabricated. So… sometimes it’s best to at least have physical meetup with someone before confirming they actually exist beyond the Third Space.

Of course with proper management and awareness, all of us should be able to enjoy the Third Space without having to worry if our party on the other side is a homicidal maniac. Simply do not forget that the internet can be a putrid horrorland as much as a wonderland!

 

My Work, Research

Research 02: Online Privacy

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Is the internet a massive cyber peephole? Sounds like a sensational question? But such claim may not be that far from the truth.

No matter how hacked-savvy people like Julian Assange or Lulzsec is, there has to be a source pool where they get their information from. (Data simply don’t manifest themselves out of thin air.) And the existence of this source pool is why online privacy is an illusion.

A Bit[E] Of Me is an experimental artwork where the artist, Federico Zannier, is literally selling his personal data on the internet. Specifically, he is selling data of his online activities. Eg. The websites he visit, the post he made on forums, etc.

“Since February, I have been recording all of my online activity (the HTML pages I have visited, the position of the mouse pointer, a screenshot of what I was looking at, a webcam image of me looking at my computer, my GPS location and a log of the apps that I was using). Check out myprivacy.info to see some of the visualizations I’ve made.”

-https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461902402/a-bit-e-of-me

(Unfortunately said data collection does not include how many time he scratches his nose for a particular day. (But you can buy his NSFW browser histroy for $2!)

Practically everyone of us has given up some degree of personal data to companies online via Facebook, Amazon, or Ebay. And said companies may have used those data for monetary purposes without us receiving a single cent of commission or royalties. Remember seeing those long list of texts ending with “I Agree” or “I Decline”? Giving out license to use our personal data for free is literally a button click away.

“Why not profit from our own personal data directly? It’s not like I can hide them anyway” is probably what goes in Zannier’s mind.

Zannier’s motivation is clear. He wants to raise awareness on how frivolous we are with our online data. He wants to highlight the absurdity of such irrational phenomenon. He wants to earn a few bucks along the way. Online privacy is pretty much a false facade, might as well make use of it right?

The advent of the internet has allowed data of all forms to be visualized and quantified. Graphs, maps, charts, images, or videos instead of strings of code. Everything we do online is collected in digital data form and can be chronicled into books or made into film if we want to (disregarding the entertainment factor). As much as we are concern with our online privacy, the moment we step into the internet, such privacy is void. In fact, it may be non-existing. So what if you set your online blog or social network account to private. The moment you saved and publish anything it will always be stored there in the server, up for grabs by anyone who can. So what if you have a high grade cyber security network. It can stop malicious software or incoming threat but for how long? Our online data are all up for grabs by potentially anyone. Companies where you registered an account, government agencies looking for “terrorists”, 4chan lurkers, etc. And we keep giving up our personal information with no means of stopping. Unless we stop using the internet entirely, this is not going to change. (Hint: We can’t.)

On hindsight, how many creepy voyeurs would bother invading your digital private space? If there are what are the consequences? People like Zannier is not revealing his bank details nor anything physically personal — simply his superficial online presence that bares no direct dire consequences to his life if exposed. People post pictures of themselves, their location and their inner thoughts on Facebook every time anyway. (That’s still no excuse for stalking.)

Nevertheless, if we bother locking our doors at night, we should do the same to our personal online space. We can forget about having total privacy but try not to have zero deterrence either.

Research

Research 01: Online Streaming

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“The Telegarden is an art installation that allows web users to view and interact with a remote garden filled with living plants. Members can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings via the tender movements of an industrial robot arm.”

From http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/garden/Ars/

The Telegarden (with regards to its description above) may sound like a typical school project by today standard. But I should draw your attention to the fact that this “typical” artwork was first introduced in 1995 — a period where domestic internet applications were still scarce and remote.

The contemporary online culture is something many of us have been taking for granted. But turning back the pendulum to the time where people are still paging one another, the internet relay system is barely practical. Sustaining 24-hour surveillance on a plant where viewers can remotely control a mechanical plant-nanny was breakthrough for the online relay system then. What is even more surprising is that such project has been sustaining till 2004 where it was then shut down. If it hasn’t, will it possibly last for decades? Very possible, considering the technology we have today.

In retrospect, such project may have potentially be one of the catalysts that pioneered the online relay streaming such as webcams, Skype or Facebook.

Meanwhile, back to current time, Goldberg’s idea of allowing multiple people to remotely contribute to what is streaming online has not gone obsolete and remains titillating.

Twitch Plays Pokemon is a project where anyone (literally anyone, no limitation on who or how many whatsoever) can input command for a video game Pokemon Red — streamed 24-7 via the online streaming service Twitch.

Like tossing a piece of meat into a piranha pond, chaos (and hilarity) ensues. For the first few hours, the community fights for control over the player character (often resulting in said character spinning in the same spot over and over). And like all mature adults, offensive words were tossed like salad in the online mosh pit. But the most astounding outcomes of this project were that the community actually comes to a consensus on how to progress the game. They have a vote on whether they go for the anarchic approach or the democratic approach. And in the end, the game was actually beaten in a few weeks. Considering the game complexity, length and the arbitrary nature of the online community, such results are nonetheless astounding.

Another great example will be Wafaa Bilal’s performance art project Domestic Tension in 2007. For 30 days, he will be streamed live via the internet for 24 hours. The catch is, he was confined to a room and viewers online can shoot him with a paintball machine he set up. Granted the message behind the project was noble – the true terror behind wars are the people who can fire the missiles in their comfort zone and something along that line. The result of such artwork was expectedly not pleasant. Let just say he left the room with a developed fear for paint.

The internet is an amazing (sometimes scary) tool for revealing a human condition — the willingness to participate if we are from a comfort zone not implicated by any collateral.  If a common purpose is presented to us via a third party space such as the internet, there will always be someone contributing to what was asked of them. Anonymity and remote control, two ideas that drives people into participating– how far of the boundaries can we pushed?