September 2017 – CherSee

Hyperessay #1: Concepts in Social Broadcasting

LIVE AUCTION_FOR SCHOOL

Posted by Goh Chersee on Thursday, 21 September 2017

Cher See and Xin Feng CrossStreaming

https://thirdspacenetwork.com/cross-stream-xin-feng-chersee/

Through these 6 weeks of lessons, I had learned much about the “third space” and social broadcasting. I will be bringing up projects or micro-projects that I have done, what I have learned from it and how Xin Feng and I apply this knowledge on our cross-streaming.

The lesson on the VideoFreex was memorable and has taught me about the revolution of broadcasting. It had changed the medium from a fixed, cleaned and choreographed version of broadcasting to a textured and “dirty” one. I believed that I had given Tim Pool as an example of how Videofreex’s work has influenced the generation and educated them on the reality of the streets in America. The ability to broadcast had also shifted the power from the major news network to us, each and every one of us. Instead of watching the news, we could use social media to educate ourselves on the ongoing problems of the world.

Learning from the Videofreex, we have decided that it would be a good opportunity to exaggerate the social problems that we had in our society today. Selling organs in a commercial way was a statement that explores how we as humans were putting a price tag on something that should be priceless. Like how Videofreex were showing the world what was really happening on the streets, the cross stream was a performance to the audiences on how material possessions and money were more important than our well-being in this generation.

I tried to make the cross stream video “dirtier” than before, to personalize the space that I broadcasted. Learning from Bold3RRR by Jon Cates, to explore the norms of today’s social media and defy the pursuit of “clean” virtual space that had plagued our “third space” today. The work reminded us as human beings and how imperfect we are, therefore our creation shouldn’t be as well. We should embrace such imperfection and personalize our space to fit our needs, for example, our desktop was where all the activities took place, therefore one could see such personalization on each individual desktop. I have also made the connection of the “third space” as our playground for us to socialize and interact with one another, therefore the same metaphor could be applied to our Desktop as our “house” or “living room”.

I wanted to make the space that I broadcasted similar to a sales flyer that we would sometimes obtain while we were shopping. The cross stream should feel cheap and “dirty” to emphasize the idea that we were conveying. It symbolizes the auction of organs or body parts as part of a supermarket sale that would be sold off for low prices.

Lastly, I wanted the viewers to interact with the video. Having the example of Hole-in-Space, it was an interesting piece that allowed people from different sides of America to interact with one another. In order to replicate the same effect, I am constantly talking to the screen in order to achieve that interaction, as I asked the viewer what was the acceptable price for the types of organs that was on sales.

In Conclusion, I felt that the cross-stream was an interesting project that allowed us to explore the price of humanity. The project was also an accumulation of our knowledge on internet art and the “third space”.

Device of the Week #1 – Theremin

Theremin is a musical instrument that was created in 1928 by a Russian inventor Leon Theremin. It is played without touching any of the components and the device was able to determine the pitch and volume of the sound by calculating the distance between your hand and the two antennas. The vertical antenna changes the pitch while the horizontal antenna changes the volume of the sound. It was an unusual and strange instrument that was unknown to the majority of the public.

Component – Infrared Obstacle Avoidance Sensor, Sound module

Theremin had a simple idea of creating sound by judging the distance of your hand, stripping away all the complex gesture in order for a person to play a musical instrument, removing all the agility that was required from the player. It provides an easy control that allows even people with disability to play music.

Research Critics on The World’s First Collaborative Sentence

The World’s First Collaborative Sentence was a digital artwork by Douglas Davis. The reading provided was a description of the artwork’s crash and corrupted file of coded text and the restoration of the artwork. The online artwork allows the public to participate and create a sentence, the world’s longest sentences being created by the collective effort of the audiences.

The digital artwork had close relations to our next lesson, Super-Participation, and it was also closely related to our social network today. In today’s social media, we were constantly commenting and sharing content, spreading videos or images with one another and the cycle might continue again and again. It proved the power of the public and showed that the “third space” had the ability to create something that was bigger than all of us combined. The World’s First Collaborative Sentence was such idea that illustrates the capacity of the internet.

A similar example of such ability being displayed should be the bike lock incident. In a demonstration in America, a masked man took out a bike lock and smashed another man’s head. The incident angered an online community and they were determined to find out who the masked man was. With the collective effort of each individual from that community, the internet was about to identify the culprit and informed the law enforcer about the incident. This also showed that with the effort of the public, there is nothing impossible.

In conclusion, I had to first admit that I felt extremely saddened by the fact the online artwork was being corrupted in the first place. The same goes for any artwork that was being destroyed or damaged, it felt as if a part of history was lost to time, and we would not have a chance to educate ourselves about it. However, I am shaken by the power of the internet and what it was able to do, the online artwork by Douglas Davis demonstrated such power in a form of a sentence.

OBS Experience

https://www.facebook.com/goh.chersee/videos/10211911388914332/

I have always felt nervous when facing the public online. However, I felt more comfortable this time round as I have all the prior experience that I could fall back to. After researching Jon Cates’ work, Bold3RRR, I had a basic idea of the content that I wanted to broadcast, a simple video about how I entertain myself with the new type of content that I felt that have great potential to grow in the “third space”, the digital commentator of video games.

Super Best Friends – one of the Let’s Player on the internet

Digital Commentator, also known as “Let’s Play”, was about a player broadcasting the play session and share it with the world. The urban dictionary define “Let’s Play” as,

One or more people, usually from message boards, that record themselves playing video games through screenshots or captured video (Mostly the latter). This can be any game, from Doom to Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

PewDiePie – one of the famous Youtuber that make Let’s Play content

I felt that more and more people are engaging in alternative media and entertainment such as “Let’s Play”. However, those who do not understand such entertainment who often question and ultimately dislike these type of new media. I personally find myself enjoying such videos and the interaction with the “entertainer”. This could also be used to compare with the Videofreex where the audiences were about to interact with the host in the “third space”. However, in this case the audiences would use the message board instead of the telephone.

Research Critique of Bold3RRR by Jon Cates

Bold3RRR by Jon Cates was an art piece that explores the possibilities of our relationship with technology, of how noises and glitches were the product of our crafting of the digital world. It was a poetic expression of our current expectation of the mechanics, that it was a perfect and clean environment for us to utilize, but Jon Cates thought otherwise. Jon Cates believed that the new media was imperfect, “dirty”. It implies a humanistic side to our media, that we are imperfect, therefore the crafting of our technology should not be perfect either. The art piece further explores the importance and possibility of accepting aberration in our media.

The work brought new perspectives to our society, to how we view our social media or “techno-social”. It was the exploration of how we “contaminate” our “third space” through interactions of our own and making technology humanistic. I was unaware of such interaction or “contamination” until I had read through the interview. I felt strange and could not agree more with Jon Cates. It was such a natural behavior for me to make all my space (for example, social media and my own desktop) my own, it was too subtle for me to realize until the reading. It had opened my eyes to how humans behave and the possibility of how our behavior changes our virtual surrounding.

Bold3RRR and the meaning behind the work were closely related to our next lesson that is Desktop as Mise-en-Scene. If the “third space” is our playground for us to socialize and interact with one another, then I would use the same metaphor and visualize our Desktop as our “house” or “living room”. It was the virtual space that we used as our shelter, for work, play or entertainment. It changes according to how we wanted our “living room” to feel. Therefore, if one would be streaming and using Desktop as a background, it would be the equivalent of inviting the audiences to your virtual home. It should be similar to how the Videofreex broadcast their content, using their house as their mise-en-scene and audiences were able to interact with them through telephones. However, in this case, we would replace the house with our Desktop and the audiences were interacting through Facebook chat instead.

In conclusion, BoldR333 by Jon Cates was an eye-opening read for me. It made me realized my own behavior and how the public interacts with technology.

Virtual Lesson – Adobe Connect

Having a lesson on Adobe Connect was a refreshing experience for me. I would love to attend the lesson on the “third space” again. I find it very fitting in fact for the class to be held in the virtual space as it would further emphasize the importance of the “third space”.

Personally, this is the first time I had a lesson online and I was pretty nervous in fact as I never had the experience before. However, when the lesson was being held, all the doubts and fear that I had was gone and I was enjoying it. I enjoyed the interactivity and how creative each individual classmate was. I enjoyed looking at them through the small window that was their reality and being a part of their everyday life.

One problem that I find quite distracting was the fact that everyone had a problem with the audio, I believed this was also due to the reason that everyone was unprepared when it comes to video streaming. If this problem was solved, the lesson would be much smoother and enjoyable.

In conclusion, if I had to choose between a class being held in the physical world or through the “third space”, I would choose the latter.

“Welcome to Electronic Café International” Research Critic

“Hole in Space” by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz

“Welcome to Electronic Cafe International” was a fascinating piece of reading, documenting the work of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz and their seminal work, Hole-in-Space from 1980. It discussed greatly on the effects of the artwork on the people that had interacted with it and how their behavior changed after the event.

I found the artwork by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz an inspiration to our current society where social media dominated our daily life. It reminded us that social media could still be used for good. From the reading, it could clearly be seen that Hole-in-Space were one of the few early works(including the Videofreex) that experimented with the virtual space or what we know today as the “third space”.

There’s a quote from the reading that I would like to bring up as it would help with the research.

A virtual space creates social situation without traditional rules of etiquette. The absence of the threat of physical harm makes people braver.

I could not agree more with the reading. As society was often bound by rules and social norms, we could not always act or speak out what was on our mind, because we too were bounded by those restrictions. It acts as an invisible rope binds us to our roles and allowed us to function as a society. However, the “third space” removes all those restrictions and allow us to truly act and experiment. It allows creativity to flourish and interactions from different races to mingles and forge greater social bonds. An example that the reading gave was the Korean and the Black community was used to be each other’s enemy but after the artwork, the relationships between the two community improved greatly. This could never be achieved anywhere but through the “third space”.

The reading was closely related to our next week(week4) lesson on our social engagement with one another and how the “thirds space” invented new ways for us to interact. Hole-in-Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz should also be considered as a collective narrative, as it documented how a group of people behavior in front of the “hole”. It made us rediscover ourselves under a different light.

In conclusion, I have learned a great deal about the “third space” and how closely related it is to our behavior. It has proven time and time again that we are still not familiar with ourselves, but only through the “third space” can we safely experiment and understand a little more about us.