Research – CherSee

Second Front live interview review

The Second Front interview was a refreshing and interesting live broadcast. I was actually looking forward to the live interview and log in to adobe connect early to catch a glimpse of the content of the video. I was at that point formulating a question that I could ask the Second Front crew later on in the interview.

The interview started. It was a new experience to me that I get to see the faces of the people that were behind the Second Front’s avatar. All of the members of the Second Front crew were looking great and fashionable. The interview discussed the process behind the world, how they consider the audiences and social issues and we were able to ask them questions on the chatting section.

I have to say that the interview did not go well in the beginning. There were latency and lag from each live feed. At one point, the host’s (randall parker) adobe connect crash, resulting in me getting disconnected with the meeting as well. However, the content and the process shared by the members of Second Front were very educational and have taught me a lot about the “third space”. It has also come to my mind that the interview was similar to the one that was done by the Videofreex. I was able to interact with the video and they were able to interact back, the “virtual leakage” concept was still present ever in the interview.

In Conclusion, the Second Front interview with Randall Parker as the host was an eye-opening experience for me. I was glad that I had the chance to peek behind the curtain to analyze the process of their work and their further plan in Second Life.

Research Critique: Second Front

The Second Front is a group of artists performing in the public virtual space that is the world of Second Life. The interview with the Second Front crew revealed their preferences in terms of their video broadcasting location, their methodology in creating their pieces and how they viewed their video.

The performance by Second Front was often shown in the public and the crew actually called it the “virtual leakage”. I believed such concept was similar to what we had learnt in our previous lessons. The ability to interact with the audiences and the audiences were able to interact back. An example of such concepts existing before the Second Front was the VideoFreex and the way they broadcast their content as well.

In the article, the Second Front had shown us another side to our humanistic behaviour when we were online interacting with one another. The Second Front had avatars and were able to do bold and crazy actions online in the world of Second Life. For example, in the video that was posted, Second Front was actually robbing a bank in the virtual world as part of their performances art. It proved to us that we often put on another persona when we were in the “third space”. The persona that was created often had very contrasting characteristic and behaved very differently from us in real life. I believed that the reason was that in the “third space”, we were able to do anything without any legal repercussion or consequences that we would have to bear later on. In such environment, people were able to explore and truly behave how they would like to and no one would criticise them. Such phenomenon was often seen in MMORPG where the player could be whoever they wanted to be and do whatever they wanted to do.

In conclusion, the Second Front is very relevant in today’s culture in the “third space”/internet where people were able to interact with one another in their “second life”. It has pushed the “third space” performance art further and brought up the concept of how our avatar was just ourselves in another form.

Co-broadcasting experiences

Part 1:

For school

Posted by Goh Chersee on Thursday, 12 October 2017

Part 2:

Co-broadcasting

Posted by Goh Chersee on Thursday, 12 October 2017

After 8 weeks of broadcasting, I considered myself as a professional in creating a live feed for the audiences. However, learning about the Co-broadcasting function on Facebook Live have changed how I would do future streaming.

Technical Difficulties

One of the major problems of Co-broadcasting or just live streaming had always been the connection problem. I was hosting the stream while Xin Feng was joining me and she was having a problem with the internet connection. The stream turns out to be fine, but there are a few parts that were laggy and the audio was all messed up.

Another improvement that the Facebook Live could develop on was to allow more than just 1 person to join in the live streaming. It would emphasize on the concept of super participation and allow our team to explore many ideas utilizing the function of Co-broadcasting.

In conclusion, I would definitely use this function in my team’s final project.

Research Critique: Jennicam

Jennicam was a webcam video that broadcast the life of Jennifer Ringley to the internet. It was 7 years of constant broadcasting about the mundane and intimate life of Jennifer, how she challenged the idea of video content and giving up your own personal data to the world.

The online artwork is still relevant in today’s society where we are constantly surrendering our data to the public. We filled up the forms and agreed to terms and condition without even looking at it. Our browsing history was being sold to companies so that they could better understand our interest and advertise what is relevant to us. All of the example above were just some of the reason why Jennicam had such a huge following. It brought the concept of living under the public eye to the extreme and proved the statement.

Jennicam have also brought light to the idea of “third space” and how constantly living in the virtual space had repercussions. The webcam had bought the idea of broadcasting even further and explore the negative effects of such idea. Having your personal details being revealed today (detail such as addresses and medical condition) might cause “swatting” of your house and even death threat being sent to your address.

One of my favorite email last year, I’ve got a message from a guy that said he was in college and its Friday night and he felt like a loser cause he is sitting at home. But he turn in to jennicam and I was in there on friday night doing my laundry. So he said it made him feel better because he knows I’m popular.

The quote above was from the David Letterman interview with Jennifer Ringley. Jennicam had also bought up the hidden desire of human nature, to feel accompanied even when there isn’t anyone around. The third space was able to achieve such results and form a unique relationship with the audiences.

In conclusion, I felt that Jennicam could still be the narratives of the society we are living in.

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.

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.

Research Critics about Videofreex

Research Critics about Videofreex

“Here Come The Videofreex” was a fascinating documentary about a group of people finding ways to distribute and broadcasting their own video after being fired by CBS for their unique content. I had watched the hour long documentary and I find it extremely inspiring and interested in their journey.

If there was one word that could be used to describe the content that Videofreex were producing, it would be unfiltered. In the older days, films and television programs were often formal and filtered. Films often have the same plot line and bits that were choreographed to have the fine polish the audiences would expect and the news coverage was just a man sitting in front of a camera and reporting about the political tension that was happening at that time. However, the Videofreex bought the Sony Portapak to the street and film the protests and demonstrations at that point of time. It felt real, textured, exciting and unfiltered. It reviewed the real problem the society faced and allowed people on a street to have a voice that would be heard by thousands of viewers. I believed this had sparked a new form of journalism. Everyone with a camera now could report on a major event, everyone is a journalist!

An example that I found similar would be a Youtuber/Journalist called Tim Pool producing videos about today’s political climate. He often filmed down protests or demonstrations and interviewed people that were participating the event. I would say both the Videofreex and Tim Pool had achieved the same goal of shedding light on whats really happened in today’s society. It also had shifted the power of mainstream media to alternate sources such as Youtube and Facebook. People no longer have to get their daily doses of news from big television networks such as CBS or CNN.

Another thing that I found extremely interesting about Videofreex were that the footage they broadcast were often about their daily lives and the event happening in Lanesville. Neither did they have any lavish set to use as a background nor did they have any beautiful costume to doll themselves up in front of the camera. However, people were attracted to their content, people were attracted to them, the Videofreex. They were attracted to the video of their daily lives and happenings! I believed that was also the reason why they were so charismatic because they were capturing life. The life of millions of people that lived like them, that why they were so relatable because the Videofreex remind people of themselves!

The Videofreex had broken the stagnate state of television programs and were the first to have experimented with the third space. The audiences were treated to an idea of having to interact with the people on their television and Videofreex were able to interact back using a telephone. They were interacting in a shared space, the third space. In today’s society, we were able to see such interaction everywhere and everytime someone uses social media to broadcast or every time someone tweet or post about their lives. I would like to quote a sentence from an article about “The Third Space” by Randall Packer as it would properly illustrate the connectivity of our being.

Nowadays, our sense of being and presence is scattered throughout the third space. We are everywhere.