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.

Videofreex

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.

Jon Cates

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”.

Example of a flyer

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.

Left – Xin Feng, Right – Cher See

 

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”.

 

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.