DIWHAT?! DIWO! DIWOAH!

DIY and DIWO

For years, it has all been about doing it yourself also known as “DIY”. DIY is not necessarily a bad mindset to have or a bad process to practice but it is certainly not the only option. There is the option of doing it with others, allowing us to not only learn from one another but also build upon the innovations of others. But maybe it is due to the individualism, society keeps encouraging or the fear of losing ownership of our creations that encourages the “DIY” culture. Regardless, doing it yourself is important, it teaches responsibility, a sense of direction, and perseverance. But as I mentioned earlier, there is also the option of doing it with others. This option is equally as edifying but possibly with a larger final creation.

“In 1996 artists Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett initiated an online platform for collaboration and experimentation, informed by community arts, pirate radio, activism and street art. Inspired by free and open software development they challenged notions of the individual genius artist.”

  • – Official Furtherfield Website

DIWO and Furtherfield

Screenshot of the Adobe Connect Meeting in Session

This online community is called Furtherfield. And the inspiration led to the ideation of “Doing it with others”, or in another words “DIWO”. This term was officially coined in 2006 by Furtherfield and has inspired so many people and organizations throughout the years of its establishment. This concept of an open collaborative platform that creates thought provoking, creative statement pieces with the help of others has inspired a plethora of people around the world and rewrote an entire mindset focused on the idea of individualism.

Doing it With Others has in a sense inspired the entire conception of Open Source Studio (OSS). Open Source Studio is built upon the foundational ideas of an open online studio for students to share their sources and creations with one another in hopes to inspire and encourage one another through their journey as growing artist. The impact OSS has left upon the students of ADM is profitable not only as students but als.o as we step into the real world. Working with OSS not only introduced me to Furtherfield and their works but also improved my sense of responsibility and the practice of recording my process. I hope to see OSS create further impact on the growth of emerging artists and can not wait to see further impacts Furtherfield will have on our generation.

Screenshot of the Plantoid Piece during the Adobe Connect meeting

The “Plantoid” piece introduced to us by Marc Garrett peaked my interest, not only for its beauty but also for the process that created the flower. And with every new flower, there is a set of instructions that the artists must follow, making the flowers unique in their own way. Incorporating something so natural like flora with something so unnatural and man made, is heartwarming. Because it shows that we humans can coexist with nature in a relationship that is neither harmful to one nor advantageous to the other. In a way, it is showing us how we need each other in order to function and survive. Also, the way the flower actually reproduces in different places all over the world is very breathtaking.

DIWO in the Third Space

Many of Furtherfield’s work deals with incorporating the ever-advancing technology into its creations. From the basic use of the open software available on the internet to digital artworks, the affect of DIWO is not just on a physical collaborative level but a digital collective level. Though not a Furtherfield projects, works like “Hole in Space”, “Please Change Beliefs”, and the “World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” incorporate the ideas of doing it with others in order to create a collaborative piece where not only is the artist the artist but also the people who contributed to its creation.

And not only does doing it with others often lead to the creation of a third space, the process before the doing is also a part of the third space in itself. The online community is a third space while the art works they create also are in the third space. And though we cannot be in the third space and first space simultaneously, we can take away information and skills learned in the third space and apply it to the first space.

DIWO in NTU 

Our projects in school though not necessarily labeled DIWO in our school, is built around the ideas of working with other. Majority of our microprojects in our Experimental Interactions class require us to negotiate with our classmates to create works of art. From projects like our Telematic Stroll and the Telematic Embrace, negotiating and doing it with others plays a strong importance in our works.

DIWO in the Future

I can see myself using the ideas in DIWO in my future art pieces, especially those pertaining to my Experimental Interaction class. Especially, because Experimental Interaction class gives its students so many opportunities to really experiment with different media and execution methods. In other classes, the extent of DIWO stops at just bouncing ideas off of each other; however, in Experimental Interaction projects, I can actually incorporate others into the final outcome of my work.

Experience of adobe connect

Adobe Connect Meeting

My experience with Adobe Connect has once again been very successful, and the more I use it, the more I seem to gravitate towards it over other video calling platforms. The connection and quality seems to be very good and even the way multiple people can be online without suffering from discrepancies is a feat on its own. I truly enjoyed this experience and feel that we should have a good balance of classes or projects through Adobe Connect.

 

 

THIS ART IS GLITCHIN

THIS ART IS GLITCHIN’

When we hear the word glitch, it’s never a good sign. If a program glitches then it creates more problems than advancements. But in this case, we want to glitch. Glitch in itself is an amalgamation of ideas and inputs that create a whole new invention.

As one of our mini-microprojects, we split ourselves into groups of fours or five and each put in a picture of ourselves in dropbox. We would all take turns creating alterations, “glitches” to the pictures. Accumulating the glitch until our final picture (done by the last person) was finished.

Original Glitch
Glitch Stage 1
Glitch Stage 2
Glitch Stage 3
Glitch Stage 4 (Final Stage)

The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence

The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence

“The Sentence has no end. Sometimes I think it had no beginning. Now I salute its authors, which means all of us. You have made a wild, precious, awful, delicious, lovable, tragic, vulgar, fearsome, divine thing.”

– Douglas Davis, 2000

What is “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence”?

“The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” is an collaborative and collective network based artwork created in 1994 by Douglas Davis, an artist and media teacher. Though considered as the “author” and “artist” this art piece, Douglas Davis publicly credits those who helped him design the website and other coworker on his website. This artwork is credited as one of the first couple artworks to utilize the World Wide Web after its creation and integration to mainstream society. “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” started to take on a life of its own as viewers were given the opportunity and freedom to contribute to the sentence in what ever form or style they preferred. One can notice that there are some irregularities in format, theme, and basic flow of the sentences due to the a variety of people from all over the world. In 1995, “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” was donated to the Whitney Museum and preserved there since then. In 2012, The Whitney Museum planned to reopen this art piece. However, due to the upgraded software of the 21st century and the outdated codes of 20th century, the website was unusable. This led to the eventual conclusion to create a duplicate of the original artwork embedded with modern coding and software that allows the duplicated version to be edited on. That version was opened online allowing a resurgence of this collaborative piece. The original version is still preserved in The Whitney Museum, though it has been locked from further edits with some of the links redirecting you to an external website.

What do I think the “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” is really saying?

I believe that “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” is an interactive record of human development and mindset as well as an ironic commentary on our current society. When “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” was created, Douglas Davis probably had the intention for the website to continue for a long time. If the goal was to great a long collaborative sentence from people all around the world that has access to the World Wide Web, it could only be achieved if people continued to participate. The sentence’s humble beginning as a method of collecting honest feedback regarding a survey about his exhibition transformed into a platform where anybody can post what ever they want when ever they felt like it, regardless of the vulgarities or discrepancies with previous additions. This, in the end, has become a primary source that is still recording the true thoughts and behaviors of humans who tend to unleash their subconscious or emotions on the web. Humans tend to be more honest about their feelings or like to create a false persona of someone who they want to be online because they do not have to taste the physical judgement and scrutiny that befalls physical confrontations. We can see that the “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” slowly starts to become a platform for people to rant their feelings, as well as the linguistic changes throughout the years (different slang or vulgarities). This may not have been the original intention per-say but like everything in modern society that seems to transform and change, “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” has metamorphasized into something more than just a simple survey.

Tumblr Notes
Tumblr Notes

On a side not, this way of constantly adding onto an already existing statement reminds of me of the way Tumblr works, where people have a catalyst image or text that triggers a wave of never-ending reblog and notes. (Though these are not the most mature examples, these were the few that I could find)

The irony of the “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” is that it is written and stored on modern technology. Even though it may the longest textual sentences, it is not necessarily the longest lasting sentence. I say this because most of the links and images attached on the original version of  “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” can not be accessed because of the outdated codes or the deleted file the “author” trashed after several years. What people assumed would be permanently on the World Wide Web, in the end no longer exists, or is “broken”. This entire situation points out  “the ephemeral nature of the Web…”. This is why I believe that the longest textual sentence is will not be the longest surviving sentence.

And for the “longest existing collaborative sentence” it is still unable to display the proper Korean Characters. It has been 24 years and within those years there have been so many advancements in technology that should be able to help depict the Korean Characters yet for some reason it still remains a garbled mess. Maybe it because the Korean characters were sent in with the old coding making it more difficult to translate it and depict it, but maybe one day it will be possible to actually see what was written in 1995.

REFLECTION

Looking through the effect and impact of “The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence” has made me think about the idea of collaboration. A collaborative piece involves not only the artist but also the audience, both contribute to the outcome of a collaborative artwork. And continues to have effect as long as one person makes the effort to keep it alive. The beauty of a collaborative work is that each contribution made is unique and personal to the contributor. All these unique pieces amalgamate to an even more unique creation. For example, our current Experimental Class is doing a collaborative art piece. We all have to post one body part every day. (Insert screen shot here). Even this collaborative art piece is a record of our generation, from the pictures you can see different editing techniques and clothing styles, even camera angle techniques unique to each batch of students.

 

“Do It With Others”

 

 

A Telematic Embrace

SUMMARY

The third space. A space that combines our current space with another space. Yet, it is nearly impossible to coexist in two of the spaces simultaneously. However, this does not mean that we can not communicate with other who have stepped into the third space along side you. In a sense as we step into the third space, we are remodelling it to become our first space.

(Image of everyone coming online on Adobe Connect)

We used Adobe Connect, a more professional counterpart to Skype and FaceTime, as our platform to access the third space. Our third spaces is occupied by our entire class (except two students who could not manage to log on). Originally, we were meant to be located in different first spaces but for the sake of efficiency and time we stayed in the Foundation 4D room. We played around with different activities that connected all of us through the third space. We tried connecting our arms to create a row, touched fingers with the people next to us, covered the screen in a monochrome color, and more.

EXPERIENCE

(Image of one of the activities)

The entire experience was fun and amusing. There were a lot of laughs however, that was mostly because we were in the same first space that allowed us to make jokes and see the reaction with others as we did some of our ridiculous activities. Other than the occasional laughs, I felt that fascinated by the experience. Sure, I’ve used Skype to call a friend and gave her a “Hi-5” or exchanged food with Bella during our Telematic Stroll. But to something of this scale with so many people and such unique activities was a novel moment in my third space career.

DISCOVERY

(Images of activity requiring aligning our body parts)

Though we were in the same first space, we can see people trying to align their hands and arms without discussing it with one another. We had the opportunity and temptation to yell out to the student whose screen was above mine to align our fingers yet we withheld the urge and used the screen itself. This in a way shows how we truly cannot completely be in the first space as well as the third space. We were aware we were in the same room physically yet our mind kept telling us to focus our thoughts in the third space.

REFLECTION

(Image of our hands close up)

The third space. Though not an official word in the dictionary, is a word that relates to many of us in this society. We spend so much time in our third space then we do in any other space (granted we are usually asleep while we are in our first space). People usually assume that once we are in the third space or “glued to our phones” that we are completely isolated and anti-social. But they do not realize that the third space is like a community of other like minded people who we can interact and connect with.

The Bauhaus and Modern Movement

     My partner and I were tasked to research and create a presentation regarding the Bauhaus and Modern Movement. Specifically, the effect the movement has left on America as well as the designs associated with the movements. 

     Though my partner was in charge of collecting the information regarding the Bauhaus Movement and myself in charge of researching about the Modern Movement; we discussed the information together so that the both of us had a clear understanding of one another’s topic.

     The PDF version of the presentation seems to be too big for OSS to post. So instead I linked the URL for the presentation below. 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gCyKz-OVoxOhqNp1sRAmstvAtmcEF-_yoE8tugCRnqM/edit?usp=sharing

     Through this research session, I have had the chance to truly  learn and understand the Modern Movement in America. To narrow down my research I focused on information pertaining to the Modern Movement in America from pre- World War I to post-World War II. My understanding of Graphic Design is no longer limited to “oh it has vintage style” when referring to Image A and B.

Lithographic Poster 1897 (Image A)
Modernist Poster by Joseph Binder 1940 (Image B)

     Now I know that Image A is a traditional illustration poster made during the initial stages of Lithographic Posters, before the 1900s. While Image B is a Modernist Poster made during 1940 using silkscreening methods and an airbrush finish. Both are “vintage” in the sense that it is antique but not should not be classified under the same style of “vintage”.

 

“Less is More”