This project was one hell of a ride. Many firsts. Having to manage my time with studies while doing an internship was really a challenge. Nonetheless, this is definitely one of my favourite class of 2 and half years. I chose Interactive Media to learn about mechanics and interactivity, be it organic or the use of digital scripts.
Ideation.
I decided that form and mechanics was more important in creating a physical and interactive device. The study of how things work and the organic nature of an interactive physical product allows for a more intuitive and relatable user experience. I wanted to explore the process of making a product instead of coding out something. I felt it was more important that I explore a physical interactive device before I incorporate digital technology into my devices. And I am glad I did.
THE FLUTE.
I decided to take something ordinary that no one has tried to redesign and give it a refreshed take. Based of the 4-hole Native American Flute, I wanted to redesign the flute such that it will produce a refreshed sound through modifications to the internal structure of it.
This was where I took reference from for the modelling of my flute.
Modelling
For the first time, I was introduced to 3D modelling. I intended to do a rapid prototyping for the flute and the best tool for this given the short span of time available was Tinkercad. It was a stripped down version of autocad and you create shapes based on existing shapes (triangle, rectangular boxes etc.) Even then, it wasn’t easy especially for someone new to this. You have to take into consideration how every part fits and works together, printing issues and the measurements.
This was the first prototype model I designed.
At this point, I wasn’t sure if this would work and the interactivity is actually very limiting. I’ve changed the mouth-piece of the flute to make it sound like a recorder, while keeping the body similar to a recorder/flute.
Still, I wasn’t at all pleased with it. So I continued to research on 3D printing and making of flutes. These are the other videos that I took references from,
Keys to a good flute.
AIRFLOW.
I realised that a smooth inner surface and the correct incision of the air hole and sound hole helped with achieving the sound we want. There should not be any frays as it will disrupt airflow, affecting the sound made by the flute.
Since sound waves has crest and troughs, I wanted to experiment if I could cause a distortion in the airflow which in turns creates a new sound. I did so by adding humps to the inner lower part of the flute.
I have also added two modular parts to the flute.
First is a spinning fidget that spins when high pressure air passes through. This, ideally, will cause some sort of vibrato.
Second is a flap that minimises the space where air passes through the flute.
Because of the limiting capabilities of the 3D printer, I have to make a boxed bottom and widen the overall width of the flute to prevent it from deforming.
Viola! The final product.
I printed it in halves and used epoxy to fit them together. Also filed the inner bits and the holes but the finish was not as smooth as I hoped it would. The whole process was extremely time consuming but worth it when I put it all together:)
DOES IT WORK? WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER?
Sadly, it doesn’t. There are several factors.
The number of humps are probably too many and sound waves just didn’t flow well enough through the chamber. The mouthpiece was not big enough and airflow was restricted. The air hole and sound hole could have been covered better and I believe there was an error in my design of the flat piece that goes on the top. There should be a small chamber that allows the flow of air from the air hole to the sound hole.
In this presentation, I talk about how ethos are any relevant in the future development of tech, citing examples of robots that has Artificial Intelligence and one that are pure mechanical with basic programming. Will they harm us like it is always portrayed in movies or are there hopes that one day, both robots and us can live harmoniously?
Welcome to the Telematic Lunch by Anam, Win Zaw, Mirei and Isaac. This project has gone through multiple amendments from the very beginning to this final video. During our brainstorming process, we had very interesting ideas that were very ambitious. Taking inspiration from A Hole in Space by Galloway and Rabinowitz, we had the idea of having a live match making session and third space dinner after. Win Zaw and Anam had the idea of a podcast with green screens exploring the idea of third-spaception (like inception, get it? haha). After much iterations, we decided on a telematic lunch, which had components of what we discussed pulled together to form this unique piece. Alas, we were the first artists who ate, played a few rounds of “never have I ever” and had a conversation with, along with an obvious cameo from a looping neon star in the outer third space on Win Zaw – a three layer third space a.k.a. Third-spaception.
As my friends and I highlighted that A Hole in Space was a huge inspiration for this piece, I would like to talk about how another piece/group, I felt, was a major contributor to our Telematic Lunch – Second Front and their Last Supper and Heist performances. I felt that what we did was heavily attributed to the exposure of Second Front’s work, in that we were all performing in the third space, had an alter-ego on board and had that very important element of improvisation in Telematic Lunch. Definitely we took it to the next level by incorporating ourselves in the piece and added layers to it with chroma-keying and ate and drank real food, which you think about now, is like eating a third space food, like that in the Last Supper. In that very similar aspect there was also an element of super-participation involved with 4 individuals interacting in their actual self in the third space instead of using animated personas which I thought was rather spectacular that we managed to incorporate in a live setting:)
Of course there goes without a doubt that we’ll face technical issues for our piece.
Space & Aligning
I was mostly involved in the adjustment of the spaces we were using to feed into our obs screen while everyone else set up the tables, chairs and cloth for the chroma-key. (you might ask why? I had a very good reason for that, I was getting the piping hot, cheesy, crust-zesty pizzas for our telematic lunch). So anyway, back to what I was doing. Adjusting the spaces was very tough albeit our previous live-test/rehearsal. Getting the angle right and distance from the phone/laptop to where we were sitting was crucial to creating a space where viewers could believe we are all sitting at the same table. We used the pizza boxes (cut into quadrants) as reference points for our alignment process. At the same time, we allowed for some misalignment to add to the fact that it was a chroma-keyed live feed but mostly because this was as best as we could align our screens.
Connections
This is where it got me frustrated. Yes, it is a given that running OBS and live feeds will cause latency to increase. However, as we inserted the live feed into the screen to make adjustments. It was such a pain because we had to wait for 20 seconds to a minute to be able to see the corrections. This further prolonged our set up time. To add on to that, there was a constant disruption to the live feed running in OBS and I had to always refresh the pages and that meant a realigning of the spaces to fit everyone in nicely. (Not turning my phone to airplane mode was also a disaster because I received 2-3 calls and this also disrupted my feed which explains multiple instances where you don’t see me in the screen:(
Here you can see an example of the disruption
Communication
One other interesting factor to our Telematic Lunch was that all of us could not see each other (except myself because I was managing the stream on OBS). This emulated the idea of being distant but at the same time connected in a third space as we explored human interaction in a collective space. The Big Kiss (by Annie Abrahams – featured strangers over the third space to kiss without any form of physical contact but largely by the aligning of their lips to make it look like they were kissing) was a very small but significant reference that contributed to the success of our Telematic lunch. As I write this, other examples came to mind. Virtual Reality is also very similar in the same way and I think this (physical interaction) is something that many manufacturers are looking into incorporating in the near future as this offers the user to interact in a real-world simulation setting.
We communicated via Skype so that everyone could play Never Have I Ever and also have a conversation together. This also allowed me to give instructions to my teammates on their body placement and gestures for our piece (as seen in the start and end of the video)
With all the technical difficulties faced, I must say that we did overcome them with much despair along the way but it was worth going through it. Because as I write this post, flashes of what was taught in class kept appearing and caused me to lose my train of thoughts. But, it is a good thing. It felt like we had experienced almost everything mentioned in class in one setting for our final project and we were able to experience first-hand how the artists felt during the course of executing their works, which more often than not, we do not get to see or read about.
This brings me to another point on improvisation and dealing with technical difficulties. Bold3rrr came to mind. Though not at all glitchy, Telematic Lunch has had multiple instances where I had to deal with our feed cutting off live and also interacting and performing. I was constantly going back and forth my phone screen and laptop and it really felt like what Jon Cates was going through, except he was much better experienced in dealing with them while I wasn’t. Much of my “panic” was due to huge latency involved. Whenever I have to refresh a page and readjust the placement of the feed, it takes 2-3 minutes just to get it back. On top of that, I am constantly hearing the feed from the live video and also our Skype conversation and this made it hard to identify which questions to reply because of the lag. So many thing were happening at once.
Nonetheless, this made me realise that this whole idea about live performance and in a third space is something like living inside your mind. Where there are constant disruptions (to your train of thoughts) and stuck in this void with endless possibilities that may or may not ruin your performance. In closing I would like to quote Liz from Second Front:
“The tech has really evolved and no one knows the boundaries and as tech emerges, it is important to keep in mind what this tech is doing and is absolutely rewiring the brain and there is a difference in how media is consumed in the social spaces online” Liz, Second Front live interview with Randall Parker, 2017.
And it is because of this – that we are only as capable as how we think, that I am confident we will see exponential progress in this field in the years to come as we are more exposed to third space performances since they are the visual articulation of our imagination.
Thank you to Mirei who did the setting up of the spaces and monitoring the collective feed on you mobile phone; Win Zaw for the awesome idea and green suit; anam for the leadership and direction as well as logistical support for making this a huge success! Many other smaller things they have done but I’ve listed the main ones here. Do view their posts to read in detail how they have contributed to this successful performance:)
Anam
Win Zaw
Mirei
At the end of it all, I felt that this was a really tiring but satisfying performance as I was able to experience the concepts Randall had gone through with us and this allowed me to better understand them and empathise with the artists who did their performances. Pizza was great, the company was awesome and I am happy with our result:) Thank you Randall for an amazing semester! Look forward to more pizzas:)
Posted by Mirei Shirai on Saturday, 4 November 2017
So, we literally lived through 2 time zones at the same time. Mirei was having an awesome time in Thailand and I was busy with work at home. We decided to walk down the streets we are in during dusk to show the liveliness and change in the sky’s temperature over time. Obviously, thailand was more interesting to see than Singapore but perhaps that is because I am so used to how it is in Singapore all the years. And this made me realise how much I have taken for granted what is around me in my neighbourhood especially since the landscape is always changing. However, at the same time, this Facebook collaborative piece ignited my love to explore and travel. And I think there is something about doing a live piece at two very different places with different cultures that is so undermining yet impactful. It allows for two diverse cultures and the people interacting to experience the sights and sounds of both places. This opens up a whole new dimension where the mind is able to see far and beyond, perhaps driving new creative inspiration for oneself at the same time being therapeutic.
I think for the technicalities of this piece, nothing seriously wrong happened. Initially, I thought it would be good that we both talked and I’m glad we didn’t (except for parts where I commented on the video). I felt this worked out well because it allows both the user and viewers to experience the journey of cross dimensions peacefully. And yes, thankfully, Mirei’s phone held up just in time to last 15 minutes hahaha. This was fun! I’m thankful to have participated in this telematic stroll Randall:)
11pm, 28th October. I was deciding if I should take a really quick shower before the interview starts or not. 11:01pm, with much itch to shower, I decided not to. And, I am so glad I did not. The interview with Second Front was so rich with passion and energy and just having that spirit to share, the members were unique in their own ways. It ended up with me wanting to hear more from them but the interview had to end and that was that.
The members started off sharing about their avatars and immediately, it amazed me. I mean, it wasn’t anything spectacular. The avatars were essentially alter egos of themselves, what they were free to identify themselves in Second Life. But, it was how they chose to represent themselves that intrigued me. Almost everyone introduced their avatars as something better and more positive rather than something unflattering. Liz was an agent, jeremy was a blue skinned alien Patrick was a cross between Steven Tyler and Andy Warhol. It all seemed to suggest that this virtual “third space” was like a safe haven for many and was offered the most freedom which ultimately sort of bring about a euphoric mood to the members when they are on Second Life.
On what it was like to perform in Second Life
Bibbe mentioned that imagination was the only limiter and what you wanted to be and do, could be accomplished with very low costs as compared to a live performance in a theatre. And this is so true. I think that, as artists, one of the facts that we have to admit is that we are arguably constrained by the big word – FUNDS. of course many do pull through this ordeal and emerge very well established but having being able to do as many things as close to what you had intended to for your art piece, means a lot to the artists.
On “virtual leakage”
When you have unlimited access (to the third space), it will set me lose – Bibbe. She goes on to say that “there is a certain dynamism between emotion and thought wherever you are when you are embodied in pixels”. What Bibbe mentioned was so interesting. I felt that she managed to encapsulate my impression of the third space so well. It felt so relatable. (And by the way, I just wanna say, she’s so cool!) This takes me to my next point on being in the virtual world.
Why does the pieces end up in abomination?
Since the third space (or if you like, Second Life) was free for all to do anything. Naturally, many people would have multiple interpretations as to what this space could be use for. Already when I first logged into Second Life, I see things like Halloween place, Gory places, Sexually suggestive places and all kinds of things that somewhat are socially agreeable by society as something as undesirable if you were to partake in real life. And this leads me to think that Second Life is a space for people to seek a harem of their inner desires. Jeremy mentioned that initially, it wasn’t clear what Second Life was for. And many immediately took this for another regular shoot ’em up site, like an RPG game. And this was one of the reasons to why Second Front decided to perform Grand Theft Avatar as a shooting (robbery) heist.
In conclusion, there were many points mentioned and it would take forever to continue on about it. But my 2 biggest takeaway was –
It brings out the bad in people don’t believe in and if you are likely to be obsessed in the virtual world, you would be in the real world as well – Bibbe
We feel things when we are in this spaces and there are (certainly) stakes – Patrick
I guess what I am trying to say is that the existence of the third space may not see detrimental effects. In that, while there could be instances where one may lose consciousness of the real world, really, there is a world of possibilities where you could explore new ideas and break existing laws to create new ones. I mean why would there be the word “possible” if there isn’t any to begin with? I think that this, not only Second Life, allows for the creation of new begins in society and this will develop as cultural norms shift over time. Cheers!
