Category Archives: My Work

Final Project, My Work

Project Update 2: YouMAP Night Experiment

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The previous experiment was in daylight, everyone awake and the streets busy with something or someone. The noise was a distraction and so were the visuals.

Hence to fully experience dependency on the Google Maps, I decided to take the experiment to the night time and to go through a path that I am aware but am not sure or have travelled before.

Thus, I chose the pathway connector that is relatively near to me and to go to my sister’s ex junior college. The pathway was previously a rundown mash and that i was familiar with. But 3 or 4 years back, they renovated and eversince then, I have actually travelled beyong the 200 ms after the basketball court, least to say at night.

So today was the day, I travelled and see how it went.

The whole experience was peaceful yet creepy to a certain extent. The peaceful was that there were not much noise or sound which also became the creepy part of this experiment. The navigation overall was good and was focused. The only disappointment was that the path was straight throughout and that there were few turns. It would be have been interesting if I tried it with a bit more twist and turns; spice up the whole experience.

At the end of the experiment, I decided that I will go back through the same path ( it was not difficult to recognize since it was a long straight line) to see how the environment was. The experiment had my phone right infront of me to avoid the view of the surrounding. So this would give a bit of view of what I initially travelled. It was dark, so let’s not expect too much of a visible view.

Next week is the final.  So I will use periscope to record the whole experience while navigating through the other phone with Google Maps. I was intending of taking a bus to a untravelled path ( nearby neighbourhood flats) and navigate my way back to class – on time!

Let’s hope I don’t get lost and that I manage to capture a variety of audiences. Perhaps, I will find ways to come up with options and hopefully be directed by people’s response through periscope!

Final Project, My Work

Project Update: YouMap Experimentation 1

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So for this week, it was all about experimenting and trying to see how it flows.

The objective was to be able to consciousness focus on the google map to navigate myself to a destination without paying attention to my surroundings visually.

Previously, I had already experimented in school with regard to the way it was to be captured.

Initially, I planned to do it on Wednesday after getting all my equipment and testing them out. I planned to go from my house to Yew Tee Point, which I also proposed the last time. However, due to the rain, I had to postpone the whole experiment today.

I started from Pioneer Mrt Station and decided to navigate myself to Jurong Point. It was to take me approxmiately 20 to 30 minutes to reach there. Hence, I commenced with the journey, being very conscious mostly to focusing on the Google Map and not what’s infront of me visually.

Google Start

I used a samsung phone to record my voice while using my iphone to navigate through to Jurong Point Mall. I took screenshots of the Google Map as I navigated to the Mall. Thus, I have used the voice recording together with the screenshots to create a short clip of my process. I could update the whole 21 mins recording due to space constrains.

The overall experience with having to navigate using Google Maps alone and trying to consciously focus on it visually can be both tiring and scary. I tend to lean on my sense of hearing for me to be cautious about my surroundings. When I am nearing a traffic light ( which I use Google Maps to detect when I have to cross a lane), I tend to automatically survey my surroundings immediately and to make sure that I am able to cross the street.

Google Middle

As a person who loves to talk, I found myself many times repeating my descriptions of the surrounding or my emotions. It got to a point where I just had to leave it silent. The recording became too mundane, in my opinion. I left it didn’t truly express me as I was a visual person.

Google Cross Road

Along the process, listening to my surroundings became extremely keen to accommodate my sense of security. The beginning stage, where the surrounding sounds just included children, buses etc, the sense of security was at bay. However, as mentioned in my recordings, it became worse as I approached the Mall. The sound was heavy, and had constant overlaps. This created discomfort in me. I was getting very frustrated and this overwhelming sense of discomfort that most probably I associated with danger. It was then, that I was more interested in ending the whole process. It was a sense of urgency and despair that filled me.

The idea of using the virtual realism to dominate my physical boundaries seemed possible when the environment was as peaceful as what it was in the google maps. However, when the scenario changes, there are certain natural instincts that I tended to express. I wouldn’t pin it down as a fight or a flight theory but it runs along those lines.

Google Next

So what’s next?  I analysed today’s project and realized that, as mentioned during last week’s critique, I needed to record myself in the process- which is essential.  However, by planning the location and the route, I think I put myself on familiar grounds and hence was confident to do it. Such familiarity was strong that I didn’t have much to talk about or express my feelings.

Hence, the next recording I am intending to do is to walk from Pioneer Mrt to Boon Lay Secondary School. Boon Lay Secondary School was secondary school. The paths to the school are filled with memories and I hoping that I can recapture those through my Google Navigation. Perhaps, this time, I will take a video from my perspective, navigating yet going down ‘memory lane’.

 

My Work

Reading: The Third Space

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When reading this article, to test the essence of this subject, I actually asked my friend who happens to be Dean’s list computer science student, to read this. At the end of it, he just replied, “So the 3rd Space is about servers where we are able to interconnect and exchange data’. Wow… He sounded so convincing, as an engineer which I appreciate but couldn’t be bothered. Now let’s look at this article as an artist.

The third space is something that is constantly connected; connecting the physical world to the virtual world. Perhaps, social media makes this term prominent. The idea of you physically existing to create a virtual identify that leads to the interaction from simultaneous users might be the closest to this matrix.

In my opinion, I am afraid I don’t have much to say about this article not because I agree with it and am actually into this idea but the 3rd space is something that is so complex that I will have to compare it the physical world. To think about it, the only sense organs that will not be useful in this environment is the skin and the nose- touch and smell. But when it comes to communication, the use of touch or smell does not play too significant a part to have caused a detrimental flaw in this mode of communication that is the creation of the 3rd dimension.

However, I would like to take this comparison towards a more mathematical approach since one of my keen interest is in mathematics. The mathematical ‘Euclidean Space’ theory. The theory states that the Euclidean Space is made up of two colliding planes from two different dimensions such that they interlay to create the 3rd dimensions. Today, this space is used to define Cartesian coordinates and analytic geometry. Nevertheless the characteristics are so very similar, in my opinion, as the 3rd space described in to the article. Elements such as Euclidean group that preserves the environment and the use of isometrics to balance the input reminds me of the social media platforms and its participants respectively.  In the weeks to come, I will explain in more details through comparisons of the project we will do.