Tag: third space

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Third Space Fallacy-Trailer

For our final project called ‘Third Space Fallacy‘, we decided to set the context as a drama fight scene between two girls from our group, Bella and Daphne. Before we carried out our performance, which is the actual day of the fight at Jurong Point mall, the girls were each posting on their Instagram accounts, building up the tension and to spread awareness of their drama to their friends around in a subtle way. They would post contents such as screenshots of their  ‘planned’ conversations and emotional posts to hint at their rocky friendship, while inserting some polls here and there to ask their online audience for ‘help’ for the next move.

What the audience did not know was that, whenever they made a poll or replied to their stories, they were indirectly affecting the choices of the two girls. We wanted to reflect this about real-life situations were people would turn to social media to get advice about their problems and sometimes, the opinions of these people actually fuel negative effects and result in tragedy unimagined.

Similarly for this case, we found out from the polls that they led to a conclusion to their fight, which result in Bella having to confront Daphne about their fight. We then bring the situation to Jurong Point mall, where an actual fight scene between the two girls occurred and it is even captured on camera. We note down that the people around them during the ‘fight’ actually stole a few glances at them during the process, recording their response to the performance.

On top of that, we also created a fake story, along with a fake Instagram account to leak to some of the online audience that we would be carrying out our previous plan of playing games at Changi Airport to gather greater involvement from the audience in our current project. We soon realised that during the polling period, many amongst the online audience actually felt emotionally involved in the drama because they thought it was real. While some replied with casual comments, most people actually private messaged the girls to check up on what exactly happened with a concerned tone. We wanted our project to exactly reach this stage of uncertainty, where people might actually believe that the ‘planned’ drama was real.

From there, we made a fake news kind of trailer to convey the entire planned performance, ending with a result that was voted by the online audience unknowingly, which was Bella’s ‘death’.

We wanted to make use of Bella’s third space death to convey a message that online and offline comment matters a lot. While the people voted in the polls and replied to their posts, they are unknowingly making a choice for the parties involved and this actually led to someone’s death. There has been many articles whereby people get affected by what they see online and resulted in so many tragedies and we wanted to bring that message across.

When we were done with the trailer, Bella and Daphne released on instastory about how this was a performance for our final project, apologising for any misunderstanding and clearing the air.

We then posted the link to our youtube trailer on our fake Instagram account so that the people who followed us there would also be notified of the outcome of the actual performance.

Afterwards, Bella actually sent us screenshots of what her friends messaged her regarding the project.

I felt like it was really interesting to note how many people felt so emotionally involved in this fake drama, along with the responses we collected. The whole process felt like a collective experience, because we gather responses from the online audience about the drama, there were also people who came up to the girls in real-life to ask about the issue, and we also noted responses from strangers at Jurong Point mall where the ‘fight’ took place. It was a success to us that many thought that it was real which was something we wanted to achieve from blast theory. The lines between reality and fictional is blurred and it made an impact in not just Bella’s and Daphne’s life, but the others who were involved indirectly as well, making them involve in this ‘game’ which came in the form of a friendship drama.

Last but not least, thanks to the team who made it all possible!!

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Third Space Fallacy-Intro

A Third Space Fallacy is an experimental interaction performance on third and first space that combines the responses collated on the third space through Instagram polls and stories to curate the next move in a friendship conflict between two girls (Bella and Daphne). To make the entire performance as real as possible, both girls had to put up an act in the span of 1 week in the first space, when questions arises from the people around them. Also, to stage that this is not part of our project for Experimental Interaction, our group have created another Instagram account @abracadabrrun, collating uninformed decisions made by our followers, which is part of the narrative of the death of Bella.

We initially wanted the project to take place at Changi Airport, where we would make use of Instagram polls for our online audience to decide on the various missions to be carried out with real life audience like a game to eliminate our group members. However, upon further discussion, we felt that albeit the game can involve both online and offline audience in the fun, it was lacking in emotional investment whereby it would just be a game and nothing else. Audience involved would not feel a certain connection to it and it would be more of enjoyment solely for us, the group members. Thus, we came up with the above idea, hoping to make use of the idea of uninformed choice, and to get the audience emotionally and physically involved in a ‘realistic’ drama fight scene.

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DIWO

I’ve heard of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) so many times unlike DIWO (Do-It-With-Others), so when I was first introduced to the concept of DIWO, it seemed like something almost impossible to achieve. Imagine a huge group of people contributing their ideas all at once, I can only picture a chaotic mess. However, I was given the opportunity to look into Furtherfield, which changed my mindset entirely. Furtherfield is a non-profit organisation started by Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow, whereby they create an online platform for individuals all around the world to work together to create something extraordinary. Unlike the DIY culture that focuses solely on the individual, DIWO stresses on the importance and significance of collaboration and sharing amongst different creatives. Making use of free and open software technology, they create a platform to expand one’s creativity by establishing connections with others.

Due to the introduction of open source technology, artists are able to better themselves and their works through a more elaborate research in collaboration with other artists.

-Randell Packer, IEEE POTENTIALS’s article

As I’ve mentioned before about open source, DIWO also shows relation to that. Rather than working alone, artists are able to discuss concepts with others and go through the process with others.

Screenshot of my social broadcasting video Source: My social broadcasting video

Going back to the first ever micro-project that we did, it shows how we can make use of the third space to converse with other people who may not be physically with us, hightlighting the possibility of interaction between individuals at different locations and different timezone.

From Telematic Embrace micro-project
Source: Taken from my phone

Bringing back some concepts from our micro-projects which I thought were appropriate to this idea of DIWO, similar to the telematic embrace project, DIWO provides a sense of intimacy and hence encourages the sharing and negotiation between users to create a piece of work with their collaborative efforts. DIWO allows effective communication amongst different parties, raising their awareness towards others.

Hello World installation
Source: http://christopherbaker.net/projects/helloworld/
Screenshot of the flickr group uploads
Source: OSS
Screenshot of the adobe connect with Marc Garrett
Source: https://vimeo.com/255880481

Although I was unable to attend the adobe connect on the actual day, I did look through the recorded video and found some points mentioned by guest Marc Garrett which I thought was extremely familiar and relatable. Quoting from Marc Garrett, he mentioned that DIWO is a “collective experience” and that it becomes a challenge of working with others, rather than only about ourselves. Individuals are also given the freedom to explore. These pushes an outcome of “Art for a better society” as mentioned by Randall Packer, allowing artists to venture outside their comfort zone and explore with different materials to create something new unlike their usual style, making full use of the advantage of working with others. The collaborative effort will in turn allow them to create outstanding unique pieces of work like the plantoids with BlockChain, as mentioned by Marc Garrett.

Plantoid, a Blockchain technology where different plants are created due to a combination of different interactions by different people
Source: http://okhaos.com/plantoids/

 

 

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Grand Theft Avatar?

The moment I received this assignment, I went ahead to watch the video Grand Theft Avatar by Second Front. To be honest, I was completely lost in the video because I could not understand what was going on in the video. Upon researching and re-watching the video a couple of times, I think I am able to gain a better understanding and appreciation towards the work. The video Grand Theft Avatar was a work created by this group called Second Front, which uses the software of a game called Second Life to create life in this virtual world. In the video, the characters mimicked members from the ‘From Cinema to Machinima’ panel, robbed the ‘Lynden Treasury’ then freed the money and left on hydrogen bombs.

Second Front freeing the lynden currency
Source: Grand Theft Avatar video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHctMuI_HU

Second Front wanted to explore the virtual reality of the third space and this work was an experimentation by Scott Kildall to produce a work using the Second Life software as an emerging cinematic form. I feel like in a sense it is quite interesting as the work showed the possibility of a creation of a space where different people from all around the world are able to interact online. At the same time, it also opens up a world where everything is literally possible, such as the scene where the characters sat on hydrogen bombs.

Virtual identity of Scott Kildall on a hydrogen bomb
Source: Grand Theft Avatar video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHctMuI_HU

The third space is a multifarious web of connections for all who inhabit and explore and share its dimensions.

-Randall Packer, The Third Space

This proves that there are no restrictions to this third space and everything nonsensical can be explored, unlike having rules in the real world to hold us down, providing the experience of a tangible virtual world.