The Big Kiss: why?

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The Big Kiss (2007) performed by Annie Abraham. Two people, one of which is Annie Abraham, sit in two separate places in front of a webcam. Their two feeds go onto a screen split down the centre, and they ‘kiss’ each other through this screen. This screen is thus the third space which is discussed in Randall Packer’s ‘Third Space’ (2014). The two people seemed very ‘into’ the kissing, as if they were really in the same first space.  This kiss transcends the physical boundaries that they were once restricted by, even though the individuals cannot feel each other physically. Also, their emotions can be felt through the internet kiss.

rather, it is the pervasiveness of distributed space and the degree and myriad of ways in which we are constantly connected.

Interestingly enough, the Big Kiss does reflect a lot of people’s relationships nowadays. Many people now live away from their hometown and leave their love ones, and use internet means to keep in contact with them, no matter whether it is through Facetime, Skype or other platforms that enables us to see and hear each other in real time. We use texting platforms to communicate as well, albeit not exactly in real time so its asynchronous (which gives us the freedom and space to reply at our own pace.) The degree of communication is more intimate in the case of The Big Kiss, as they are forced to face each other in a very intimate (yet at the same time public) space, and not just communicate via their words but through their facial expressions and actions. This may not be the case for everyone who uses the same tools, but it leads us to question whether or not the third space allows the same level of intimacy and communication as the first space.

The penultimate paragraph of Randall Packer’s article pointed out something: that the third space can and may eventually become the new standard in the future. A point to note is the fact that Annie Abraham was born in 1954. She mostly grew up in a time where the internet did not exist. To have to fathom the fact that you can communicate with a person remotely (other than over the telephone) would have been difficult to understand. The increasing use of the internet and the tools that it lends in the 21st century, I imagine, would have been an interesting concept to explore for someone who didn’t rely on it in the past. The third space would have been difficult to understand. Whereas for the millennials, they grow up with the concept of a third space- the millennials don’t need to question how we are able to cross physical boundaries because it’s so commonplace. However, it would still be odd to see people attempting their own rendition of the Big Kiss on their personal devices in public in this day and age. This is probably because it is a very brave act of public display of affection, and would still warrant weird looks from people on the MRT or on the streets if you were to start looking very passionate kissing your phone. In the third space, maybe it would not look that odd, but in real life it would not get a good response from strangers.

This work was very intriguing, and does challenge people’s thoughts about the virtual realm- how does intimacy work virtually, and can it transcend the physical space into the third space? I believe that through this work, we have been able to get some answers to these questions, but I think this concept still requires some smoothening out in my mind to fully comprehend the purpose of the work.

OpenSourceCulture: summary

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Open Source Culture, from what I understand is the system where people in the community share resources so that we sort of bounce ideas and information off each other. This used to be used exclusively to describe software, but since then, has been used to describe various other things such as the idea of having an open (virtual) space for people to interact and work together- the DIWO idea instead of DIY.

I think this video is pretty useful in summarising the open source software bit in the first article. (I was honestly slightly confused with the first article and had to reread it a couple of times and google quite of few terms before understanding it.)

Having an Open Source Studio space allows the artist to move out of the ‘romantic notion of a solitary artist’ as Randall Packer says, and move into the world where everything is available on the web. Working alone is going to be a thing of the past, and the future is collaboration. Especially in a time such as this, we are able to communicate seamless over the web to people across the globe, and discuss about the ideas and influence artistic decisions. The open source concept challenges the proprietary model that has been working for a long time for monetary gains (because of the monopoly that the company holds in the market), and tries to change the perspective where we should work to improve and collaborate to create a inclusive space.

 

An example of an open source space is the concept of co working spaces popping up all over major cities like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Although this is different from a virtual collaborative space that we are currently on (Open Source Studio), we do see the element of collaboration in this physical space, rather than the typical office space where people are in individual cubicles. ‘Hot desks’ are places where you share a large communal desk with fellow co workers, and you will never know who you are going to end up next to. These co working spaces are especially useful for people in the start up business, as they are able to meet other people from different industries at the same place and there is a potential of working together in a future project, and there is an element of collaboration there! (i personally love the sound of a co working space, and one of the first places that i heard of is Colony in KL. you can take a look at the space here!)

 

(Sorry i forgot to tag it in Experimental Interaction, posted it last night!)