Category Archives: Micro-Project

Micro-project 07: Video Selfie

Lines. Trips. Glitch. 

Lines. Trips. Glitch. is a short 1 minute video selfie which expresses my artistic alter ego, mostly inspired by minimalist artist Sol Lewitt and glitch art. This video selfie explores traditional drawing and digital glitch art – and maybe the converging of both.

I was mostly inspired by Sol Lewitt, an American artist who is linked to art movements such as Minimalism and Conceptual art. He is recognised for his line artworks, where Lewitt would fill the entire canvas with just lines. Although abstract, I felt that Lewitt’s lines encapsulate more than just forms; perhaps even emotions.

As I chose an artist to express my artistic alter ego, I felt that the location would be best held in an artistic space, like this drawing room. The props in the room were arranged deliberately to create the desired mood, like how the painting at the back shows the contrast of a figure painted and a real person who is situated in front of the canvas (me). The effects of the video, mostly glitchy, added a trippy feel to it. (The painted face looks pretty demonic when the colour changed (00:58) secs) Accompanied by the song that I chose, (Erza by Flume), I wanted to portray a distorted state of mind as an “artist” inspired by Sol Lewitt, the imaginary double. Personally, the entangled lines which I drew symbolised being torn in between, confused and lost (mostly negative and thus, the distortion).

How can the video selfie be used to alter identity?

By taking a video selfie, we are given more control over the outcome of what we want to portray to the audience. Higher control also means that we are able to record according to what we want and we are able to stage any persona that we want to portray to the viewers. In addition, there is no limit to the takes and this ensures that we are able to perfect that persona if we wanted to.

How might video be used to conceal identity?

There are endless possibilities to our choices here in the digital world. We could choose to record the video selfie upfront, showing our faces but we could also choose not to show it at all. The viewers can only see what is shown in the video and nothing else, thus, the control is still being overpowered by the creators and not viewers.

How do the objects that surround you contribute to your sense of identity? 

As mentioned, the location, the song choice and effects are deliberate ways to create the desired mise en scène. Without any dialogue, but just through my actions, the props and space, viewers are able to distinctly recognise myself as an artist who is drawing on a canvas.

Overall, I felt that this creating this video selfie has more thoughts put into it as we delved into digital identity. On a daily basis, as we post Instagram stories online, we neglect such aspects; we don’t consider whether do we actually alter our identity or not. But, through this micro-project, it instilled a greater sense of digital identity awareness in me.

Micro-project 06: A Day in the Life of Super-Participation

In this project, my group (Myself, Melo, Bryan, Samantha and Nikki), were tasked to publish posts on Facebook during our recess week. Firstly, we did not set any rules but we agreed to start posting on Wednesday, 7 March, 8am for 24 hours.

To be honest, at the start, I did not know what to post. And knowing that I slept late the night before, I used the schedule option to schedule my posts at 8-10am. And yupp, when I woke up at 10am,everyone was already active on the Facebook page, posting about their daily activities, what they had for breakfast and there I was, still on my bed.

As the day went by, I got the hang of posting more things. However, I tend to not share too personal information online as I fear being judged. Afterall, the internet can be a scary place. So, I posted things which I only felt comfortable sharing, some trivial, but mostly about my daily activities and probably things that interest me, such as food. Also, I realised that throughout the day, I tend to forget to post certain things when I am busy with work or occupied at the moment. Because of this, some of my posts are not posted in real-time but are lagging behind an hour or so.

This micro-project motivated me to explore my digital identity in just 24 hours. I realised that as I was influenced and obliged to post, there are certain aspects about me that would not change, such as the type of posts or my attitude towards social media and perception of myself while using an online platform. Yes, I might have great control over what I can post and can entirely fake an identity if I wanted to. But because this was a closed group and that we knew everyone we were sharing our posts to, we naturally let our guards down and be comfortable with our posted content. From here, it is evident that the type of audience who have access to my information played a vital role in my content posted.

It was also an interesting journey as I get to understand each other’s persona through what we share.

Kai; The Chill One

I, myself, was identified as a person who is very chill, and sleepy (literally, as I woke up the latest and scheduled posts while I was asleep). My posts later on in the day learn towards more of a chill and relaxed vibe. All of these are in fact true to my real personality.

Melo; The Meticulous

As for my group member, Melo, we concluded that she is a meticulous person when it comes to aesthetics. Her posts have to be edited before she can post it online. Perhaps, as a person who enjoys looking at aesthetically pleasing photos, she would do the same when it comes to her as well. Nowadays, online content can be extremely influential to a person.

Bryan; The Workaholic

As for Bryan, we concluded that he was definitely the most hardworking group member out of all of us as he was already doing work early in the morning (while I was STILL asleep). Throughout the day, his photos about his work were posted consistently. To encourage one another, every one of us liked one another’s posts and gave nice comments – something which I felt, encompasses social media activities. “Likes”, “Favourites” and “Share”. All of these functions are extended ways we could express ourselves, rather than just words. This is also a unique aspect of online social media.

Niki; The “Trouble” Magnet

“Trouble” magnet not in terms of a bad way, by the way! Speaking of nice comments, what we remembered from Niki was that she was always in some sort of a “trouble” – whether if she was sick, or injured her finger. Mostly, we commented something encouraging, such as, “Get well soon!” etc.

Samantha; The Bubbly One

Lastly, as for Samantha, I felt that her posts were a mix of work and fun, like the video she posted of herself helping her friend to film. I also recalled that she posted a picture of food early in the morning and that definitely made me want to get breakfast too. The persona for her seemed to be a bubbly and active person.

Through super-participation in this micro-project, I have learnt that there are many intrinsic and extrinsic factors which influence the motivation of our actions on a social media platform. By analysing how we shape this online persona via our posts, we are able to uncover key behavioural insights from a person and indeed, we try to create a persona of how we want others to perceive us. However, in my opinion, there is a fine line between the degree of control we have; it all depends on the intent and aim. The example from Amalia Ulman proves us otherwise. Excellences & Perfections (2014), was an interesting example which displayed utmost control in creating a digital identity. It is a four month durational performance taking place directly on her personal Instagram. The artist fabricated a fictional character with the intention was to prove how easy an audience can be manipulated through the use of mainstream archetypes and characters they’ve seen before. Surely, no one went that far while creating a fake identity.

All in all, the exercise and the examples shown in class allowed me to see an array of personas and digital identify created (a range from actual self to perceived self).

 

Research Critique 3: Glitch & The Art of Destruction

For micro-project 5, my group’s (Myself, Bryan, Si Hui, Reuben and Ying Hui) concept revolved around capturing the destruction of art through performance art and media. First, we printed a photo of one of world’s most famous artwork – Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da vinci. This renaissance artwork is highly regarded, thus, belonging to the “high renaissance” period, a period of grandmasters with impeccable skills. Then, we set the printed photo of the painting on fire and recorded it.

The art of destruction. The destruction of art.

By burning this artwork down to ashes, we wanted to bring about the notion of seeing the destruction of art as a form of art. We “embrace accidents”, or even, we create them.

One may see it as literally destroying art, but the element of deconstruction in the destruction process was that we wanted to highlight. We wanted to highlight that destruction could even be in something which everyone admired and thought highly of. We also wanted to show a deviation from the norms of “art”. As art is usually thought of as classy and placed in a museum, or even a bulletproof glass (for the Mona Lisa), we wanted to rebel against this perfectionist mindset. Instead of cutting or tearing the paper apart, we decided to burn it to create a duration-based artwork; a performance which the audience could watch us burn the picture. Through this, the Mona Lisa transforms from a static piece of artwork into something new, such as an experience or a performance.

As a performance art, the deterioration of the artwork, from paper to ashes, creates a new quality through the destruction. Media Burn by the Ant Farm from the Interview with Chip Lord is a great example of such artworks, where it “exemplifies fascination with the automobile and television as cultural artifacts through looking at the impact of mass media in American culture.” It was their bold act which brought about their statement uniquely and in a new light. And what we challenge here, with our artwork, is to see beyond the act of “destroying” a beautiful piece of artwork. Instead, looking at the destruction in a whole new way and to defy the rules of art.

As mentioned in  Menkman, R. (2009) “Glitch Studies Manifesto”, “Glitch art is often about relaying the membrane of the normal, to create a new protocol after shattering an earlier one. The perfect glitch shows how destruction can change into the creation of something original.” With this, we wanted to set the world’s most famous painting on fire; a statement of defying the general rules of art. Thus, by shifting this perspective at how we look at destruction, it is the start of creating something original as the mass audience are used to looking at funnelled out content from the media.

Another example mentioned by Lei was Ai Wei Wei’s, dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), where Ai dropped an authentic antiquity. He was thinking about the themes of transformation and destruction. He embarked on collecting ancient vessels with the aim of converting them into contemporary art pieces. This is my first time coming across this piece and I found it really interesting how this artwork considered a form of consumer culture and heritage preservation.

Lastly, In Randall Packer’s Conversation with Jon Cates (2014) Hyperallergic , Cates mentioned, “there is a poetic embrace of noise and error.” and the whole geist of learning about glitch is as what he mentioned. Through the previous project where we created glitch and the most recent one, the art of destruction, it has brought me to rethink about “aesthetics”. Both glitch and destruction are artistic expressions which embrace flaws and errors. In my opinion, the element of deconstruction is what makes these glitches and destruction something way more than it is. Glitch is just more than just dead/flawed pixels or destructed matter, the beauty of it is that, it could be organic glitches, such as glitches during performances. As we commonly associate glitches with the errors we see on screen and technical errors, this case of demonstrating glitch through performance art brought out the flexibility of glitch art as it can be, very organic, occuring during a live performance as well.

 

Micro-Project 5: The Art Of Destruction

For micro-project 5, my group’s (Myself, Bryan, Si Hui, Reuben and Ying Hui) concept revolved around capturing the destruction of art through performance art and media. First, we printed a photo of one of world’s most famous artwork – Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da vinci. This renaissance artwork is highly regarded, thus, belonging to the “high renaissance” period, a period of grandmasters with impeccable skills. Then, we set the printed photo of the painting on fire and recorded it.

The art of destruction. The destruction of art.

By burning this artwork down to ashes, we wanted to bring about the notion of seeing the destruction of art as a form of art. We “embrace accidents”, or even, we create them.

One may see it as literally destroying art, but the element of deconstruction in the destruction process was that we wanted to highlight. We wanted to highlight that destruction could even be in something which everyone admired and thought highly of. We also wanted to show a deviation from the norms of “art”. As art is usually thought of as classy and placed in a museum, or even a bulletproof glass (for the Mona Lisa), we wanted to rebel against this perfectionist mindset. Instead of cutting or tearing the paper apart, we decided to burn it to create a duration-based artwork; a performance which the audience could watch us burn the picture. Through this, the Mona Lisa transforms from a static piece of artwork into something new, such as an experience or a performance.

The outcome of the artwork surprised me a little as the ashes looked different from what I normally see. (Lei says that it is brown because of the carbon).

 

Micro-Project 04: Exquisite Glitch

In this project, my team, Joseph, Dion and I, took turns to edit each other’s original photo. Through editing photos and transferring to the next person to edit them again using adobe photoshop and audition, layers of effects are collapsed. Each layer is creating a new form of its precursor. The collective image is a collaborative creative effort of each team member. By using different techniques due to our preferences and differences in software used, it adds on to the glitch transformation. The variety of these software editing tools contributed largely to the manipulation. As we decompose images, we are breaking down how much we are able to recognise our “self-portrait”, thus, the effects are seen as “distortions” to us.

01 Original Image

 02 Edited by myself

Tools used in Adobe Photoshop: Intensive increase in colour saturation, distortion tool.

In this particular edit, decomposition of the image was clear, through the pixels that were created not by adding an effect but by increasing the colour saturation of a selected colour. Evidently, this process of breaking down could be seen in how the colours are segregated throughout the image.

 03 Edited by Joseph

After Joseph’s edit, the pixels and noise were harsher and colours were more vivid. Only the distortion remained recognizable.

 04 Edited by Dion

After Dion’s edit through Adobe Audition, the image segregated, adding on to the glitchiness.

 05 Edited by myself (Final)

Tools used in adobe photoshop: Filter > Distort tool > Wave (random).

As the image was already heavily manipulated, I tried to use a different tool. I used the random function so as to embrace the glitch variation in the transformation. The random tool actually chops up the image even further, breaking the flow of shapes and colours from the previous image.

Altogether, it was an interesting and unique experience to edit images while embracing glitch art and not in pursuit of perfection.

Micro-Project 03 – Tele-Drift

Posted by Kai Ting on Wednesday, 31 January 2018

In this micro-project, I worked with Jia Ying and we created “Draw Together”. “Draw Together” allows participants to draw with someone else and as they draw, they have to achieve their end goal together; to complete the entire drawing by contributing half of it. At the start, we determine what to draw by contributing a word each. Eg. “Fat” and “Cat”. Depending on the words written by one person, the drawing varies. The outcome would then be a collective drawing by both.

In this case, the third space for us would be the drawing itself. Most of the time, we were focusing more on connecting the drawing rather than the movement and coordination of our hands. Although it might be a good idea, we realised that one of us is left-handed. Thus, we could only choose between – bad hand coordination or a scribbly cat drawn by someone who didn’t use their master hand. On the bright side, as the drawing looked pretty similar and complete, it looked as if the drawing was a piece itself rather than in entirely different locations.

The first person point of view used, in this case, created more intimacy throughout. As compared to having a camera placed from afar and looking at it from a third person’s perspective, this first person’s perspective helped to achieve an intimate and natural look; as though the viewer is looking at him/herself drawing.

Based on the examples shown in class, Guilty Landscapes (2016) by Dries Verhoeven and Telematic Dreaming (1993) by Paul Sermon, I felt that the projected visuals were key to creating an impactful third space in real time as they connected people and had more involvement.

Jia Ying and I faced some challenges while we were doing this micro-project. Other than the left-handed issue, we initially wanted to play tic-tac-toe on paper using the split screen. However, due to the split screen, we could not plot the Xs and Os across the other screen. Also, it could be interesting if the canvas filled the entire video space and there were more than 2 participants. With this, participants are able to connect their drawings not just side by side, but from all sides. Nonetheless, this micro-project was an interesting one to work on.

 

 

Research Critique 01/Micro-Project 02 – Crowd-Sourced Time-Based Art

Colour, is not just a visual perception. Colour is a silent language and is visceral; it is more intuitive than rational. Why is red perceived as a colour associated with anger? And for blue, sadness. Colour psychology has shown that hues are determinants of the human behaviour. Not only do colours influence perception, they evoke emotions as well.

 Survey by SurveyLegend

“How is ADM Feeling Today?” is a collaborative crowdsourced artwork where the participants, our classmates, cast votes via a link, (click here to access the poll), based on their current mood. The poll options consist of a variety of colours and each colour represents an emotion.

As our classmates cast their votes, the main screen displays a colour: the averaged colour based on their responses. When our classmates were voting, colours shifted to a cooler shade as the majority of them voted for restless (green) and sad (blue). Eventually, neutral (white) prevailed as the most voted mood and the colour shown on the screen became pastel teal. Cumulated responses in real time depict the colour that will be shown on screen, thus, answering the question – How is ADM feeling today?


Colour picker from Colour Aurlien.

By using a collaborative approach to create art, we are open to endless possibilities of experiencing something new. As mentioned from Marc Garrett’s article on D.I.W.O (Do-It-With-Others), a willingness to transform our ideas and intentions not solely based on ‘proprietorial’ dependencies, and a fetish for the ‘New’, allows space for ‘different versions of the new’ and ‘old’ dialogues to evolve. This enables the embracing of holistic gradations and interactions with others, which also include differences; possibilities and diversities connecting with ecology and a variant of creative expressions (Garrett, 2014).

Relating to the article, expressing moods using colours and visuals can be an innovation and collaborative way to create greater social awareness and to know how others are feeling. How often do we express ourselves to others, especially in this digitalized world? Although it may not be much, we can bridge the gap between solely peer-to-peer interaction and digitalized mediums. Instead of asking the class verbally, “How is everyone feeling today?”, we could change it up and ask them through this collaborative experience. James Wallbank, in his essay for ISEA in 2010, wrote: “Creativity transforms value”.  And, really, nothing is as valuable as experiencing and building these interpersonal relationships through art.


Screenshot of The Sheep Market.

The value is the artwork itself; a collective art piece. A similar art piece, The Sheep Market (2006) by Aaron Koblin is a collection of 10,000 sheep created by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Each worker was paid $.02 (US) to “draw a sheep facing left”. This artwork “enables online users to contribute a tiny part of a large project” and “have little knowledge of what the larger finished product will be” (OSS, 2018). Both the contribution and anticipation of the collective final piece were aspects that “How is ADM Feeling Today?” adopted. As said, the value would be seeing the results; be it rewarding, satisfied, expected or unexpected. An example would be that as our classmates voted and the final colour, pastel teal, was shown on screen, it surprised Lei, who voted for happy (yellow). For people who voted for neutral (white), sad (blue) or restless (green), like myself, it may come off as an empathetic experience; having the same mood reassures me that I am not the only one feeling restless that day.

Altogether, my group (myself, Dion and Ying Hui) felt that this microproject encapsulated the essence of D.I.W.O. As both creators and participants of “How is ADM Feeling Today?”, it was a fun and insightful project to both work on and learn from. Some of the things that I felt that could have been improved are the technical capabilities and the scale of the crowdsourcing. Firstly, the change in colours was done manually. If we could make it change automatically according to the variable (number of votes) by using hex colour codes, it would have been a more complete and interactive piece. Secondly, if the coding mentioned above works, this artwork could be done in a way larger scale – from just G04 to the entire school, or even worldwide.