Tag Archives: tele-drift

Research Critique 02 – The Third Space

To me, the third space is a space where realities are able to coincide due to technological advancements. It can also be a combination of a physical space and a remote space, where time and space is not relevant.

In this space, there are endless possibilities and many known boundaries are collapsed because of new innovations and a greater use of technology. People can supposedly interact with one another; yet, not being physically present. It allows us to experience the remote space on a greater level, incorporating our senses into this experience; sight, hearing, sound, and (seemingly) touch.

In Randall Packer’s article, The Third Space, he mentioned, it is the pervasiveness of distributed space and the degree and myriad of ways in which we are constantly connected. And from this ubiquitous state of shared presence we have come to inhabit an entirely new way of seeing via a fracturing of perception.

The term, shared presence, was what I felt, a reflection of telematic performances; the ability to feel one’s presence but not being physically there.

In my micro-project 3, Tele-Drift, Jia Ying and I created “Draw Together”. Draw Together allows participants to draw with someone else regardless of their location as long as they have a canvas. As they draw, they have to achieve their end goal together; to complete the drawing by contributing half/part of it.

In this project, there were no location boundaries and all we needed was a canvas and a live video function. Despite being in different locations, the involvement of more senses beyond sight and sound, the consistent first-person perspective of the canvas and the real-time aspect of the live video function created closeness and intimacy between the artists. While drawing, the object that is representative of the “third” body is the canvas itself. Although Jia Ying and I were not able to coordinate our hand gestures while we were drawing, I felt that the canvas spoke for us as the “third” body as we were interacting through pen and paper.

In Maria Chatzichristodoulo’s Cyberformance article, Paul Sermon mentioned, “The ability to exist outside of the users own space and time is created by an alarmingly real sense of touch that is enhanced by the context of the bed and caused by an acute shift of senses in the telematic space.” About his Telematic Dreaming (1993) performance.

Amongst all the telematic performances, I felt that Telematic Dreaming prevailed as the most impactful and intimate piece of work. In comparison with my tele-drift project, with the context of the canvas (vs the bed), it was evident that having an intimate object was more impactful.

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.