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PSYCH! Home Page: 

PSYCH! (Home Page)

PSYCH! Process Page: 

PROCESS

PSYCH! Final Live Stream Page: 

FINAL LIVE STREAM: PSYCH!

IN THE END…….

Reflections:

General Learning Points:

Live streaming is really very spontaneous and requires quick thinking and reaction in real time. It exhibits the realness of the situation with the setup and props making it more believable. Audiences are made unintentional voyeurs when they indirectly spy on Clarita’s Facebook information as well as Ling Ern’s camera.

We gave the audience a sense of autonomy when they can contribute to the collect narrative and their decisions make an impact on the live stream. These greatly increase the level of relatedness and involvement of their participation.

However, live streaming also meant that it provides little room for mistakes as these actions cannot be unseen by our viewers. When we faced technical difficulties, we must find ways to react quickly to our live audience.

 

LING ERN POV:

Through playing the role of a victim, I realised the vulnerability of online users and how our traces left behind to serve as baits for hackers to target us. The consequences can be very devastating for the victim and it truly invokes audiences to rethink their own actions. For instance, not clearing your cache or browser history after doing a bank transaction or avoid using  Free Public Wifi often as we are unaware of the origin of the service provided. All these can easily lead to data breaches and theft of confidential information, especially after the talk by Surya Mattu about the WIFI Packet Sniffer.

The devastating consequences in this short role play caution our online audience to take the initiative to protect themselves over the internet, such as reading small print terms and conditions before agreeing to an app that may collect your personal information. We can deny app permissions to access our camera and microphone instead of clicking “ok” right away each time we download a new app. Similar to my reaction in the video when victims are flustered, we do not think rationally and provides our information right away to the other party.

This roleplay also serves as a reminder to our audience to calm down and think through the questions asked first before replying. We can raise awareness about cybersecurity and highlight the possibility that anonymity will prob­a­bly be a lux­ury com­mod­ity one day. It will be lux­ury that one’s own tracks will not be recorded.

 

CLARITA POV:

By putting ourselves into the position of a hacker. We explored the motivation and intention of the hacker and realised how anonymity can encourage people to be bolder in terms of unethical behaviours, especially for monetary gains and voyeurism. The availability and high accessibility of applications in which anonymous people can use to change their identity, for instance, the voice changing app and IP changer hacking code.

Similar to what Sarah Watson mentioned about how we leave traces on the internet very easily making us highly trackable,  these are the kind of loopholes that allow hackers to make use of people’s data and further breach their privacy and take advantage of their personal information. These hackers can then get away easily with the anonymity which explains the increasing number of phone calls we receive nowadays impersonating the police saying that “We have your package at the customs and hence we need your personal information to approve it” or impersonating a company personnel stating that “Congratulations you have won yourself a grand prize and you need to pay this handling fee before getting your item.”

 

 

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CONCEPT / IDEA

 

The Internet is a wonderful place. It brings us unlimited connectivity, unlimited history storage, and unlimited sharing of information, amongst many other great advantages, for the good of living beings.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that the Internet, too, allows for unlimited access to all sorts of data, which sparks debate about privacy, access to open-sourced terrorism, and blurs the line between the ethics and responsibility of actions taken over the Internet.

The format of our final project will be a scripted live broadcast (unknown to the audience) that revolves around surveillance and cyber security. We will be using hacking (data transmission) and authenticity over the internet as our main focus in the broadcast. A virtual space creates a social situation without traditional rules of etiquette. The lack of immediate or physical consequences emboldens people to engage in behaviour unlikely seen in real life.

 

Our final project aims to act as a prompt for the audience to analyse / think of these issues deeper, about the existence of these malicious intentions and how they can protect themselves from it, be it by simply covering their cameras on their devices when unused, or being more aware of cyber security and being more responsible for their own privacy over the internet, at the very least.

 

POTENTIAL STORYLINE / CONTENT

Clarita’s Facebook is hacked by a mysterious person. The hacker uses the live stream function on her phone, and proceeds to access Clarita’s friend list, asking viewers to choose someone, which ends up being Ling Ern. The hacker reveals that he/she will prank Ling Ern and shows the process of hacking into Ling Ern’s phone and accessing her phone camera.

Ling Ern, on the other hand, is broadcasted on Clarita’s Facebook live stream without her knowledge. To draw Ling Ern’s attention to her phone, the hacker sent a notification which prompts her to look at her phone, giving the live audience a view of Ling Ern’s face. The hacker proceeds to carry out a couple of pranks (may or may not be decided by audience) that might end up devastating for Ling Ern (like hacking her bank account or something serious).

 

REFERENCES / INSPIRATION

  • The Pirate Cinema (Nicolas Maigret)   

Link: https://vimeo.com/67518774

This work depicts the idea of surveillance and cyber security where everyone viewing the art piece is actually indirectly spying on the activities of the community torrenting different types of videos online. This makes the audience forced/unintentional voyeurs.

 

  • Bold3RRR (Jon Cates)

Link: https://player.vimeo.com/video/49110316

Jon Cates: http://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/jon-cates

Website: http://systemsapproach.net/innerindex.html

In this work, Jon Cates shares his work processes on live streaming. This allows the audience to openly view his artistic processes. In our final project, we want this sharing of real-time work processes over the third space to be depicted too.

 

  • Open Source Studio (Randall Packer)

       

 

http://zakros.com/open-source-studio/#way

https://thirdspacenetwork.com/collective-narrative/

Interactive collective narrative where the audience can have the opportunity to decide what happens to target, being involved in constructing this narrative.

Third space and open source network allows us to rethink broadcasting and artist’s studio then and now. We are shifting towards peer-to-peer broadcasted art that creatively joins virtual and physical spaces with technical imagination, conceptual thinking, social sensibilities with live media art made by “artist-broadcasters” exploring a collective approach to Internet streaming.

 

 LING ERN – POV OF VICTIM

  1. Explores the vulnerability of users and factors that lead users to fall prey to hackers:  Through identifying reasons for data breaches, theft of personal information and invasion of privacy.
  2. Invoke audience to rethink about their own actions- whether they take responsible steps to protect themselves on the internet. For instance: Not reading the terms and agreement on social media websites fully and agree to them right away.
  3. Ways in which PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) play a part in protecting users.
  4. Identify potential dangers of technology and devices nowadays where tracking user’s activity on devices, pictures, messages is prevalent as well as selling information on activities to third parties.
  5. Raise awareness about cyber security and highlight the possibility that anonymity will prob­a­bly be a lux­ury com­mod­ity one day. It will be lux­ury that one’s own tracks will not be recorded.

 

CLARITA – POV OF HACKER

  1. Explores motivation for hackers in terms of: anonymity, fun, monetary gain, power play, voyeurism
  2. Identify the kind of loopholes that allow hackers to make use of people’s accounts online.
  3. Intention of hackers changing their identity (identity transformation) as well as the characteristics of the internet that allows that to do so.
  4. Invoking the audience to think about ethical boundaries when third parties are only accessing data through parameters that are technically allowed by the victims through agreeing to the terms and agreements.
  5. Drawing parallels between hackers going through personal data and companies selling data of their users.

LINK TO PRESENTATION SLIDES:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10yI1oJFNKdUql-KE5xLDQVz-k7jXSSCN9DTlf6wZ1gc/edit?usp=sharing

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This is the original image:

Concept: Anonymity and hidden identities && Changing Personas on the Internet (Identity transformation)

Much like the chameleon, when we try to be anonymous by hiding our identity on the internet, we are attempting to camouflage ourselves by blending into the environment.   With this attempt to blend according to our surroundings, we may alter our reactions and perhaps even personas depending on the situation or the people we are communicating with. This is reflected with the colour changing characteristic of the chameleon. In turn, the glitch effect also represents this characteristic with the unpredictability of every change, especially the colours and patterns.

Glitch Attempt:

 

 

 

 

Process:

Initially, I used WordPad and Notepad to glitch my images. However, that did not work for me at all as with any small edit, the image will be broken. I referred to several tutorials online which mentioned that jpg and png images will easily be broken and that I have to convert them to TIFF or BMP for the images to work on WordPad and NotePad. Despite doing so, there was still no improvement.

I researched further and found that notepad++ may be a better platform for glitch art. Thankfully it worked!!

I begin with copying and pasting a few lines here and there and that resulted in the first image: fuzzy effect. I continued doing so for some time but did not see any significant changes in the image. I then tried a different approach and referred to the hex editor method recommended online.

This is the original text:

After changing it to HEX:

I replaced some alphabets and phrases here and there, in chunks first then followed by fewer lines. Tutorials also recommended that the effective replacement will be alphabets a-f and number 0-9.

 

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For micro project 4, I approach it in 2 ways:

1) Impromptu live interview @7am in the morning:

I have been taking the NTU shuttle bus for the past 3 semesters and I am quite curious about how other students/passengers think about the service so I decided to do a very short impromptu interview. In this video, I interviewed my lecturer for one of my modules this semester as well as the in charge (headcounter) for the shuttle service at the Marine Parade bus stop! As it is still quite early in the morning, it is hard to get my friends to come online promptly when my live streaming starts so I did not prepare that many audience/viewers. For the friends, I asked, quite a number of them couldn’t wake up in time. The bus will leave about 7.10am so I reached slightly earlier today and pre-empt my lecturer that I am doing a 3 min live broadcast and she was agreeable to be a participant in my broadcast. After the broadcast, I also asked if the Malay lady was okay with me posting this up for my project, I was quite glad that she agreed quite readily!

Here are some other comments left by my friends:

2) Nature- an expansion of my first video about birds:

On the topic of nature, I like the sense of continuity from the bird video in micro project 1 so I decided to find something similar to expand on! In the morning as part of my route from home to the shuttle bus stop, I will have to walk past this mini “Bird Park”. In a way, it is part of my daily routine hence this part of nature feels rather close to heart.

Here are some closer shots of them:

    

some other comments left by my friends:

This is actually the 2nd attempt of the video. The first attempt was at 6.45am in the morning with the mist but it is actually quite hard to video the birds so I went ahead to conduct my interview at the bus stop before heading back for a 2nd attempt on the way home.

Overall, micro project 4 is still quite interesting because I conducted my first live interview and I tried to engage people from the 1st space (physical space) as well as reacting to audience from the third space (replying in speech with live comments coming in)!

 

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Before Micro Project 3, I have never done any live videos or broadcasting, so it was a new experience for me.  I attempted several live videos, including 2 of them at the neighbourhood community garden with Instagram live before attempting another 2 live videos at the Bedok Hawker Centres with Facebook Live. When I was trying out the features at the community garden,  I didn’t know how to screen record with sound on my phone (forgot to enable mic) and was left with the videos muted. Hence after figuring out the issue, I decided to do a more impromptu broadcast about food recommendations at the hawker centre because I am a foodie and this is something I genuinely want to share with my viewers. The whole experience was really fun and as I was recommending the stalls in my videos, quite a few people sitting around who heard me along the way were staring at me with a questionable look. Nonetheless, I begin to find myself liking live broadcasting because of the spontaneity and that the content is really raw and unfiltered.

 

 

 

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“Good morning Mr. Orwell” is a piece which uses the satellite technology to create interactive performances, linking different stages in different parts of the world. Combination of broadcast footage of live programs in New York and Paris involves video interventions using the Paik-Video Synthesizer which allowed the artist to alter and manipulate existing video images.

 

(watch 6:30 , 39:00 , 51:20)

Paik-Video Synthesizer

                

This program was done to demonstrate the benign and positive effects of technology on our lives as opposed to George Orwell’s dystopian view of technological advances on the future society as described in his novel 1984 where television is seen as a negative medium, useful for dictators or politicians for one-way communication.

The 1 hr long cross-country broadcast on New Year’s Day symbolises how television can cross borders and provide liberating information-communication service. It also showcases the spontaneity and immediacy of live social broadcasting with the intersection of experimental art where the hitches, glitches, delays, and improvisations (inevitable technical difficulties) play a part in the live broadcasting.

 

Merce Cunningham dance: 

 

Delayed footage of the dance was underlaid, creating an illusion of him dancing with himself in two ‘time frames’ in real time.

Charlotte Moorman playing the TV cello: 

The re-enactment of TV Cello by Charlotte Moorman also distorts space when we see the host George Plimpton appearing in both our television screens and in the TV Cello at the same time, forming a new composite image.

Idea of a third space?

The idea of a third space is formed where different performance segments with asynchronous elements are put together and displayed as an output. Back then in 1984, it allowed people all over the world to see satellite broadcast as more than just a tool to disseminate live/important news, it became a medium for collaborative artwork to take place.

The collective narrative presented will be heavily dependent on the responses of both the participants in the first space (host, artists, and musicians, dancers etc) and third space (live stream viewers). The constantly changing aesthetic can potentially change viewers’ perceptions of a normal television and begin to view it as an artistic medium. More importantly, he showed that we can overcome time difference and spatial limitations with technology.

 

References:

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-paik-nam-june- artworks.htm

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/goog-morning/

https://www.eai.org/titles/good-morning-mr-orwell.html

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell: Nam June Paik’s Avant-Garde New Year’s Celebration with Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Peter Gabriel & More

http://nightflight.com/revisiting-good-morning-mr-orwell-nam-june-paiks-rebuttal-to-orwells-dystopian-vision-on-the-first-day-of-1984/

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/paik-abe-synthesizer/

https://www.n3krozoft.com/_xxbcf67373.TMP/tv/paik_abe_synthesizer.html  (Read this to know how the synthesizer works)

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How might the open source system of sharing and collective narrative be a creative inspiration and useful approach for your work as an artist or designer?

 

Open source has the power of inclusivity that eliminates distance, which is a barrier for communication between people worldwide.[1] It provides a platform for users to collaborate more easily through the ability to share content.[2] The huge open sources available online can allow us to freely appropriate and modify a work, be it to integrate it into a larger project or create a new artwork using the original as an inspiration. This serves as a convenient platform between artists, designers and creators to exchange countless new ideas within the society that push the boundaries of technological advancement while building on the foundation of the old. To some extent, we can also somewhat preserve our artwork online due to the massive amount of storage made available.[3]

Available sharing platforms such as Flickr and Pinterest allows one to gain some inspiration from the relevant images shared online. This is particularly useful for artists where different perception can be derived from the same picture featured and can hence trigger a different reaction to it and even inspire us in many ways.

The spirit of sharing can be reflected in the art shown below.

Douglas Davis: The World’s First Collaborative Sentence. Launched 1994, Restored 2013.

Retrieved from http://artport.whitney.org/collection/DouglasDavis/live/Sentence/sentence104.html & https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/Artport/DouglasDavis  (Whitney Museum of American Art)

The above image features my own attempt at the world longest collaborative sentence where I managed to share and contribute to the ongoing artwork that is available anytime and anywhere to anyone in the world. This is a good representation of a collective narrative where all the sharing can be seen and read by people from all walks of life.

 

 

[1] Open Source Studio (2015) The Studio of Now.

[2] Open Source Studio (2015) The Way of Open Source.

[3] Open Source Studio (2015) The Open Source Artist.