Experimental Interaction – G4

April 25, 2018

S O N D E R : G L I T C H M R T

GLITCH SINGAPORE?

A public interactive performance that is based on a site-specific narrative with integrated elements of DIWO, Third Space and Glitch.

Brain storming process

references :

The Shed at Dulwich

A spoof restaurant in a garden shed in Dulwich. It was created as a hoax by journalist Oobah Butler which became the top-rated restaurant in London on TripAdvisor before the listing was taken down. The restaurant was open for one night and served a faux menu themed with “emotions”.

The hoax played off the trend for micro-restaurants.

Bulter Cafes in Japan

The basic concept of a butler cafe is that you are extraordinarily wealthy and you’re returning to your mansion for dinner/afternoon tea. The butlers great you with 「お帰りなさいませ、お嬢様！」”Welcome home, my lady!” and take your coat and carry your bag to your table and make small talk with you and serve you tea and generally make you feel like a fantastic person.

– shaun-nihon.blogspot.jp

Big brother

A reality game show whereby the audience watch the interaction between a group of contestants living together in a custom built home, isolated from the outside world, under constant surveillance. An exploration of human dynamics.

Terrace House

A Japanese reality show about strangers, men and women, living together in a house, where the development of their relationship is monitored.

INITIAL IDEAS summary

Pillow talk

Location : Bunc Hostel Singapore

2 strangers have an intimate conversation with one another separated by bed sheet/ different rooms.
No escape room
Stimulation of the board game Dead of Winter
Surveillance

Location : Inside tents of East and West Coast Park

RPG Game

Real life arcade game where we are the characters that the player (public audience) controls.

The one that got away = The Labyrinth

Brief outline:

Location : Bugis Street

A runner and catcher narrative at roots, this stimulated dystopian chasing game where Renegade AIs (runners) have to escape from the Guards (catchers) through the floors of Bugis Street in the time span of 1/1.5 hours. The gameplay was to be monitored through updates on telegram as well as a secret recordings by the team members. The runners would have to take “discreet” photos of themselves completing their missions to which would be given to the catchers by us as clues to track them down. The chasers have to find the runners using these clues and attempt to catch them by asking whom they suspect to complete a common idiom in a specific way, such as:

[The grass is always greener…] […on the ADM rooftop.]
[Coffee, tea, or…] […teriyaki?]
[Birds of a feather…] […cockblock together.]

Glitch : There would be 3 pairs of runner and catcher, 6 players in total. Our plan was to recruit help from our own friends who don’t know each other so that they won’t know who they are running away from/ catching. Plus the 3 runners are to concurrently update their clues on the instagram, creating confusion for the chasers, as they won’t know which clue to track down.

DIWO : Runners and catchers can choose to form alliances among themselves to help each other achieve their end goals.

Third Space: The runners and catchers would be communicating with among themselves and us through separate telegram groups. The clues from runners would be posted on instagram as they complete their missions.

We decided on a test run on a Saturday with Si Hui’s and Ying Hui’s friend (although I was missing for the whole test run process because of my 3d project.)

After we all sat down with the players after the game, we were told that the narrative was not engaging enough – why were the renegades AIs running away? how is it going to end? Which we were unclear of among ourselves. But even if we did, I foresee that we might be restricting the players with too much world building, hence there would not be chances for any meaningful accidents, glitches.

Plus, the chaser felt that the gameplay was not as engaging for him as the runner as he merely had to chase the runner around using instagram clues which he was not even using to find the runner.

And lastly, we simply did not have the manpower and tools to secretly follow 6 separate players. On the test run itself, the other 4 members struggled with the recording, 2 of them having to avoid their own friends in order not to give away where the stations were.

FINAL IDEA GENERATIOn

Location: MRT

A uniquely ironic space where we are most of the time in our own private bubbles even though our physical bodies are squished together with other bodies of the crowd, which we repeat without questioning day after day like a routine. There were many interesting themes that could be explored within this space, from its coverage over the entire of Singapore, the intersections of old and new lines to familiar strangers.

I think that Si Hui has also mentioned a very interesting fascination of ours at one point of our lives, the thrill of having a meaningful intersection with the “fate” one on the train whom you’ve never met before, in a very “Before Sunrise”-esque/Korean drama way.

And so, we decided to focus on the general feelings of sonder we go through everyday. So what is Sonder?

“the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”

We have two players who are strangers to one another to board on separate mrt lines, east west line and downtown line, and travel along to meet at the intersection, which is Bugis in this case.

We actually wanted strangers on board to participate but when we realise it was very hard to find someone who was travelling specifically to Bugis, and willing to be filmed. Plus, recruiting people at the Bukit Panjang station was a tricky one as the trains arrive 2 minutes apart from one another, which means there was barely any bystanders waiting to board. We couldn’t board the train to ask people too as we needed the other team at Jurong East ready with their player at the same time. The only one who showed any interest to us that day was this kind MRT employee, but she couldn’t possibly leave her station so :,).

Therefore, we decided to stick to inviting friends of our groupmates, who don’t know each other.

And then on their journey, they are to engage in an online chat with one anothe via Telegram, each taking on their persona as East West line and Downtown line respectively. Then as they converse, they are required to draw portraits of each other based on the impression they have of one another. And as their journey approaches to the end, they are asked whether they decide to meet each other at Bugis. If they both decide to, they have to find each other while referring to the portraits that they drew.

ARTIST REFERENCE

Final Trailer

Day 1 : Sihui + Yilin ( yinghui’s friend )

Here are a few of the highlights of their conversations

Si Hui Pretending to be a guy

Finding out they have similar academic background

A common interest in board games

They share a common friend

And my favourite moment

DAy 2

I wasn’t there on site with the rest of the group on that day, but I managed to witness the ongoing chat real time. From the get go, this chat was way more livelier than the others.

Highlights:

+ I think we the facilitators also played a role as glitches. By filming them openly, I feel like we the members were invading this intimate space that was to be shared between 2 people especially when each pair decides to meet up. There are also instances where Ying Hui and I ended up giving unintentional clues out to the players which gives them ideas about who the other person might be, which adds to the impression that they were supposed to form on their own.

+Portraits and the conversations also gave each player a visual expectation of each other, making the physical encounter an unexpected experience.

+Our initial idea was for the breadbot to ask more and more personal and meaningful questions as the conversation goes on, but it was proven to be difficult given the considerably short time we were running each run, and the conversations for both days turned out to be driven by the players, making it hard for the breadbot to butt in.

Personal TAKE AWAY

As someone recording for day 1, what I found most interesting of this whole experience was the dynamics between Si Hui and Yi Lin, especially Si Hui disappointment at Yi Lin’s online versus face-to-face encounter.

This reaction is not surprising at all, as we, myself included, take the online personas to be a direct representation of that person which in this case has been filtered through the Telegram app. When we see and interact with the real person face-to-face, it becomes an entirely different experience when the person no longer have the barriers and filters to present himself the way he would have wanted. I sort of understand that Yi Lin must have felt under pressure, suddenly having to meet Si Hui, plus more strangers who were filming every move, no longer under the comforts of Telegram.

But, perhaps because I saw Yi Lin first in person, I didn’t experience the disparity in personality that Si Hui must have felt. I can understand that he was a really nice guy, willing to take his free time off to help out a friend when he knows that he had to go to Bugis and travel back home without any rewards. Plus, he didn’t back out, even after he knew that he had to interact with a stranger, considering his introverted personality. Therefore, I can sort of see where his online personality is coming from, answering Si Hui in a friendly and earnest manner.

I think this actually isn’t just confined to online personas however, as even in our daily interactions, we do have our own set of personas based on who we are interacting with in the end. For one, as much as I would like to be “real” to people, I do know that the way I interact with my family is different from the way I treat my friends. Even in my family, I have different personas accustomed to each member. But even so, I believe that though there may be multiple personas, through each one, there is still inherently a part of me that is within it, no matter how discreet or fake it may be. This probably (or maybe not) counts as an extension from my Super Participation reflection, where even though everything is a self-driven curation, it still stems from a sense of self, no matter how discreet it may be. In that curation, we can perhaps still find the traces of that person if we look hard enough.

I feel that this interactive experience based on the specific feelings of sonder between strangers and the juxtaposition of the lonely self in a crowded and ever-moving MRT, really manages to bring out the relevance of personas, online and offline, in our daily lives.

(I hope this somehow makes sense as I try to put what is going on in my head into words as hard as I can :,) )

And with that, I shall bring an end to my one hell of a train wrecky thoughts.

April 11, 2018

Hyperessay : The art of Symposium

Throughout the 3 days of this online symposium, we delved into the world of social broadcasting through the use of the third space which connects the online spectators to the performers over the world, using web conferences. It showcased a list of presentations and performances which allowed us to engage with many-to-many interactions over the net through a series of real-time web conferences.

I had the opportunity to experience the Day 1 and Day 2 programs live, and in this essay, I will be talking about my personal take on what stood out to me during these 2 sessions.

Day 1 : Entanglement

The real-time online performance by pioneering Internet artist Annie Abrahams and her collaborators around the world was what I found myself to be most intrigued with.

It embraced many of the interactive aspects that Maria Chatzichristodoulou briefed us before which also aligns with what we have been exposing ourselves to throughout this semester.

The internationalism that Maria spoke of is first integrated into the performance, when artists collaborate from their respective geographical locations through the third space created over the net. As a result, an easily accessible platform which imitates the feel of a singular collective space is created.

The performance also implements the DIWO aspects, when the performers are given the space to interpret the set of instructions in their own ways. We see this so, when each artist begins to break away from their initial seemingly synchronized performance to their own individualistic artistic directions. We visually see this through a single screen which is made up of smaller windows which changes from a rather synonymous group of images to a group of contrasting ones. This was accompanies by the transformation of a synonymous voices to overlapping of voices reciting different phrases, with some not even in English. This messy performance ends again with a rather silent synonymous meditation from all the performers.

In the end, we get to experience intimacy through both coordinated actions as well as one created through clashing concoction of personal voices. A final collective artwork is therefore created by embracing all of these individual colours and personalities which is present even when they were doing the same things.

A renewed sense of intimacy is formed, with the glitches and time lags which only adds another layer of togetherness in its own terms, instead of hindering connections, due to the disruptive nature of these elements.

Perhaps the performance suggests that notion of sameness does not necessarily equate to togetherness, as we can create our own unique sense of togetherness through entanglements by embracing our own mess, pushing for an internationalism that is inclusive.

Day 2: My One Demand

We had Matt Adams from Blast Theories who went through a series of their projects to give his insights on weaving in narratives to interactive mediums in order to question the validity of the line drawn between myth making and political reality.

As an avid movie lover, I was particularly interested in the interactive film project My One demand. On the surface, it may seem like a documentary that follows 7 different people with unrequited love across different generations.

However, unlike its conventional predecessors, it was broadcasted real-time in an uninterrupted single shot format to 2 groups of audiences, one in the cinemas and another group online.

In addition, it allowed the participating audience to contribute their personal opinions via questions embedded in the film’s narration via their devices and get back responses from the narration which is reciprocated by the narrator over the film that continues to take place. It therefore allowed the audience to shape the final narrative to a certain extent by inputting their personal voices and experiences on top of the scripted film that is concurrently being played out.

What I like about the project is that although the project was not controversial or revolutionary in definition per se, it did manage to challenge the very core foundation of cinema as a vessel solely for the audience to immerse themselves fully into passivity.

To me, in a sense, the passivity of the viewership in cinema is a reflection of sorts of the passivity we display in our daily lives, when it comes to creating conversations, be it our connections within our personal circles to much bigger spectrums like politics.

By interrupting this immersive experience, a space is created to internalise and respond to what they had been engaging with, without letting the moments die out. It allows for “communal” connections, allowing the audience to connect with the “characters” on a deeper level by giving away their own vulnerabilities as which in turns helps them facilitate them own understanding of themselves when they happen to be in these situations.

In conclusion, these two days have helped me to see the beauty of the unpredictable many to many interactions which encourages us to look out for new opportunities as well as reflect on our current take on what it means to be connected to constantly question and redefine it in our society by using technology as a tool to facilitate it.

April 4, 2018April 23, 2018

Micro Project 7: Video Selfie

Here is my artistic alter ego who runs a cooking game channel.

A̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶f̶a̶i̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶e̶m̶p̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶H̶a̶y̶a̶o̶ ̶M̶i̶y̶a̶z̶a̶k̶i̶, I decided on my artistic alter ego as a gamer who plays rather simple clicking cooking games instead of other popular games.

I played a ton of cooking games on these online sites when I was young, so I decided to go back and source out one of my favourites back then, which I used to play over and over again because of its pretty visuals.

I filmed this at the clean corner of my desk and played the game over and over until I got the “perfect” end results. I filtered the video with a slight glitchy effect afterwards. Then, I uploaded, with an attempt to title it as attention grabbing as possible like gaming channels like to do.

I wanted to portray myself as an artist who is able to pursue what I truly want, without being catering to what the others want. Plus, I want to be able to treasure my past experiences, whether good and bad, to learn from them and use them to grow as an artist. Lastly, I want to have courage to put myself and my work out there, which I am always reluctant to do.

This video selfie has enabled me to alter my identity by allowing me to portray myself as the best version of myself. The ability to selectively upload your successes and good sides enables us easily delude people into thinking that we are flawless when it is impossible to be.

In a sense, videos help us hide our imperfections, which is also part of our identity.

In a physical sense, since only my hands were part of the film, my physical identity is concealed. But, by constructing my environment as a clean space, I am able to construct impressions of myself that I want people to see such as being an organised person etc, which contributes to the final image of a cooking gamer that I want to procure.

However, videos can also reveal parts of our identity that we might not intentionally want to. In my case, despite all the loud colours and sounds, the rather empty space and lack of a personal voice probably reveals that I am still a private person, despite efforts to paint myself as a gamer who doesn’t mind putting herself out there.

So finally to end things off, here is the link to the game if anyone wants to ever try it.

March 21, 2018

Research Critique 3

In our micro-project, Dion, Brendan, Sam and I decided to explore the art of destruction on how the interaction between a bucket of water, tissue papers, hand soap and a starbucks drink distorts our conceptual understandings of these following objects.

Through our series of interactions, we created a conceptual contradiction between our actions and our preconceived notions of the functions of these following items. For instance, the soap cleans, but in this case it fails to clean the pollution caused by drink; it just makes it worse by dirtying the water further, which is a direct contradiction of the soap’s primary functions.

We physically destroyed the cleanliness of water with a set of solutions that are supposed to work theoretically to produce clean water. Thus, we are embracing and creating conceptual inconsistencies through this contradictory act of physical destruction.

In a sense, we destroyed the semiotics of these objects by taking apart their meanings and functions that we are so used to, in order to demonstrate our set of ideas.

In this case, we incorporated both the physical and ideological destruction to express the fragility of functions that we are so accustomed to in our lives.

To me, this ties in with the art of destruction and glitches, where the constitutions of a subject are manipulated or left to deteriorate, resulting usually the subject to undergo a drastic transformation, beyond the point of return. These diverse forms of destruction however all serve to create meaningful discussions, statements, and ultimately reflections of the societies we respectively live in.

Even though societies are different from each other due to cultures and traditions, we still universally enforce our own rules and conventions in order to give ourselves a routine, and a sense of uniform harmony. To me, this is especially so in this day and age, when technology has developed so far, and is still developing to envision ourselves as a society without human flaws in it.

Although it is not unfounded that human errors are seen as undesirable, it still evokes a sense of human touch and individuality, allowing us to keep in touch with ourselves.

Jon Cates shares this sentiment in his interview where he states ” dirtiness implies there is a human quality in new media, that it is not perfect, it’s not sterile, it’s not removed from real life, but it contains its imperfections, it’s impurities, in a way, it’s organic qualities, that get closer to our “wet” lives, rather than our binary ones.”

Glitch embraces these flaws as seen from Glitch Studies Manifesto, where dirtiness is associated with “a negative feeling makes place for an intimate, personal experience of a machine (or program), a system showing its formations, inner workings and flaws.”

Ant farm also created these projects that were destructive in nature by utilizing the power for images as images tend to be “more powerful than the event itself”.

They utilize the imperfections which we humans are born with in our DNA, which is essentially impossible to eliminate it completely; it is what makes us humans human. And it is this very human quality that the art of destruction and glitch art strives to emulate, to create insightful conversations and opportunities to reflect and question using unconventional methods, just as we have hoped to in our micro-project.

March 14, 2018April 25, 2018

Micro-Project 6: Super Participation

We decided to carry out our super participation from Friday 11 a.m to Saturday 11 a.m. There was no specific theme; we just posted whatever each of us would have wanted.

And what we ended up whipping up was a heap of text posts, photos, and videos that usually entailed updates on what was happening to each of us on that day. We also attempted to engage and comment on each other’s posts.

Almost all of the posts were made by us based on our experiences of that day, with rare occasions of shared content that can be found on the net.

The contents posted are noticeably different, from person to person. We have those who posted more videos while there were those who shared more photos.

This activity does allow us to reflect the role of our digital identities, which is especially prevalent in our social media driven world today. We are at this age when your digital identities can affect our lives tremendously, when we have so many people who are able to capitalize on the personas they have carefully created. At the same time, it can ruin people easily when they do not adhere to their identities’ values, which we see a lot in celebrity culture and scandals.

Here is a basic rundown of what I did.

I tried to start off my recording what I was doing on that day by taking photos but already in the morning, I find myself dissatisfied with the photos of fried eggs I was having in the morning, so I decided if I am going to be that scared of scrutiny, I might as well just post screenshots, which does not require touch ups.

I basically spent the entirety of the previous night and that whole chunk of morning dedicated to writing this literature essay of mine, where I have to analyse a film and discuss the utopian and dystopian aspects of it. I decided to share my favourite parts of the movie as well as my process.

At the same time, I tried to comment and like other team members’ posts.

And the infamous game download saga.

And ended off with this

If I reflect on my own posts for instance, I avoided posting personal posts, like selfies, or videos. Instead I posted screenshots of what I was doing at the time with captions that gave little information about the content. Even though I didn’t post anything too personal, in a way I feel that I was already projecting myself already as this character who enjoys being ambiguous.

In conclusion, even if you post content with little to no personal matters, it still in a way gives us a hint of our characters, thus leading to an eventual creation of a digital persona in its own way. In the same way, I feel that no matter how much of truth or “realness” you project yourself to be in the digital realm, they are still somewhat controlled as the contents we post may vary from personal, trivial or intellectual but in the end, to me, they are in some way a curation nonetheless by the creator.

February 21, 2018April 25, 2018

Glitch Practices

For this micro project, Brendan, Jia Ying and I edited our self portraits using Photoshop.

Original image

1st Edit by me

Not knowing what to do, I started off by testing out some random filters and decided on the “distort” function as I felt that I needed to distort the visuals of the original photo first and foremost in order to render it unrecognizable as much as I could so that the “glitch” element stands out in the most obvious way possible.

I decided on “twirl” for this edit.

2nd Edit by Brendan

Since I have already distorted the physiques of the elements in the image, he went with the overall colouration of the image. All the previous colours are now lost only leaving behind reddish and bluish hues. These two hues appear to be divided into 2, blue on my left and pink on my right. The picture is visually further divided by pixels on the left and grains on the right.

3rd Edit by Jia Ying

Again, I think Jia Ying here tried to distort the visual proportions of the elements by warping and twirling the make ups of the image.

Final Edit by me again

Here I tried to distort both the colours and the visuals of the image by cropping to replace parts of the image, as well as changing the colour and texture properties to certain parts of the image marked by the selection tool.

Through the collective image manipulation by passing it around from one person to another, we are able to distort and manipulate the original image into an unpredictable combination that still possesses the essence of the original.

The modifications and the final art work also embraces the imperfections, creating its own form of aesthetic from deconstruction and re composition.

By applying different forms of glitches in our own interpretations, we are able to create an artwork that deviates from the original completely, in both visual and stored data, which gets altered collectively as we pile up one edit over another.

February 14, 2018April 25, 2018

Research Critique 2: The third space

With the completion of the Micro-project 3, the third space to me is a manifestation of spaces when fused together, enabling people around the world to connect and collaborate beyond the time and physical constraints.

With the current technological advances, the limits of the physical boundaries can easily be overcome with online presence and live projections.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou studied such projects that utilizes these aforementioned features of technology, from Multi User Dungeons (MUDs) to telematic performances.

Through studies of MUDs, she showed the possibilities of enhanced real-time social interactions through virtual reality stimulations which enables users to interact with other users alike from all around the world, which allows for a new experience of intimacy.

The MUDs also encourage users to showcase their creative sides, by giving them the freedom to create their own online personalities in immersive ways, such as the abilities to customise their own characters and choose their own narrative amid other possible narratives.

Studies on Telematic performances also showcased the availability of a wide array of resources users can easily access to without having to spend any money, showing how anyone with an internet connection can participate in projects of their own.

Not only that, works like The Electronic Disturbance (1996) prove that collaborations in fields such as art and dance, are made especially easy, regardless of where you live.

Although on a small scale, through our micro project, I believe that we are able to explore these features of the third space. Namely, we explored to a certain extent, continuity of perspectives, movements and spaces in order. In a sense, we were able to create a facade of a newly formed continued third space, where movements and perspectives are aligned without having to be in the same space.

In my opinion, this immersive virtual engagement with both yourself and others all around the world creates a unique intimacy without having to be physically present in the same space, allowing internationalism to be a much deeper and personal experience no longer detained by physical barriers.

There are more opportunities to explore our pre-existing relationships with others and the space we live in,at the same time, explore new ways of interaction through new spaces with fresh persepctives.

To collate all these features of the third space, I would like to summarise this research with Randall Packer’s apt description of the third space as ” a space of invention and possibility, like lucid dreaming, where participants might assume their avatar identities, engage in post-human, cyborgian manifestations, or perhaps reinvent the world in the image of their own making.”

February 7, 2018February 14, 2018

Micro-Project 3 – Tele-Drift

In week 3, we were tasked to explore the third space by performing with the use of the facebook live feature, specifically its ability to host 2 different people at the same time with its split screen feature.

After some technical difficulties, Joel and I decided on a performance piece where we utilise the third space to act as a portal that connects the 2 different locations at the same time, in this case are 2 different enclosed classrooms. Perhaps because the classes looked similar to each other, a convincing creation of a new unified space between 2 different places was made possible.

We decided to perform a couple of simple acts to create a facade of continuity between these 2 separated spaces by translating these activities from one screen to another as fluid as possible, which was the main challenge of this project, as it was hard to get the right timing for the objects to be in the right place.

First was the money being transferred from one place to another where we explored continuity using first perspective views. Second was climbing up and down stairs, exploring the continuity of movements. And lastly we attempted to throw the tissue paper across the 2 spaces thus creating a continuity between spaces.

Posted by Joel Lee on Wednesday, 31 January 2018

Although on a small scale, I believe that through this activity, we were able to explore the essence of time and shared space in the third space, and how it can pave way to creative ways for more collaborative art performances that are no longer limited by the physical boundaries.

February 7, 2018February 15, 2018

Micro-Project 2 – Crowd-Sourced Time-Based Art

In this project, the viewer is tasked to interpret the given image and draw out a physical manifestation of their feelings in response to the image they see, with the materials made available to them, which are in this case are markers varying in colour (3 to be exact) to be used on the canvas offered, our arms. The images given also varied in tone and appearance, from recognizable subjects like dogs and cats,

to more unusual ones, like a photoshopped frog-kiwi.

These factors act as limiting reagents to shape the audience’s output in the form of drawings.

Since the audience were mostly students in ADM, they were all cooperative with our instructions as they are probably aware that this is for an assignment.

The end result was a collection simple drawings, though they vary in visuals whereby the ones who chose the cat and the dog photo, all drew a more representational impression of dogs and cats. On the other hand, those who chose the northern lights and the photoshopped frog, tended to drew more abstract depictions of the subject or their feelings.

By the end of it, each of our arms held an array of strangers’ personal reactions to each image in the physical form of marker drawings.

(From top to bottom: Frederick, Teri, Si qi and me)

Research Critique

The DIWO aspect of our project has enabled us to gain an insight on how a diverse art work can be put together when the final outcome is essentially unpredictable as the number of different ways a collective of individuals can interpret a subject is much vaster than what a single individual can.

It embraces the need of social interaction, in this case where we borrow the creativity and skillsets of other artists to create a collective artwork made in reaction to a single subject from multiple points of view and interpretations. This can be seen to a certain degree in Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece where the audience given the same set of instructions are shown to carry them out in different ways based on their own interpretation.

Personally, I find that what makes the final work different from the traditional art is the fact that a reflection of each audience’s personalities, which stems from their own unique and personal experiences, can be observed with DIWO projects.

For example in our case, a student upon seeing a picture of Oscar, she gushed about her own cat, Peanut. Her familiarity and love for cats was perhaps one of the factors that prompted her to draw Oscar with extra care.

Thus, as an artist, such personal details from the audience in the process make DIWO artworks a much more interesting and enriching experience than just curating the final artwork by yourself.

This rich array of expressions would have proven to be far more difficult to conjecture without implementing the characteristics of DIWO projects which allows for “an effective form of artistic collaboration with others, and to a wider culture”, as stated in Marc Garrett’s article.