Category: Hyperessay

Final Hyperessay: Be cautious of technological change – aaajiao

April 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

‘aaajiao’ is the virtual persona of Chinese new media artist Xu Wenkai(徐文恺). His art is marked by a strong dystopian awareness, literati spirits and sophistication. In my view, aaajiao is a special artist who comes from the background of Computer Science. Compare with common engineers,  he doesn’t care about the machine performance and employ the ability to create the technological products to solve problems. By contrast, he is not optimistic about the power of technology and focuses on discovering the dark side of it, he employs his technical skills to create implied artworks to engage audiences to consider the value of technology from his perspective.

Personally speaking, from his artworks, I realize the thinking of “ Be cautious of technological change“.  And in the following essay,  I will explian how aaajiao communicate this idea to audiences through his artworks.

Typeface

‘Typeface’ https://github.com/aaajiao/typeface

‘Typeface’ is aaajiao’s artwork that aims to explore the value of Chinese characters which are recreated by the digital mean. In this project, aaajiao codes algorithm to teach the machine to learn how to write 9 Chinese characters. During the process of machine training, through mutilating a large number of characters into the pixel level, the neural network finally learns the writing skill in its own way. However, aaajiao claims that the machine’s study of creating words leads to the loss of the meaning of characters, and he states his purpose is not to teach the computer to write characters but to create a sense of ‘meaningless’.

In my view, in order to understand this ‘meaningless’, audiences should have the context of the historical knowledge about the birth of Chinese characters. It is generally believed that Chinese characters are one of the oldest words over the world in term of history, it has been thousands of years since the development of Oracle bone script to today’s Chinese characters. Basically, most of Chines characters could be seen as a long-time evolution from the abstract graphics drawings.

evolution of Chinese character(fish) in different dynasties

Some people hold overly romantic attitude toward the out of computers, they start to believe that computers are creating a wisdom. As a sensible artist and engineer who creates this piece, aaajiao reminds people of that the recreated words are only an image or a digital image processing from computers perspective. There are thousands of humanistic history of creating Chinese characters while the computer only takes several seconds to recreate it, as a human, we cannot treat these characters without our previous experience, and the history, is the essential soul of words, and without history, words are losing their meaning.

The artwork of ‘Typeface’ reminders me of Google’s artificial intelligence(AI) of AlphaGo who beats the best human Go player and ranks the first in the world. The rapid development of AI provides endless possibilities for human, and we start to imagine what value that AI can bring to us. Different from most people, aaajiao doesn’t hold an absolutely optimistic attitude toward it, as a sensitive artist,  he cares about the humanistic value of the technological products and critically thinks about the result caused by the technological revolution. And ‘Typeface’ was his typical artwork reflecting the negative value brought by AI.

Moreover, I would like to link the piece of  ‘Typeface’ to Mark Amerika’s work, GRAMMATRON. From my understanding, GRAMMATRON was an artwork that employs the subject of ‘texts’ and the new type of technology at that time(Internet or Hypermedia). Instead of book production, it provides a public domain networked-narrative environment where the stories are narrated. Through experiments the technique of hypertexts, GRAMMATRON was questioning how a narrative would be composed, published and distributed in the age of digital dissemination and predicting the coming change that internet will bring to our life. Compare with GRAMMATRON, ‘Typeface’ is doing something similar that experiment the current advanced technology(AI) as well as create a new way of handwriting, the difference is that ‘Typeface’ does not aim to challenge the traditional handwriting but to attempt to emphasize the humanistic importance of traditional handwriting.

Blog weighting(2013) & A Dead Innovative Company(2016)

Blog Weighting http://eventstructure.com/blogArchaeological-0

“Blog weighting” is aaajiao’s artwork that implies the underrated power of data in the digital era. aaajiao found a writer who has been writing his blog for ten years. He collected all of the blog’s data and saved it onto an SD card.  And then he put the SD card on the scale and jewelry on another scale to compare their value by traditional measuring standard.

A Dead Innovative Company, http://eventstructure.com/A-Dead-Innovative-Company

The piece of “A Dead Innovative Company” emphasizes that data is the core fortune of an innovative company in this current digital era. In this piece, audiences could insert a flash disk into the USB port, and get two files which means they can easily destroy an innovative company by stealing the soul(data) from it.

From my perspective, “Blog weighting” and “A Dead Innovative Company” are also interesting and thoughtful works.  The comparison between the SD card(data) and the jewelry is really humorous and ironical, without doubt, the result is obvious that the card is much lighter than the jewelry, but does it mean data is less value than jewelry? I think the answer is no.

aaajiao describes that the purpose for him to create these two artworks is to engage audiences to reconsider the value of data in this digital era.  Data’s spreading has become fast and easy, I tend to say that we are living in a society which has become fed on the open data spaces arising from the proliferation of the internet. And the subject of data in these two works reminders me of Bush’s “As We May Think”:

“Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.”

Bush describes that the record of ideas(data) helps knowledge to be inherited and evolved across the entire human race instead of individual, and human was bogged down at that time as specialization extends(or the difficulty of saving and extending knowledge from my understanding). What is ironical, nowadays people are used to be benefited from the internet or the hypermedia which is evolved from Bush’s idea of Memex, however,  the ease of spreading knowledge(data) leads to people’s neglect the value of data. I think that “Blog weighting” is attempting to recall our attention to the value or the power of data.

“The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.”

This is the last paragraph of “As we may think” where predicts the Bush’s concerned about the science application in future. In the piece of “Dead Innovative Company”, the audience’s interaction with the artwork could imply the violent behavior that human use the science application in a wrong way, to be more specific, the interaction of inserting a flash disk(cruel weapon) is trying to kill the company(perish in conflict).  It also warns us that we are living in the age of information, we are benefited from data, but also threatened by data such as the privacy issues.

Conclusion

In conclusion,  aaajiao’s works are throwing the idea of “Be cautious of technological change” to the public. In this hyperessay, I research three of his artworks to communicate his idea. Nowadays most people are holding overly optimistic attitude toward the technology, and or even overly obsessed with the technological explosion. However, like what Walter Benjamin describes the ‘mechanical reproduction era’ and the loss of aura of artworks, copied artworks are losing aura during the process of mechanical reproduction, and the recreated Chinese characters in ‘Typeface’ are also losing its aura and its essential meaning during the computer recreation. In “Blog weighting” and “A Dead Innovative Company”, aaajiao attempts to emphasize the power of data, and to hint that the positive and negative ways for people to employ the technology.  As an observant artist, aaajiao is reminding us to be cautious of technological change not only from the positive perspective but also the cautious one.

 

 

Reference

  • Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945

Bibliography

  • Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, 2001

 

The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium

Review of The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium

April 3, 2018 / / 1 Comment

I attended the first day and the third day of The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium, which includes the Keynote by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and the Internet Performance by Annie Abrahams and collaborators(Day 1), as well as the Internet Performance by Jon Cates and collaborators(Day 3). This Hyperessay will critique and discuss the certain contents in the symposiums I attended.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Symposium Keynote

Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Symposium Keynote

Keynote of Live Art and Telematics: The Promise of Internationalism by Maria Chatzichristodoulou

Chatzichristodoulou introduces several artworks created by the well-respected pioneers in the history of telematics, as well as questions the outcomes of these live art experiments linking to visions of Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the ‘global village’.

keywords & definitions of the keynote by Maria Chatzichristodoulou

There are two impressive pieces of works for me which are At home in Gaza and London by Station House Opera in 2016 and The Pixelated Revolution by Rabih Mroué in 2012. From my understanding, the role of telematics in At home in Gaza and London is to challenge restrictions placed upon the free circulation of people and ideas. Specifically, the piece creates a mutual performance space for participants in the two locations of Gaza and London separated by great political, economic and physical divides. As Gaza is currently suffering from the situation of inaccessible outside world, the aim of this piece is to employ contemporary mobile technologies to build the connection to one of the most inaccessible places on earth lives with an international audience. It means, through telematics, artists break the physical barrier and create freedom in the third space.

In addition, the Pixelated Revolution articulates and disputes Syria’s geopolitical chaos through the ‘killed images’ produced by the bipod camera which an extension of the victim’ visual feeling. The “killed images” was really shocked through providing an immersive visual feeling with the first person perspective. However, Mroué states that there is a layer of abstraction between the abundance of visual information and the narrative it forges which further trouble the knowledge one can extract from the chaos of media and the chaos depicted in the images themselves. In my view, the short film produced by the victim, to some extent, disclose the uncovering chaos in Syria, however, the technical problem which should be the quality of camera blurs the process of revealing the truth (Who is the sniper?).

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training: Directed and performed by Annie Abrahams (FR) with Antye Greie (FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Hương Ngô (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT), Igor Stromajer (DE), and NTU students

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training: Directed and performed by Annie Abrahams (FR) with Antye Greie (FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Hương Ngô (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT), Igor Stromajer (DE), and NTU students

In the work of online En-semble – Entanglement Training(2018), artists investigate the way to work together with the certain protocol in the third space which is a connected world that machines and humans have to communicate accepting partial overviews, glitches, time-lags, disrupting audience participation and ensuing disorientation.

I noticed a detail in the introduction of this performance on the website of this symposium, which describes that NTU students are one part of the performers. I tend to believe this could describe the interactive and happening which are the ones of the most important characters of modern art. And in this case, I personally think the audience’s responses such as their texts in the chatting windows would influence the performance in some ways even if Annie Abrahams said that they were too busy to pay attention to there. Moreover, when the conversation was beginning after the performance with the terrible network environment (which I still considered as a part of the performance), people’s behaviors began to be slightly unnatural, audiences and performers with different expressions, like nervous, confused, lost, uncomfortable and etc. We were all shared with the third space with each other, but essentially, we were still not in same time (latency) neither the same location, I began to observe what we did as well as to consider what we should do to connect well with human and also machine in the partial third world with glitches.

TCP 3-Way Handshake Diagram

Meanwhile, the question asked by Professor Randall Packer about the protocol of performance reminded me about the Transmission Control Protocol(TCP) which is is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite, and its connection establishment process:  “Three-Way Handshake” which make each side verify that it can send packets to the other side . Generally, it could be thought as a most effective way to build a reliable, ordered, and error-checked connection, and when the meeting was influenced by the unstable network environment, I was thinking that could we use the thinking of “Three-Way Handshake” if we are suffering from a terrible one on one webcam conservation.

igaies – intimate glitches across internet errors  by internationally renowned Chicago glitch artist Jon Cates (US) and collaborators: Roberto Sifuentes (US), Arcángel Constantini (MX), Shawné Michaelain Holloway (US), 愛真 Janet Lin (US) & Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (UK) (XXXtraPrincess), and Aram Han Sifuentes (US)

igaies – intimate glitches across internet errors  by internationally renowned Chicago glitch artist Jon Cates (US) and collaborators: Roberto Sifuentes (US), Arcángel Constantini (MX), Shawné Michaelain Holloway (US), 愛真 Janet Lin (US) & Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (UK) (XXXtraPrincess), and Aram Han Sifuentes (US)

In the work of igaies (intimate glitches across internet errors), Jon Cates and collaborators developed a series of multifarious and differentiated performance works that express the combination of small miraculous mistakes and moments of beautiful brokenness which fuse together as a single improvisatory, real-time sensory overload of noise, blood, hashtags, fetishism, sexuality, memes, and #cutestuff.

I was really attracted by the part of Roberto Sifuentes’ #exsanguination. His body was be mourned and cleaned by ritualistically putting on leeches on.

“Responding to hyper-mediatized, colliding images, and sensory overload of global despair to create #exsanguination, a performance where the bleeding body stands in for the displaced, invisible, and forgotten, becoming a site for activism, penance, and reinvention.”

– Roberto Sifuentes and collaborators

Roberto Sifuentes, #exsanguination

I think that the leeches and Roberto Sifuentes represent abstractly the relationship between human and this hyper-mediatized era. As the rapid development of technology, too many information are infesting around ourselves. Personally thinking,  in this generation, about 80% of our conscious time is spent on facing screens, the position of the virtual space and real space has been upside down right now. Human might be tired of screen and overload of digital information, and need the process of exsanguination to mourn and clean the body with leeches. Moreover, there was also an interesting idea that came up to my mind at the end of the symposium, for the online symposium itself, compare the local audiences and remote audiences, the local audiences sharing the same real space with performers were physically closer to them than the remote ones sharing the third space with performers, however, the remote audiences had more opportunities to be active such as they can discuss and ask questions in the chat room but not to disturb the performance. It could probably represent a way of the upside down between the real space and the virtual space.