HYPER ESSAY

Already in 1993 the first live stream was done by Xerox PARC when they streamed a live performance by Severe Tire Damage to Australia. After a couple of years Apple used the same technology and hosted a web host of Metallica.

This constitutes the base of live streaming and builded a curiosity for companies to use in order to inspire their audiences to get more engaged and enthusiastic about that messages could be live which gave them access to the latest, freshest news about their products.

This first expression of the live stream that is all about latest, purest, freshest news, is what I in my final project want to challenge. A lot have changed from the early days of the live streams. Today everyone can easy make a live stream so long they have a smart phone or just a way to record and internet connection.

One inspiration for me is the No Fun art piece by Eva and Franco Mattes that through live streaming on Chatrolett  which is a plattform that allows you to chat live with strangers all around the world by talking to them or through texting . The one you will chat with will be assigned to you randomly and you can choose to change chat partner whenever you want. On this plattform did the Mattes couple make it look like a man was hanging himself, they did simultaneous record the strangers they chatted and their reactions. This forced people to actually question if what they saw was real or not and it showed how people react when so absurd things happens.

 

From week 1 tutorial Internet art & culture

 

Another source of inspiration for the project came from the lecture about about authenticity and liveness where we brought up Diller and Scofidio and their project Refresh from 1998 where you could go in and watch people in an office and every time you hit refresh you would see them in another place, doing something looking like a live update. However is this not the case as some of the persons displayed in the office is not real persons. They where in fact photoshopped in the frame just making it look that they are actual real people.

 

 

The last inspiration that I got fram class was not an actual live stream. It was from Amalia Ulman, the first great Instagram artist. Where she convinced her audience that she had a life that she in fact was not living. Where she went through different parts in order to develop her character that she portraid. She was able to make all her instagram followers to think that she had made some radical choice and had become a new person. In contrast to the other artist mentioned above did she actually make people that knew her for real change their mind about how she was as a person through the months she did her performance.

So with the inspiration and my gained knowledge I have gotten through the lapse of the course have it concluded in a final project where I will challenge the core concept of a live stream. What is actually live and can a live stream be modified and be far from pure and new content?

I will in the same way as Eva and Franco Mettes did a performance that questions the audience if what they see is real or not and then also see how they take responsibility of what they witness. In the same way as Diller and Scofidio and the previous mentioned artist will I put in fake elements in my broadcast and make them as realistic as possible. And I will try like Amalia Ulman to fool people that real know me that I am a differente person than what they think I am. This will however be hard when I only have 30 minutes to do so. The key to my project is that my “live stream” will be in fact a pre recording.

The recording will begin with me introducing myself and ask the people watching to give me dares, by this making them “involved”. I will then do dares I have already figured out in advanced and have friends that will be watching the live broadcast to give me dares which I will perform. Only that my friends will know in advance what they need to write so it will add up with the video. In the end of my 30 minutes of broadcasting I will however paus the recording I have already done and change the camera so they can see that I am in a different environment, making it clear that the live broadcast was set up from the beginning.

 

The comments which my friends will help me provide make the other viewers of the broadcast think that it is an open source media but in fact it will not be. Hopefully this makes people want to participant more and make more requests when they see me preform what is written live in the chat, especially if what I do is a little more extreme and out there. However I will test and see how it works if I speak in real with a microphone of some kind making me able to talk with my audience and answer the questions and comments they do during the live stream. I will also try to talk and make comments during my broadcast that would suggest that I am in fact reading the comments.

 

The schema of the broadcast will be as following:

  1. Starting at Canteen 2 at NTU – introducing everyone to whats up.
  2. Get my first dare, to steal something from 7eleven
    1. I will in advance go in to the store and tell them that I am doing a school project where it should look like I am stealing and ask if I can by something in advance and then go in and take it from the shelf
  3. Steal from 7 eleven and get a rush taking about it a bit and walk towards the pool getting my second dare, to give out complements to strangers
  4. After that I will get my final dare to go skinny dipping in the pool.
  5. When I am at the pool and ready to get in I should turn the camera and show myself and then “accidentally” drop the camera in the pool. Making me go in after and then switch to the real live me, making the final reveal.

The whole performance will be filmed on a go pro camera because then I can drop in the pool without worrying.

 

One issue I have is that I have a set time when I should do my “broadcast” at 8:30-21:00pm which means that it will be dark outside. But I want to do my recording when it is a bit lighter outside so you can really see what I am doing. But a large part of the audience will be Swedish and also be in Sweden which will save up the situation. Because they will not think about the light because they already have a picture of Singapore being sunny and hot all the time so I am counting on them not noticing.

From the previous broadcast I have done during the semester have I noticed that I restrain myself when I use my own private Instagram account. I was afraid of talking or doing something that would look weird. So by doing the recording in advance I think that the outcome will be better because than I just need to hit play and watch, I cannot interfere because then I will ruin the performance. Making me evolve and deal with what I have created. This will be good for me on differente levels both that I in the future can with ease show more of my creations for my private followers as well and also understand that you don’t have to be picture perfect all the time. It does also give me some pressure to give them a good performance as well and I know that the video will be well made.

 

An example of this kind of performance that we have not have covered in class and is  David Dobrik a vlogger on YouTube. A vlog is supposed to be what you do in a day. Like a video dairy. However is all of his videos extreme and he do take plenty of takes and I would even say that some of the videos are scripted. He doesn’t send live but I would say that is the only differences between us.

The result I hope that I will be getting from this performance is that I want to challenge my viewers to question what they see and hopefully react in an appropriate way. I want to start a thought process and help them become more critical to what they see. This will also be testing them if they believe everything they see or not. And will this be considered live? or will it not?

 

Some interesting links for the topic:

https://repertoireproductions.com/2017/02/18/a-history-of-live-streaming/

https://theoutline.com/post/3082/youtube-is-overrun-with-fake-livestreams?zd=1&zi=cjgxz2bz

https://brightspark-consulting.com/live-stream-pre-recorded-video/

INTER-MISSION

The main question for the Lapse project id “Does technology help us to remember, or to forget?”

 

They challenge this thought by taking places around Singapore and displaying them so that they can be editable and can even be taken away.  They do take away big landmarks and people can come and see how this unfold through different lapses in time. Making the viewers question their memory. It will also revile what the different landmarks means to you when you see them disappearing. Going in to your childhood memories and making you question how different the Singapore you live in now is from the Singapore you grew up in.

 

 

For me personally does not the actually artwork speak strongly for me. I do not have any strong feeling towards Singapore and do not have any big memories from the landmarks they mentioned like the national museum. However does the concept of the artwork touch me. If it would be portraying my hometown. Further do I feel that the magic is gone when you walk out of the exhibition and can see all the monuments when you walk out. What I would like to see is that One of the landmarks from the exhibition that has been demolished. Making a more heavy impact. Because that would make you really see the change if you have something that have disappeared for real. Making people value the landmarks they have more because they can in fact been taken down.

 

 

Links:

https://www.sifa.sg/archive-programmes/the-lapse-project

https://inter-mission.art/The-Lapse-Project-1

http://popspoken.com/arts/2018/04/inter-mission/amp?fbclid=IwAR0cQ6oRSWb_Wb2kcFP9zjDMj0g7W6GrjtWP__Oo9Ecwo-6B77qA-2VI5iQ

Individual reading and reflection on a selected essay

For this reading assignment I choose to read a part of Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and technology. I read part 4.1 Research agendas in mathematics and artificial life, more specific “Why is mathematics a Part of a Book on Science , Technology and Art ”.

 

The text begins with mentioning  some similarities between mathematics and art as that they both try to find an understanding and through the understanding uncover the underlaying structures, processes and relationships. Further does the text bring up the connection between mathematics and science it does also conclude that they are not the same. Mathematics does however help science and they are an important adjunct to the physical sciences and technology. I would want to add that I think thereby that mathematics and art also can be adjunct. One quote strengthening this argument is “mathematicians, like artists, have the opportunity to dream up arbitrary worlds with their own internally consistent rules unfettered by connections with the conventional world”(p.298)

 

Furthermore does the text take up the evolving of mathematics and that huge part the computer plays in that aspect. It is then they come to talk about artificial intelligence. They talk about the interest artificial life has for both mathematicians and artists. As it says in the text “Artificial Life and genetic algorithms research has drawn much scientific and artistic attention. Artists are intrigued by the challenge to create artificial life-forms that simulate the behaviors of biological life or that evolve and self-propagate as a result of experience.”(p.305)

 

The text ends with how artificial intelligence is available as a cross-platform for both art and science for restoration by structure a consciousness about assumptions that shape the perception.

 

Personally I do think the text goes from mathematics and art to science and art real fast even though they said that they were not the same. However do I feel that mathematics is key part for science, as they also determine in the text. Also does science lay the foundation for plenty of art. When we talk about artificial intelligence does computer science heavily influence the artist. Without the computer science wouldn’t interactive art that consists of artificial intelligence exist.

 

Even though the text is written in 2002 do I feel that it is still relevant and I am not alone in this. Later texts about the subject agrees with me as well. For example Tabitha Goldstaub write for Forbs in 2018 about art and AI, where she interviewed artist there among Anna Ridler that said and I quote When I work with technology, I’m never interested in making work about technology for its own sake, but rather how I can use technology as a tool to talk about other things – memory, love, decay – or to augment or change the story in a way in that otherwise would not happen.This phrase says me that what Stephan Wilson wrote in 2002 is still as relevant today. When artist view technology as a tool that they need to have in order to do work that otherwise never would have happened. The same year IBM writes that when we began to use AI to create art by using style transfer which uses deep neural networks. It does also say that it you do not need any artistic or coding experience to be able to do this.  This may be true. But it is important to know that for being able to do anything with artificial intelligence in an art piece you may not need to be able to do coding but someone that was able to code made that possible for you.

 

 

 

 

 

Credit

 

https://monoskop.org/images/3/33/Wilson_Stephen_Information_Arts_Intersections_of_Art_Science_and_Technology.pdf

 

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tabithagoldstaub/2018/09/24/machine-dreams-art-and-artificial-intelligence/#6b2b06779c21

 

https://medium.com/design-ibm/the-role-of-art-in-ai-31033ad7c54e

 

 

 

 

 

Micro Project 6: Private vs Public

In my broadcast project I did take inspiration from the JenniCam and whatever I did the 20 minutes that I was live was included in the live video. the only thing though was that the perspective of the video was that the camera always faced me. In JenniCam the camera was static and did always record her room. In my case was the camera flexible but it was always filming my face.

 

I did interact with people during the recording, I moved changed places but you can’t really tell. I showed everything that I did but from a perspective that made it hard to tell where I was or what I was doing. The only clue is the surrounding that I am in and the voice in the background. Which did work fantastic and I would imagine that everyone that was watching did know what I was doing without seeing it. Just seeing me react to it.

I wanted to keep the live recording as real as possible and did so by not making up a plan before and just tried to not to think with the camera. I did however send a message in to my livestream saying something about the situation I was in. This made my audience to interact in the livestream which was really pleasant.

 

Before my live performance I did three posts on it on Instagram so they knew that I was supposed to send live. I did also ask them a question to make them a part of the whole experience by making them  choose where I would make the live. I did listen to them and ended up making it in ADM.

       

 

The video did not end up the way I wanted really, Since my professor draged ut the class 5 extra minutes. And when you are live you can´t go back and fix it people will notice and it will already have been seen of alot of people..

 

 

 

https://vimeo.com/366667666

password to video: surstromming

Micro Project 5: Glitch Aberrations

When you watch this sequence of glitched images amp up the brightness of your computer for a better result!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The image shown is from me standing on a volcano when I was on vacation a couple of years ago. But with each new sequence it looks like a vacation from hell but that changes somewhere in the middle and becomes lighter and happier again but with a darker tone then the original. Much like life itself starting happy and peaceful and then all problems come  and you feel overwhelmed until you manage to live with them even if it leaves you changed.

 

Art Science Museum

What really stroke me about the Future world exhibition was how kid friendly it was. I love when art can touch everyone and you do not need to have some background information beforehand to be able to enjoy it. To see all the kids there feel the magic when their turtles and fishes came to live and see how curios they become at the same time when the fully grown people there.

 

The artwork that spoke to me the most where the Inverted Globe, Giant Connecting Block Town. Where you make your own infrastructure by placing different blocks around the room. Making boats, trains and planes connecting to each other. Also that when the “town” get busier and bigger it is harder to keep the town in check which is interesting and very accurate. Which I think is made beautifully. It is also interesting to see how they have made the artwork with connecting different attribute to different colored boxes and how they detect if the box is lifted or not. And also how the city changes when you change the blocks, at the projected city that you can see on the tv monitor in the roof. It feels like the artwork has a really complicated technical aspects to it but it is a shown in a very simple beautiful way where everything is really thought – out.

Menafest for final project

Have you ever played Mad Libs? Or have you ever seen the Mad Libs theater? If you have not I have linked a video below to help you understand.

The whole things is that there is is a story outline from the beginning but there is gaps that the other person fills in. Which then will create a uniq story.

I do always find this very amusing and fun to watch. So I thought I would amp up it a bit. By doing a story. A day in my life and then ask people for the missing words. So they will without knowing it help me create a day in my life. I will from the beginning do a storyline that I could manage to do. After this I will ask people for different words and with help of this word create a day in my life that I need execute the day after. This day will be  recorded as well when I ask people for the different words.

Micro-Project 4: Pirate broadcasting

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Once again does this course test my boundaries. This was my first broadcast that I did on my original account. It was nervous to see when people joined in. I thought that by doing a broadcast with not so much content would be easier and then doing something that would require me to entertain my audience more actively. However  did it feel very weird not to entertain my audience. But when it had gone 30 sek did it feel very weird if I would start talking out of nowhere.  So I kept quiet during the whole video.

Further did I not just do one video. I did one more. I started to enjoying seeing who saw the videos. Even if it was not plenty of people. There where some people joining my broadcast that I haven’t talked to in a very long time and it was nice to see that they still are intrested in whats going on in my life.

In the first video I am going out from the elevator down the corridor. The screen is really shaky and it looks a bit like a horror movie or that I am being chased. I do however go out on the roof of the ADM. When I do go out on the roof there is already people there and I film the surroundings a bit before I cancel the video.

The second video then starts with me being locked out. I couldn’t get back in and I had to go down from the roof. Which made me go through the water sprinkles on the roof and through the crowed of people being outside and drinking, eating and chatting with each other. Once again is not the film very stable and it was really hard going down the stairs without shaking my phone. The second live broadcast ends when I am finally down and on my way back in to ADM again.