Micro-Project 3. Together Split

We did three attempts in making a split screen artwork. We did the splitscreen recordings through Instagram group-chat. All of us were located in the same room and that was hard enough. The screens did appear in different ways on all of our phones making it hard to know if we were in the right position or not.

We took a decision and made Jakes phone the one we all should try to fit in to. But it was hard really hard to get everyone in the right place. Which you can see below. But one thing is for sure, we had a-lot of fun making this art project.

 

The password to the movie is: surstromming

VID_73800221_054204_506 from Amanda Engstrom on Vimeo.

 

 

 

Together split 1 from Amanda Engstrom on Vimeo.

 

 

VID_73800619_102554_294 from Amanda Engstrom on Vimeo.

 

  • Out of all the 3 Micro-Projects
    • The project I had most creative control was project 2 were you portrayed your alter ego, beacuse I was in charge of everything and got the result i wanted.  Therefore I had the most creative control however do I not think I was the most creative i that piece.
    • The project with the most unpredictable outcome would I say was the 3:rd micro-project. i think I had the least control because I did not see the end product or the process even if I was a part of it but I di not see any of it. I just know how it ended when Jake sent the video. I needed to just trust him.
    • I would say that the most Open- Source project was the second one. Most people had influence over the project and it was the most free one where everyone could add whatever they thought about.

Micro-Project 2-Crowd- Sourced Art

What is the content of the work and who is creating it?

The idea about the piece is that we now more than ever begin to merge into one culture. We become a world citizens. However does people still assume certain things when they think about different places and the people that lives there. And as a person included in a certain nationality what do we think about ourselves and how does that result compared with what others think about us match up? Those who created this art where people from mine and Najihas social circles.

 

Where does this work take place?

The art took place on the internet with help of the sites polleverywhere, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook did we create this peer to peer art.

 

How does this work involve social interaction?

Without any answers the artwork would not exist because it is the answers that build the art, it is literally their words that makes the art. And for the participants to find the art must we, Najiha and me reach out to them in some kind of way. Thereby making a social interaction.

How is your crowd-sourced project different from one that is created by a single artist/creator?

It gets broaden. One person can never act or think as a bunch of people making it hard to get the same depth and different aspects that a group of persons can. In this case in particular it also serve as a purpose to get a understanding of what different persons from different culture backgrounds think about other nationalities and what one nationality think about themselves. This would not be possible if it was just one person creating the art.

 

Brainstorming and execution

From the beginning had my partner Najiha already an idea on what she wanted to do for this project. She was interested in the ethnical culture and how it had gotten effected through us, humanity starting to become more of international citizens.  She had an idea about targeting the Malay / Singaporean population and asking them through social media what was their expressions where about their culture that they identified with. But when I came in to the picture did it mean some problems because I do not have a large circle of people that identify themselves as Malay/ Singaporean in my social network. However do I have a large number of people that identify themselves as Swedish. Therefore did we expand Naihjas idea and we decided that we should ask Singaporean and Swedish citizens what they both thought about the other culture and what they thought about themselves, where the answers created art.

So the brainstorming part wasn’t that big for the both of us when we had a clear picture of we wanted from the beginning and with a relative tight time frame did we stick to this first idea.

The outcome that I wanted was to see was the difference between what other nationalities thought about each other and if they corresponded with what they thought about themselves.

We gave our participants a big freedom in what they could answer. We gave them an open question that you could answer whatever you wanted on, we did just want them to write in english. What they could have done is to be dishonest and not answer truthfully. That is also something we cannot check if they did or not. By this they would create a fake picture of what they thought. Hopefully did not everyone answer with a lie. The beautiful thing with the word cloud we used is that if someone answers the same thing as someone else the word will become bigger than the others. So you could see what was the most answered word.

I think that the work we did will be stronger and more diversed. However could the art piece become a bit “to much” id it would be thousands of answers. So something I did not know before starting the artwork was that the maximum number of answers for my polls where 25. However now afterwards I think that it turned out alright. I did however had people that wanted to answer that couldn’t because of the limit. Another thing that didn’t go as planed was that if a person answered a sentence, this sentence would be split in to words. Making the sentence “walk in a slow pace” become five different words. Making it seem that the person think that the other nationality is  walk, in, a, slow, pace. Which is not so correct. If we would this over again we would give the participants more constrains and say that they could just answer one word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exampels on how I used my social media. Both through private messengers in groups. And also in bigger groups where I am a member. (yes I know that the first two messanges are in english, sorry about that)

 

And result of this is now shown below. The first poll is a poll where I and Nahija both asked Singaporeans and Swedish people to answer making it a mixture of both in one. Later we made the polls so that Each nationality answered in different polls.

The poll where both Swedish, and Singaporean answered

 

The poll where Swedish people answered about Singaporean

 

The poll where Swedish people answered about Swedish stuff

 

McLarena Inspiring example of interactive art

In celebration of the Scottish Canadian animator, producer and director Norman McLarens 100th anniversary of his birth did the Quartier des Spectacles and the National Film Board of Canada 2014 an interactive installation. Inspired of McLarens own work the film Canon. The installation welcomed the audience to reconstruct the original movie by together with each other do the original choreography for the film.

The original movie Canon

They managed to do this with a booth that was located on the spot where the participants went in and saw others perform dance moves which they later mimicked with there on interpretation therefore creating a collective dance that grows more and more for every new participant.

 

 

The dance was shown on the façade of a close by building. In front of the façade where also cinema seating where you could sit and watch the dance evolve.

Thoughts

As long as technology is this piece of art pretty straight forward. They use the recordings of people and match them together with recordings of others to merge them into a dance video. That is not the technology that makes this piece interesting. It is about how it brings strangers together in a fun and different way. To be able to have interactive art pieces that brings joy simultaneously as it broadens the knowledge of a historical person, in this case Norman McLaren is the really inspiring aspect of this piece.

 

Something that could make this installation fail is if the participants choose not to follow the dance moves shown on the split screen in the recording booth. Which in that case leads to the dance not resemble the original. Others may also say that those person are the ones that truly evolve the final product with a new take on something old. In this I haven´t  encountered any information regarding that issue while researching on the piece. However could I imagine this be a problem with a lot of interactive art if it comes to the point of someone not just doing what was expected but truly doing harm to the piece by being disrespectful and offensive.

 

As a last statement do I only want to add that I think it is a wonderful way of celebrate McLaren this way, by creating pice and be a part of what he created rather than an ordinary exhibition. Creators should be remembered by creating not by just reading about them.

 

Links

http://www.dailytouslesjours.com/project/mclarena/

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/where-begin-norman-mclaren

 

Micro Project 1. Video Double

Micro Project 1. Video Double

 

Link to video: https://vimeo.com/355038426

 

The assignment was to do a video representing my “artistic alter ego”. I did the video with my phone and edited it with iMovie. The audio is made with the program MatLab.

 

My thoughts going in to this project was that I had to write down who I aspire to be and then portrait that into a video. It was harder than expected. I have never seen myself as an artist even if I like to be artistic and creative. The words I finally came up with was: easy, intelligent, finding a calm, with meaning and that I would be able to see a problem from plenty of different ways.

 

The result became a video where I stand on a balcony being filmed in a circle. Demonstrating how I would be able to see the same thing from multiple angles. I do also have my backpack on me, representing that I will carry my history and experiences with me through my art. After this I walk towards the elevators and waiting for it to come, saying that I want to show great patience for becoming a great artist and being able to take my time and also apricate where I am in the moment. When the elevator then comes I go in it and the door closes. This is to show that I am not afraid of taking a leap into something different, a new element. Because right now I have practiced my art through webpages or with sketches but I would love to be able to try pottery as well.

 

The background for the film is a balcony with glass. The impression is something simple and minimalistic which is what I would like to represent. Not needing to be bold and eye catching. More that it would be straight and getting the Scandinavian style. Being dressed as a businesswoman with no frill, bows and etc. and as a person be clear and straight.

 

I do not speak or are in the middle of the frame in the video which is because I do not want to be an artist on full time I do not want to be out there and commercialize it. I want to be able to post my work on the internet and just see what reactions it gets. Instead I put on music that is kind of happy and easy going exactly how I want to represent myself as, I want my work to be easy to understand not dark and mystic.

 

Finally I am dressed in blue, I have also put on a filter that makes the whole video go towards blue. And blue represents intelligence, loyalty and strength. Which is all characteristics I want to aim to be as an artist and as a person.

 

Today I do not feel patience, I get stuck in one angle of seeing things and do not see myself being as straightforward as I want. But I guess that the first step on the way is knowing what you are and where you want to be in order to one day get there.

Micro Project 0. Displacement to the Networked Space

Going in to this first micro project I was a bit nervous. Instagram for me is both personal and not so personal at the same time. Personal in that sense that I do not want random people or strangers seeing me and my feed. But simultaneous do I not want my followers to see me as something different. I want to fit in with the others I follow and that follows me and the post I did in this micro project would change that.

 

I did however post it on my regular feed engstr.m and did not create a new account. With this I did the two things that I was afraid of I opened up my account to public from private in order to let my course mate see my post that I posted with #ossadm. I did also with my posted pictures post something that I usually don´t post in my feed or see others do either. So to say at least I was uncomfortable.

 

That was more difficult for me than finding something to take a picture of. Even though I am an exchange student and that ADM doesn´t have a special significance to me jet. So I took the assignment and made it more about what I felt about ADM in the moment by photograph different parts of the school and it’s surroundings.

 

I took four pictures that I posted in one post. The first one, a picture that shows the classroom we had the class at but through its windows. The caption to the picture is “Looking in from the outside”. Which together with the picture reflects how I feelt to come to a new place not knowing and understanding but still be there but as in the picture behind a barrier like the window. I can see it but I cannot completely be there.

 

 

The second picture is a picture of the water outside of the ADM building with one bright light. The caption to the picture is “As bright as the brightest but only at night”. The meaning behind this picture is how I most of the time doesn´t feel that I am good enough. Not for studying at ADM here, but then sometimes I get a spark and feel confident.

 

 

Picture number three is taken inside of the ADM building beside a locker in the hall with the caption “Somewhere between soft and hard”. Where I with my skirt and blouse represented the soft and the locker the hard. When I took this picture I thought about the course registration process, which was about the only thing I thought about that whole week. And how harsh it was with the waitlist the algorithm system and so on. But also how nice and soft it was, giving students the opportunity to attend classes and then drop them if they didn’t like them and give them a second chance by finding a new course. And how I was now in between the hard and the soft feeling confused.

 

The fourth and final picture had the caption “In a path already made for others”. The image was on the road leading up to the ADM building. It made me think about the path I had taken before and in Singapore and how I felt a bit trapped that I had to follow a certain path in order to get the credits and courses that is required of me so I can get the courses counted back at my home university.

 

The result on my post on Instagram was that when I opened up my account to public I got fifteen new followers. Which was scary and not what I wanted, the next day I did wake up to some messages from strangers. This resulted in that I closed my account again and started a new account engstrom474 where I posted the same pictures again under the same hashtag as before. My originally post did get twenty-six likes and five comments in the three hours it was up. Four of the comments was from friends messing with me and thinking that the post were fake and the fifth comment was from a friend basically saying that she missed me and my depth. It was fun to see how wheel my friends knows me and that they can see that it was a post I would by myself post. Except one of my friend that know me in another way that pearheps have seen a side of me that the others haven´t and does also miss that about me. In this exercise did  I gain a lot of courage by stepping out of my comfort zone but it was also really nice when I took down the post and created a new account without worrying about how could find the “real” me.