Category: Micro-Project

This is the end result, listen it at your own risk.

For this Micro Project, my group members— Nikki, Joel, Joseph— and I created an audio through the act of destruction. We wanted to demonstrate the art of destruction by going against all the rules and norms established in music production and redefine the idea of what is considered music.

We started off by recording an audio of us singing the ‘Happy Birthday’ song. The recording was done at a stairway that produced a lot of echo, in contrast to the ideal studio setting. All of us have our ears covered during the recording, so that we could not hear ourselves. This resulted in a total lack of synchronisation; our pitches were off and all of us started and ended the song at different timings. 

We also recorded other sounds on our way back to the classroom— a screeching door, metal cabinets closing, bottle dropping and bottle against railing— to add more textures to the song. We then mashed everything together in Audacity and added random effects to destruct the audio.

This project allowed us to look into destruction as a form of artistic expression and practice it firsthand. We intentionally curated imperfections in our work,  and by doing so, transformed the medium and meaning of the artwork. As mentioned by Menkman in the Glitch Studies Manifesto article, these imperfections ‘shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse’. It was a liberating experience to embrace inconsistencies in technology and challenge the norms of established systems. Instead of trying to attain perfection, it is a change to surrender to chaos and explore the possibility of randomness.

Menkman also described glitch/destructive art as ‘an always growing language’. The essence of glitch lies in its unpredictability and disfavour. Once people start to understand or embrace a glitch, it is said to have passed its tipping point. When this happens, the essence of glitch art vanishes as the glitch is understood as a new norm and no longer have its element of surprise. Therefore, glitch/destructive art is deemed as a radical and an ever-changing expression because the curators have to constantly explore methods to tilt the equilibrium of normality.

In the recent years, glitch art has been gaining a lot of attention and what was once understood as a glitch has now become a new commodity. According to Jon Cates in an interview with Randall Packer, ‘glitch is already now being compromised or being folded into aesthetics that are also highly popular’. I think that despite this, glitch art can never truly be dead as it is something that will evolve with human’s constant need for advancement.

Click the link above to watch a magic show!!!!!

The third space is a place where people from different locations connect in real-time. It is not a physical place, but it exists through communication links and networking. In ‘The Third Space’ article, Randall Packer’s mentioned that in the third space “We are distributed across space and time.”, because it gives us the possibility to experience an alternate reality that is simultaneously happening in another location.

There are no boundaries constricting the third space. It allows people from the opposite side of the world to interact and create experiences that are sometimes impossible to create in the first or second space.

To experience the possibilities of the third space, my classmate Reuben and I staged a performance using Facebook live broadcast. Through this platform, we created a third space where both of us interacted, even though we were in different parts of the school. We attempted to create a third body by coordinating Reuben’s right hand and my left hand using the split screen function so that our hands look like they were from one person.

Both of us were holding a paper ball that we have to hide and show at coordinated timings to make it seemed like we were shuffling the ball. The audience were to guess which hand was holding the paper ball at the end. We were able to virtually hold objects and create a third body using similar looking objects, coordinating our hands and reacting to what we see and hear.

In the article, Randall also mentioned that in a third space “We can no longer separate the real and the virtual”.  However, I felt that my experience in the third space lacked intimacy that characterises interaction in the first space as it only engages my sight and sound.

In order to create intimacy, I think that the setting of the third space shared between people should be similar, so that their brain will be hoaxed to think that they are in the same space. Intimacy can also be enhanced when the projected image of the third space are of relative scale to one another and the setting is a private place such as the bedroom or toilet. Most importantly, the third space has to be in real time, so that the interactions are live and engaging.

For our crowdsourced project, my group mates and I decided to use the help of our fellow ADM students to design a hand-drawn tattoo sleeve. The students were asked to draw on our arms in response to a specified picture that we have chosen earlier. The final artwork was an interesting mix of colours and style as shown below. These drawings were a direct representation of our audience’s reaction and imagination. Thus, there are an endless possibilities to its outcome.

Our project was slightly inspired by Aaron Koblin’s crowdsourced project “The Sheep Market” as both our projects required our audience to contribute a drawing as a part of an artwork. However, the other aspects of the project were entirely different. One of which being the methods employed for crowdsourcing. Aaron Koblin had utilised an online platform while we had chosen physical networking. Unlike our project, “The Sheep Market” also has a better focus and an intended outcome as Aaron Koblin specified only sheep to be drawn.

I think what our group could have done better in this project was to be more specific in terms of what we wanted our the audience to experience and incorporate more instructions. This would allow us to have a better control over the outcome of the artwork.

This crowdsourced project was a fine example of “Do It With Others” (DIWO) as it involved a collaboration between different groups of people through physical networking. This project blurred the line between the role of an artist (us) and a curator/audience (the students), as both parties contributed ideas to the artwork. In Marc Garett’s article, he mentioned that DIWO, “brings all actors to the fore, artists become co-curators alongside the curators, and the curators themselves can also be co-creators.”

The blurring of roles between artists and audiences can be observed in Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. In her performance, Yoko Ono sat motionless on the stage while the audiences were instructed to snip off a piece of her clothing with a pair of scissors. In this case, the audiences became the agents contributing to the creation of the art, helping the curator achieve their ideal outcome.

DIWO is an upgrade from traditional artwork as it challenges the conventional definition of art made by a single artist to create an integrative experience. It utilises not one, but many ideas to overcome mainstream cultural ideals. There are also more creative space in a DIWO project as compared to traditional artistic creations, because it is not restricted by the authorities. This breathes life into the art.