Hyperessay | Social Broadcasting: A Communications Revolution

We’re all familiar with traditional television broadcasting where it is a one-way transmission of “ideas”. When we watch TV, we receive these images, videos, and information from a one-way perspective where we as viewers are unable to share our own ideas.

With the progression of technology, Social Broadcasting came about. It gives an opportunity for people to collaborate and exchange ideas that could not have been done before.

In this essay, I will be discussing how the 3-day Symposium has made use of Social Broadcasting as a form of collaboration and exchange of ideas between many-to-many people, be it speakers, performers, or viewers. (will mainly be speaking about Day 1 & Day 3)

Keynote Speakers

During Day 1 of the Symposium, we had the pleasure of having Maria Chatzichristodoulou to share with us about telematics in arts and performance.

Telematics, as mentioned by Maria Chatzichristodoulou on Day 1 of the Symposium, can be defined as:

“The use of telecommunication networks to establish links to between two remote spaces of the same kind and to present the activities in those two separate spaces variously at a single performance event. These activities make use of the web as a third performance space”

From this definition, we can see how this Symposium can also be considered a Telematics Performance. Where the web-based online symposium brings people, speakers to performers to viewers, from different geographically remote spaces, in a single performance space.

What sets itself apart from a traditional television broadcasting, is the ability for us viewers to ask questions and share our own thoughts and ideas through the chat function. And the speaker being able to reply and share their own thoughts immediately.

Performances

I had the opportunity to witness 2 different performances that happened through this Social Broadcasting platform.

Online-Ensemble: Entanglement Training

In this performance, Annie Abrahams and her collaborators investigate how to communicate in a Social Broadcasting setting.

What I find interesting about this performance is the use of objects, prepared phrases and voices to converse with each other in a way that brings the performers from the different geographical location into a single space.

It entangles the issues of Social Broadcasting where there is a presence of “partial overviews, glitches, time-lags, disrupting audience participation and ensuing disorientation”.

With Social Broadcasting, there are obvious complications to it. For example, the bandwidth for everyone is different which could result in time-lags and glitch disruptions.

The performers made use of these complications to their own advantage which I felt is a form of embracing “Glitch Art” as discussed in lecture and through Micro-Project 5.

As mentioned in the Randall Packer, Conversation with Jon Cates (2014) Hyperallergic:

“For me, this approach to noise or noisiness, or dirt, or dirtiness, is a way to foreground as you say, an aberrance or perversion of normative message or what we might perceive to be logical reasoning.”

As a form of “Glitch Art”, this performance strays far away from the idea of perfection or “logical reasoning” and embraces the flaws or glitches of the Social Broadcasting.

igaies (intimate glitches across internet errors)

This performance “intended to be a series of small miraculous mistakes, moments of beautiful brokenness, redefining Glitch Art through participatory networks and gestures”.

In terms of being “Glitch Art”, I personally felt that the first performance by XXXtraPrincess embodies it the best. The constantly changing of screens and overlapping voices emphasizes the aversion to the idea of perfection and instead made use of the glitch as an art form.

However, throughout all the performances, I personally felt that the Social Broadcasting element was not highlighted. It was more like a traditional television broadcasting where we are just watching things unfold. There was a lack of connectivity between performers and viewers, in terms of Social Broadcasting. It was a one-way exchange of ideas, a televised performance art would be a more suitable way of explaining it.

Nonetheless, it was an eye-opening performance to me as they dwell into sensitive topics that I felt that Singapore is too afraid and conservative to trudge upon. It was definitely a culture shock from the usual art we see in Singapore.

All in all,

The Symposium highlighted the different essence of Social Broadcasting and how it engages the idea of many-to-many broadcasting. Using the chat function, collaborative performances, and discussions.

Bag Paper Model

Gym bag meet Shower Bag

Designed for the gym/sports/dance enthusiasts.

A shower bag which users can detach from the backpack to avoid having to bring your entire backpack and risking getting your entire backpack wet. Also, the detachable backpack is a convenient method of carrying user’s shower item instead of having to carry a separate bag.

Research

Sketches

Process

Materials used: Paper, Zips

Attachment methods: Taping, Sewing, Gluing

Began by first dissecting the bag into different layers to figure out how to attach them together.

A difficulty I faced was that the size of the backpack is quite big, one sheet of paper will not be able to cover the entire backpack thus having to split it into two sections instead.

The next challenge was attaching the zippers. Especially for the shower bag, the curved layout was tedious to craft. Because of the odd shape, it did not stick well, therefore, I had to sew instead.

I also prepared various pockets within the bag based on the size of my own items; e.g. shampoo/soap bottles, toothbrush, clothes.

Final Product

A chic black gym bag with a detachable shower bag.

 

 

Micro Project 7: Video Selfie (Marina Abramovic)

Based on Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 10 performance at a festival in Edinburgh in 1973.

She lays twenty different knives and two cassette recorders on a white paper on the floor.

For my Video Selfie, I wanted to recreate the same setup. For obvious reasons, I replaced the knives with a pencil, a marker, and a penknife. I chose this 3 replacements as it symbolizes traditional art which I detest. These instruments serve as a painful reminder to me that I can’t excel in traditional art.

To further reenact the performance, I sat on the floor, facing down, and dressed in dark colours. Portraying myself as a vulnerable being which I believe Marina intended for.

I proceeded to record the sound on my phone which is placed on my side. Similarly, with the Rhythm 10 performance, I stabbed the areas between my outstretched fingers of my left hand using the instruments.

After completing the cycle, I repeated the process but this time, trying to be in sync with the sound recorded from the first cycle.

As much as I wished to completely recreate this performance, due to certain limitations, I had to change certain ideas. To recreate the idea of blood, I splattered some dark paint on the paper and my left hand.

“the mistakes of the past and those of the present are synchronous”

In some way, I am facing the consequences of the past where I used to reject traditional art. Thus resulting in me suffering now as I learn to adapt and figure out traditional art.

Research Critique 3: Micro Project 5

(In collaboration with Azizah, Naomi and Qistina)

“Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” – Gautama Buddha

We began this micro-project with the idea of how words can be a cause for destruction. The words we speak can have a great impact on a person and create a lasting memory. In this micro-project, we delve into the idea of how negative words leads to the destruction of a beautiful form and transforms it into a complete mess. I felt that our project embraces an underlying societal problem where we aren’t aware how much our words can affect people.

In the Ant Farm, Media Burn (1975) mentioned in the Interview with Chip Lord, the performance art is “a creation of an image” that serves as “a powerful critique of television”. Similarly to this micro project, it tackles a certain societal issue, wherein the case of Media Burn, it “challenges and destroys television” for its ubiquitous presence in everyday lives.

For this beautiful form, we chose a flower which we plucked out from its plant (the first form of destruction – in the form of removing it from its natural environment).

After which, we brought it to someplace else, where we began our attack of words as well as physical attack. As we recite the negative poem, we see the flower getting cut, stabbed, burned, stepped on and eventually buried.

Towards the end, we see a breakage of the linear narrative where the narrative sequence was jumbled up, resulting in an inconsistency – a form of glitch that we incorporated. As mentioned in the Randall Packer, Conversation with Jon Cates (2014) Hyperallergic:

“For me this approach to noise or noisiness, or dirt, or dirtiness, is a way to foreground as you say, an aberrance or perversion of normative message or what we might perceive to be logical reasoning.”

As Jon Cates have mentioned, the addition of noise (glitch), in this case, the breakage of linear narrative, helps to move away from the normality or logical reasoning of what people depict as “perfection“. Further emphasizing the beauty of glitch art in the Menkman, R. (2009) “Glitch Studies Manifesto :

“glitch can reveal a new opportunity, a spark of creative energy that indicates that something new is about to be created“

 

A Phone Dock – A Chair For Your Phone

Phone Dock which is retractable (that allows for adjusting the height to your preference).

Sketch 1

In my first sketch, the form that I came up with resembled a chair. Hence, I decided to create a chair for your Phone.

After consultation, I was informed to add more curvature to my form. I agreed with this comment as the form did appear very cuboid.

Sketch 2

With the feedback, I added more curves to my form.

During class, I began experimenting with creating this form using foam. I decided to break it up into different parts, and combining them together.

Final Sketch

After experimenting with the foam, I figured that I could push it even further and go with more curvature to resemble a chair.

Process

Final Model

Up Close of Base

Up Close of Seat

360 Degree View of Model

Micro Project 4: Exquisite Glitch

(In collaboration with JJ, Youlmae and Tanya)

Original

We were tasked to take a self-portrait of ourselves, either an image of our face or any part of our body. Thus, I chose to take a photo of my eyes.

First Iteration

And so begins, the glitching process.

As we can see, the first form of glitch was a little subdued with just an addition of what appears to be a filter of small mosaic tiles. I believe that for most of the first iteration was not as exaggerated could be because we were directly editing the original image, thus feeling a little apprehensive about glitching the image. It could also be that we did not want to glitch it too much because we were aware that the image would inevitably go through more layers of glitch.

Second Iteration

In the second iteration, we can see the exaggeration escalate.

This edit, the image was skewed to create a deformed look.

Third Iteration


Things get interesting here. Youlmae decided to try and glitch the image through the audio editing software Audacity.

And this was the result. She decided to export the file as small as possible, thus the image came out really tiny.

Fourth Iteration

I was deciding whether to enlarge the image for the final iteration. However, I embraced glitch and kept it that size. Nonetheless, I added some other filters which created more contrast within the image.

As we can clearly see, the transformation from the first image to the final image was drastic. In the final image, we do not see the slightest resemblance to the first image, it became completely unrecognizable.

Research Critique 2: Micro Project 3

The Walking Story

A collaboration with Chen Jingyi on Facebook Live as a third space.

For a detailed Description of the Walking Story and video, click here.

Two wandering souls, Fizah and Jingyi, enlisted the help of each other to aid in their journey around ADM. Leaving the decision on where we end up to each other, we rely on each other to decide the direction we should take when we come across two paths using a piece of paper with written directional signs (up, down, left, right). The other will respond by performing directional hand gestures.

After five minutes, we stopped in our tracks to reveal where we ended up.

Fizah

Start: Basement near lift lobby

End: 1st floor at the corner of the locker area

Jing Yi

Start: ADM Library

End: 3rd floor facing the grass patch

Third Space

For Micro-project 3, I felt that we tackled the idea of third space as another form/way to interact and communicate in different geographical location.

This can be seen from MOO (MUD Object Oriented) where it is “focused on social interaction rather than gaming” (Chatzichristodoulou, Maria. Cyposium the Book, (2012)).  Upstage is an example of such third space where audiences attending a live event are able to chat while the performance unfolds.

There are many third spaces out there that allow for communication between people from different places. One such example is video-calling platforms such as Skype, Google Hangout, Tango, etc. To me, a phone call could also be considered a third space if we are looking at it in this context. Considering this, wouldn’t Message, WhatsApp, Telegram be considered as a third space too?

Essentially, third spaces have evolved to become a part of our daily lives without us being aware.

“But most startling is the fact that the third space is simply an integral fact of everyday life in the 21st century. The digital natives have never known another reality, they are the standard bearers of this brave new world.” (Packer, Randall. The Third Space (2012))

Galloway, Kit; Rabinowitz, Sherrie, «Hole in Space», 1980
Photography | © Galloway, Kit; Rabinowitz, Sherrie

The Hole-in-Space, one of the first telematics performance, also showcases how third space is used as a form of communication by connecting people walking past the Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts (NYC) and The Broadway department store in Century City (LA). These two groups of people were separated from each other by approximately 3,944km, however, the artists “severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection” (Chatzichristodoulou, Maria. Cyposium the Book, (2012)).

Similarly, in the Walking Story, this physical boundary where myself and Jingyi are in different locations are “severed” by both of us being in the same third space (Facebook Live) at the same particular time and communicating through it.

Leaving the decision that may create an impact on your life to someone else may be difficult, scary to some. In the Walking Story, the intensity of the decision is obviously lowered. However, we are put into a situation where we have to subconsciously put our trust in each other to bring us to a location. This creates a sort of intimacy between the both of us. It is like asking a stranger for directions where you have to trust that that stranger is giving you the right direction.

Conclusion

In the beginning, third space was something that I found difficult to comprehend. After going through Micro-Project 3 and readings, I am better able to understand the concept of a third space.

 

Research Critique 1: Micro Project 2

First Impression (In collaboration with Felicia and Hazel)

Naturally, we get curious about what our first impressions to other people are. It isn’t “socially acceptable” to ask people you just met about their first impression of us, we usually only ask this question once we get to know them a little bit better. However, by then, they would already have forgotten about the first impression or their judgment could be clouded by their current impression they have of you. Thus, we decided to conduct an experiment to ask people we have never met before about their first impression of us.  Generally, the use of art as a way to tackle or bring awareness to social issues in our community has become prominent.

“[…] art has become too narcissistic and self-referential and divorced from social life. I see a new form of participatory art emerging, in which artists engage with communities and their concerns, and explore issues with their added aesthetic concerns“ [34] (Bauwens 2010)

 

Artists involved:

  1. Felicia – the canvas (the one who will be “judged”)
  2. Fizah – the speaker (the one who will tell people what to do)
  3. Hazel – the videographer (the one who will record people’s reactions)

We begin by asking Felicia what she thinks her first impression is; bubbly, scary. We wanted to make a comparison on her idea of what she thinks versus what others actually think.

After which, we went to the ADM lounge to gather the first impressions. We got the participants to contribute to the artwork by writing their impressions on Felicia’s arms (only at the beginning) and back. We hoped that we could gather a plethora of impressions from different people.

As mentioned in Marc Garrett’s article on D.I.W.O (Do-It-With-Others),

“The practice of DIWO allows space for an openness where a rich mixing of components from different sources crossover and build a hybrid experience.”

Having collected enough impressions, we wrapped up the experiment and shared our findings with the class.

The finished artwork, co-created with our participants

Analysis

The artwork requires participants’ involvement through writing their first impression of Felicia on her back. In doing so, we (the artists) do not have control over the final outcome of the artwork. We (Hazel and myself) are there to provide instructions to the participant whereas on Felicia’s part she provides them a canvas. The participants have the freedom to respond in whatever way they want. Hence, we have no control over the direction and outcome of our artwork that traditional artists have.

The idea of involving people by allowing them to contribute can also be seen in the artworks discussed such as the Human clock by Craig D. Giffen and the Sheep Market by Aaron Koblin. Without participants’ contributions, the artworks will remain at a standstill without any development.

Similar to Cut Piece by Yoko Ono, we made use of the interaction between participants and artists where the participants were up close with our canvas and had to write on her. Differing from the Please Change Beliefs by Jenny Holzer which is web-based and does not involve physical interaction.

Micro Project 3: The Walking Story (Collaboration with Chen Jingyi)

Posted by Norafizah Normin on Monday, 29 January 2018

The video begins at 2:50

The Walking Story – A collaboration between Fizah & Jingyi

The Walking Story shows 2 wondering souls traveling around a place called ADM. They have enlisted the assistance of each other to aid them in their random journey through a Facebook Live.

As shy souls, we only see their feet as they wander around the school. The two souls begin their journey at different places unbeknown to each other. Using only a piece of paper with helping directions written (up, down, left, right), they ask the other for their opinion on which way they should go on their journey around ADM. The other will respond by performing directional signs only using their hands.

After 5 minutes of endless walking, the two souls stop in their track to reveal where they have ended up with the others direction.

THE END

Objectives:

To see where we would end up when you leave the decision on where you should go to someone else.

Outcome:

Fizah

Start: Basement near lift lobby

End: 1st floor at the corner of the locker area

Jing Yi

Start: ADM Library

End: 3rd floor facing the grass patch

Other Ideas:

We started off by brainstorming ideas of how we should work together in sync. The other idea we had was similar to charades. We will be in different rooms and each takes a turn to give each other things to choose from. For example, someone starts off by saying “winter or summer”, then after 3 seconds, we will both have to say out our choice and try to be in sync with each other. It will gradually get more and more difficult; for example, if we say “love”, we will see if we both could do the same actions associated with “love”.

However, the cons are that there wouldn’t have a “climax” for the game and we are also afraid that the live stream would lag causing a delay in the reaction time by a few seconds.

Experience:

Fizah

In the beginning, being unfamiliar with Facebook Live, we were unsure of how to do the split screen. With Lei’s aid, we managed to get back on track. Throughout the journey, I also got worried about losing Wifi connection while walking around. I started the live stream with 58% phone battery and ended with 1%. Thankfully, my phone battery survived for the 5 minutes of filming. It was personally a fun experience and broaden my mind on ways to interact with someone through a live stream.

Jing Yi

Personally, I learn something new cause I seldom use Facebook and even to go live will be a challenge for me. It provides me with a different experience and also we use the third space as an interactive platform to communicate with each other.

Project 4 – Poetics of Time // Cooking with Fizah

FILM

Link: https://vimeo.com/244330517

ABOUT

A slow-motion film showing the process of cooking fried rice, a local dish common throughout every race in Singapore.

I hope to highlight the effort put into cooking our home-cooked meals by our unsung heroes; our mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings or maid. By capturing the process of cooking an everyday meal in a mesmerizing way, I hope that the audience has a better appreciation of what usually would be a mundane daily cooking.

I wanted to create content that almost everybody can relate to. I am aware that it is impossible to, there will be exceptions. Initially, I wanted it to be about a mother’s cooking, however, after consideration, I realised that everybody has different predicaments thus may not be able to relate to mother’s cooking. To be completely honest, even for me, I am not able to relate.

Thus, I changed the idea to a home-cooked meal which I hope more people can relate to.

The idea was generated during my brainstorming process when I thought of some things that everybody loves. Hence, I decided to go with the topic of food because who doesn’t like food?

After which, I reflected on my own life where food comes along and thus thought of the meals my father prepared. Seeing him come home from work, despite being tired, he prepares dinner for the family to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, with my own circumstances, it has been difficult to thank and show my appreciation towards him.  Hence, I created this film in dedication to the unsung hero that is my father.

NEW CONCEPT

Initially, I wanted to recreate the idea of heaven from Project 3 through space. However, after setting out my objective of being relatable to my audience, I decided to think of new ideas instead. Especially for my idea of heaven, I believe the idea is heavily influenced by my idea of what heaven should be and thus this may not be relatable to my audience.

COMMUNICATE

My goal for this project is to remind the audience to appreciate the love and thought put into making our home-cooked meals. I feel that we tend to overlook the effort that our mother, father, grandparents, maid or even siblings put into cooking our meals. I hope after watching the film, my audience will go home and remember to show their appreciation or just a say a simple thank you to their loved ones for their effort.

EDITED TIME

I’ve chosen to do the film in slow motion to capture the process in a captivating and mesmerizing way. Also, the film follows a sequential step by step process of cooking fried rice. Thus, creating a linear edited time.

RHYTHM, MOVEMENT, CAUSATION, DURATION

I wanted to create a rhythm in my film by having a change in the shots every few seconds rather than showcasing the entire process which you would normally see on a cooking show.

In the first part of the film, the transition between each shot is a cut, whereas the second part, the transition turns into a fade. I wanted to highlight the change in the meaning between this two parts, thus I used different movements.

I wanted people to view the film at first as a mesmerizing cooking show, after which the film would unexpectedly change to something with a deeper meaning. Hence, in the front part of the film, there is the expectation for the viewers to watch the sequential process of cooking fried rice and I break this expectation by adding the message about coming home to a home-cooked meal.

I could not really decide on the duration of the film before filming because I wasn’t sure how long I should time each scene. The rough estimation I had was about 3-5 minutes. After filming and editing, I decided that 5 minutes was enough to captivate the audience and at the same time show the mesmerizing process of cooking a home cooked meal.

PROCESS

Before starting my filming, I had to do some research on how to make fried rice.

From the research, I extracted the ingredients that are required and also the step by step process of cooking fried rice.

Ingredients

Sequence

The step by step process of cooking fried rice is crucial to creating the sequence of the film. The sequence of the film follows the process diligently. Hence, from the research I derived the sequence below:

Scene No. Step
1 Cooking rice
2 Chopping onions
3 Chopping chicken meat
4 Pouring out mixed vegetables
5 Starting fire
6 Pouring onion into pot
7 Stir-frying chicken
8 Pouring in onions
9 Stir-frying onions
10 Adding mixed vegetables
11 Stir-frying altogether
12 Drop in cooked chicken meat
13 Mixing together
14 Drop an egg into pot
15 Mixing everything
16 Add in cooked rice
17 Stirring all the ingredients
18 Drizzle in some soy sauce
19 Topping it off with spring onions
20 Table setting shots

 

Filming

Initially, I wanted to do the filming and cooking on my own but I realised that that is a difficult feat to perform. Hence, I got the help of my sister to assist me in cooking it while I film the process.

For the filming, I used my iPhone 6s configured to 1080p at 60fps on normal video mode to capture the process with the help of a tripod.

Here is a short behind the scenes footage of the process:

Editing

To edit the videos taken and create the slow motion effect, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. This was my first time using Premiere Pro, as I usually work with Adobe After Effects. Fortunately, my experience with After Effects and other video editing tools helped with learning how to use Premiere Pro much easier.

All the videos taken were recorded at 60fps and imported to a 25fps sequence which allowed for the slow motion effect. However, I realised that the slow-motion effect was not obvious enough, thus I decided to speed some parts of the video by 2 times, mimicking what it would look like normally.

To create this edgier and cinematic look to the first part of the film, I added a cool tone on top of it whereas, for the second part, I opted for a warmer tone to illustrate the idea of home.

I added in music to help add to this contrast between this two parts, the front part being a slow immersive music and the second part being a cheerful, homely song.

Part 1

Part 2

Music credits: bensound.com

CHALLENGES

Finding the right camera

I decided to borrow a DSLR camera from my friend to do the filming. The main reason why I wanted a DSLR was that I wanted high-quality shots and manual focus. However, I forgot to take into consideration that not all cameras are able to capture videos at 60fps. Unfortunately, the camera could only capture up to 24fps. I checked with the camera provided by the school and it could only capture up to 25fps. As suggested by Lei, I had to resort to using my iPhone 6S which offers the option of filming at 1080p with 60fps. However, the camera did not provide with best quality videos up to my expectation.

Exporting video

After I was done with editing, it was time to export my video and choosing the appropriate exporting setting. However, the estimated time it would take to export was about 5-8 hours. I have heard the horror stories of the time needed for exporting videos on Premiere Pro, but I completely forgot about it at that time. I did not expect it to be that long and I didn’t accommodate 5-8 hours for exporting. Hence, I had to resort to reducing the quality and size of the video export which helped in reducing the exporting time to 3 hours instead. I believe this could have been due to the slow processor of my laptop so I believe if I intend on using Premiere Pro in the future, I should invest in a newer and better laptop.

 

CONCLUSION

It is sad to say goodbye to 4D. It has been an amazing journey learning many new things such as photography and videography. Being new to the Arts scene, I haven’t developed my own style in many areas including 4D. Getting an opportunity to view my classmate’s own style coming to life has motivated me to discover my own style.

–THE END —