Group members – Jia Jun, Joey, Naomi, Nokwan

Idea – The concept for this project was to allow the audience on our third space platform to decide how our player was gonna be made up by a separate pair of hands. This was to incorporate the use of DIWO, third space and glitch so as to encapsulate everything we’ve learnt from this semester into one final project.

Project Setting – In Hall

Context – To get ready for each of our own respective plans for the day (i.e date, exam welfare pack, etc.)

Medium – Instalive and Instapoll

 

PROCESS

We actually had quite a few varied ideas before coming down to this final one.

Episode Drama Live! – This idea was inspired from the Crowdsourced Dating project that Lei showed us and would take place in two places – ADM and Clarke Quay (cause that seems to be the hotspot for all drunken mishaps). ADM would serve as our headquarters where we would be livestreaming all the action taking place in CQ to a real audience we would gather on our end. This audience would then be the deciding factor behind the actions of our actor in CQ as whatever suggestion they throw out would then dictate the actions of our actor. Meanwhile in CQ, our actor would be pretending to be a drunkard while interacting with strangers in an attempt to make them accomplish a certain mission without their knowledge. He would be connected through a mic attached to him and another team member will be filming him from a distance.

Problems encountered: Due to lack of proper logistics and manpower, we were unable to carry out this plan in the end as it was too extensive. We also feared getting our actor into trouble (such as with the local police) as Singaporeans can be quite conservative and we didn’t want to risk overstepping any boundaries.

 

Collaborative Concert – This idea would take place mainly in two different rooms in ADM. The concept was for a group of pseudo musicians to compose a song through the guidance of an audience in third space who would be connected through a live stream from the other room. The instruments used would be makeshift sound making items such as wine glasses filled with water (tuned as closely as we could possibly achieve for complete amateurs), and biscuit tins + drumsticks.

Problems encountered: We realised there wasn’t much significance in our location and use of third space as technically we were all under the same roof and the audience could very easily be shifted to the same room as the musicians. This essentially negated our use of third space and made our idea very weak. At the same time, as while our “musicians” actually had music background and were well versed in music, the instruments we provided them weren’t exactly the most easy to figure out. Our audience on the other hand, had no background in music, and hence were clueless as to how to guide the musicians. As a result, the entire thing was a flop. Other difficulties we faced also included the lag in our social platforms (we tried both Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and Skype) and difficulty connecting.

 

Fans Do My Makeup! – This concept came to us after the failure of our previous two ideas and we were brainstorming about what other sort of art we could possibly make with a collaborative element. That’s when we thought of make up, as majority of our group has no prior experience with makeup, hence, what better way to experience it for the first time than to have our possibly more experienced friends help us over third space!

 

RESEARCH

We took inspiration from nostalgic games from our childhood such as the following Lindsay Lohan game. Other sources include youtube vlogs on makeup and also the Not My Hands Challenge. It was through these research and our trial that we decided we wanted to incorporate different personalities when we were being made up to make it have more of a performative element. Also, it will definitely make it more entertaining and with increased entertainment value, comes increased audience participation due to increased interest.

 

USE OF DIWO, GLITCH AND THIRD SPACE

DIWO – We had two layers of DIWO, mainly suggestions from our live audience, and the use of another person’s hands instead of our own in order to complete our makeover.

Glitch – Due to us not using our own hands, there were difficulties doing proper makeup as the person acting as the hands could not see the face of the person getting made over. This resulted in a lot of mess up and the end result was definitely not too pretty. At the same time, due to us having minimal make up knowledge be it when it comes to application nor about the products, there were a lot of fumbles such as when the audience suggested a certain product, but due to our lack of knowledge, we chose the wrong item instead. Also most of the products weren’t used for their intended purpose (i.e lipstick was barely used for the lips but more to draw on every other part of the face). Lastly, due to the occasional lag from Instagram and the fact that we were unable to keep up with the spam of suggestions, we were not able to see all the comments immediately after our viewers send them in, hence we received a lot of people saying “READ THE COMMENTS!!”.

Third Space – Due to our choice in location which was to show how prior to going out, most of the time, makeovers usually happen in the privacy of one’s home, hence in order to bring in the extra audience which also serves as a contrast to this intrusion of privacy (and an added layer of glitch) we had to incorporate the use of third space through the Instalive platform.

 

REFLECTIONS

Throughout this project, there were many ups and downs from the start when we were still clueless as to how to proceed and with the constant failures of our initial ideas. However, once we decided on our final idea and it was something that everyone loved, we were all pumped to get started. It also provided a lot of hilarity to both and our audience and I can easily say it is HANDS (haha) DOWN, my favourite EI project of the entire semester. It is through this that I also realised the beauty of collaborative art projects and useability along with convenience of the third space as without all these elements combined, our final project would just be a singular individual putting on makeup without any additional value. It is also rewarding when many of our friends come to us telling us how much they enjoyed watching our project and even when we were screening it in class, everyone was laughing. However, of course no project is perfect and given the chance to do over, here are certain improvements that could be made:

• Wider selection of makeup along with making sure the audience are aware of their options
• More test runs so that the personalities we chose to adapt would be stronger and more consistent
• Stronger narrative
• Inclusion of pseudo make up products for requested products that we dont have – such as actual stationery highlighter in replacement of makeup highlighter

With that in mind, overall, I still feel that this was a great project to end the semester and to wrap up everything we’ve learnt and I will definitely still look back on this project whenever I’m in need of a good laugh or just for reminiscing sake.