The Death of Privacy ☠
by Third Front (Putri Dina, Siewhua Tan, Tiffany Rosete, Valerie Lay)
Final broadcast: https://www.facebook.com/dina.anuar/videos/1651683038215811/
Individual: https://www.facebook.com/wrongval/videos/10155308046368208/
Our project aims to explore the boundaries of glitch, abstract, connectivity, latency and the frustrations of social broadcasting. Inspired by the television screens, each one of us has our own individual screens (top left: Siewhua, top right: Valerie, bottom left: Tiffany, bottom right: Dina). Aligned with the topic of giving up of data, each of us are essentially doing so by sharing about ourselves online, by web browsing, skype calls, vlogs, etc.
Never have I thought i’ll be part of an internet art performance piece, but I was actually thrilled to perform this with a spontaneous team!
Planning and ideation of concept: Glitch
First and foremost, the concept behind this piece went through huge amounts of thought and process. Through the various live broadcast assignments done previously, I found these aspects almost unavoidable:
- Latency
- Error screens
- Data and connection issues
Hence, knowing of these recurrent technical errors, I decided that if we can’t get rid of them, we make use of them.
Therefore we turned to glitch! I LOVEEEEEE the glitch aesthetic even before I joined this course and I’m loving it even better now, especially its idea of ‘not everything has to be perfect’.
So our final broadcast closely follows the glitch aesthetic as well as concept as inspired from Jon Cate’s BOLD3RRR
Paying attention to detail: The layers of underlying meanings in this performance
Another key component I suggested to the team that we ought to have is paying attention to the details. It was about finding ways of how our medium can add on to the narrative of our project. We gave away many subtleties in our piece through the use of metaphors and overlaying of screens in OBS to name a few – are you able to spot some of them?
Making use of what we’ve learnt…..and implemented the things we found useful
Throughout these 14 weeks, we’ve been exposed to so many interesting concepts and ideas on real-time aggregation and nuances of the media. However, to tell apart an amateur and a professional, the difference is to be able to recognise what makes a work successful and implement it to your own. Hence, picking out the key aspects of successful pieces such as Hole-in-Space, JenniCam etc, it went down to the aspects of communication, interaction, ability invoking emotions, relevance of theme and high coordination. These were the key factors well thought about by the artist that made that previous work successful.
Specific works of influence
BOLD3RRR by Jon Cates – high coordination
Inspired by Jon Cates’ Bold3rrr, this highly skilled piece focuses on the frustration between netizens and the network. Sounds of static, feedback and switching of screens was a big part of our piece. Through this, it gives a sense of disorientation for viewers. Just like Jon, the true audience of this piece is actually ourselves – serving as a reminder against giving up too much data. It involves very careful and practised coordination between switching of screens on the OBS. As for performers ourselves, coordination and trained practice was also important as we also had to plan our flow when I made the kill – to press the right buttons devices to get the error messages to show.
JenniCam by Jennifer Ringley – relevance of theme, two-way interaction within ‘live’ broadcast
JenniCam inspired us in terms of providing a ‘window into your private life’ and exposing your internet life to the public masses. Somewhat like giving a ‘hole-in-space’, it allows people to take a peek into your life, leading to your own detriment. Just like her piece, there is two-way interactivity in real-time. JenniCam is relevant to people because they were all lonely. Jennifer’s piece was successful as as human beings, everyone could relate to being lonely at times and FOMO. Similarly, we centered our piece on the idea of data. As human beings of the 21st century, everyone is hungry for data in a way or another. Hence with the use of predominant themes and relatable topics such as data, we have been inspired by this to create a successful work.
Final broadcast and course: In a nutshell
A key thing I have learnt is the possibilities of the new found two-way interaction that is happening in real time. The possibilities of being able to be at more than one place at a time. And through that, a form of virtual leakage is spilled between the parties in communication, where they are seemingly bolder in their third-space. Paying attention to detail and high coordination will give you an extra edge in making successful work be it in internet art or any work an artist could do.
“Great art doesn’t reveal itself immediately.
Ultimately, I have also learnt that it is okay not to understand the work immediately. The intention behind the artist and his work can be several levels deep. This is where we exercise our ways of seeing, as said by John Berger.
