Internet Art & Culture

FINAL BROADCAST: The Death of Privacy by Third Front

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.

Telematic Stroll: Urban Jungle v Heartland

Today, we took it to the streets of Clementi in the West and Punggol, the utmost end of the North-East. I decided to take the stroll in Punggol instead as this urban estate is just a shore away from Johore Bahru, Malaysia.

Urban concept vs Old School Heartlands

Nestled in the quiet and up-and-coming estate of Punggol is Waterway Terrace, a HDB apartment with a not-so-conventional HDB apartment structure. At the foot of the blocks is also a park, filled with exercise-goers amidst the greenery. Furthermore, it is located right across a shopping mall. Hence, many people mistake this building for a condo.

Therefore, my partner Siewhua and I wanted to showcase these contrasts in a growing and new estate, juxtaposed with the old estate Clementi where she lives. Clementi on the other hand, brings out the heartlands with its old-school looking flats and shophouses.

Typical shophouses found around void decks of Clementi estate.

Our Telematic Stroll

We were told to go live for about 15 minutes but we actually went on for about 40 minutes?! We were shocked at how into it we were that we actually didn’t realise the duration.

Particularly, we paid attention to structure, perspectives, lines, shadows, shape during the walk. Also, we tried to pick out common objects and sync our actions.

In the midst of the contrasts, the new and the old, we also managed to capture these similarities amongst the differences that we found particularly interesting.

Perspective

Lines and shadows

Greenery

Indeed why we’re called Green City in Singapore. Trees everywhere, sheltering us along pathways that intertwine.

Common objects

Bikes for rent! You see lots of these oBikes, Ofos or Mobikes wherever you are across the island nowadays

Fences and bars. They seem to appear even more secure in urban landscapes, creating a nice repetition effect.

We happened to walk towards (not into) a lamp post at the same time!

Old school estate vs newer estate braille! Different design, same purpose! #humancentricdesign

Plants and more greenery. No plants were harmed during the process. Just synchronizing our actions,

Mosquito bite – same leg, same area sia

Even the mozzies were in sync. We got bitten on the same leg and spot during the broadcast. Yikes

Issues

Bandwidth – Just as Hole-in-space has proven, bandwidth is so so important. Having enough data is in Singapore has been a problem – what we call ‘data deprivation’. Siewhua does have much to spare and this was one thing that we had to tackle. In fact she only left 300MB for the month…. God bless her next bill. So this module……1 AU for 1 GB

Orientation– As many have done it, their screens are side by side. We did notice this but decided to leave it as it is as it’s the imperfection that proves certain points. Basically, I told Siewhua that comparing these two estates were like ‘peering through a pinhole’ or looking into another world through a small window. Yes, just like through a film camera. We see these similarities, big or small that becomes rather uncanny when it takes place in the same moment.

Just like this moment here

Weather – As a site-specific piece that was outdoor, it was either sunny as hell or raining cats and dogs. We were actually quite relieved that we had bright sun and blue skies (although we got a little burnt) as it broke into a torrential rain right after we ended our broadcast. Perhaps clouds were also in-sync that day islandwide for the telematic stroll!

In Summary

To tie it all up, it indeed felt like my partner was right there with me on the telematic stroll although she was half the island away. Amazing how the third space is able to do that. It indeed showed how one can be at two places at the same time, in REAL TIME, with two-way interaction. This is just the start of something and perhaps we could incorporate more stuff into a telematic stroll in the future like buying a drink. I wanted to get LiHo(new age bobba milk tea) while Siewhua gets her good old Teh ping (milk tea SG style) at the ending. But we wouldve badly overran. Maybe next time folks!

Telematic Stroll Video

Randall asked me to go live #telematicstroll

Posted by Val Lay on Saturday, 4 November 2017

Adobe Connect Second Front Interview

The clock on my Mac showed 11pm and I was drained with an entire day of back to back events – but I actually felt the energy through the third space during the session on Adobe Connect with Second Front that kept me engaged. Perhaps, this was a form of virtual leakage (of energy)?

Some latency and some bits of sunshine were shown on their grids as the session kicked off. I found this strangely cinematic. It was night and all in Singapore while these folks had sun over there! Just like Skype sessions, it’s always intriguing when you’re interacting with someone at the other side of the world. It is also fascinating to be able to sneak a peek into the other parties’ spaces and scan across their backdrops. Or rather, for Singaporeans, we just call this ‘kaypoh’ or nosey :b

Amidst the virtual talkshow, adding on to the sunshine and chatter was definitely Bibbes. With the boundary that the virtual world creates, along with Bibbe’s already eccentric character, she was definitely a good example of how people can be bolder, or rather, even bolder when in the third space. Hence, it was actually possible for your true personality to shine even virtually, in contrast to those that want to come off as another personality.

As mentioned in class, it was indeed a thing to multi-task during such sessions. I found myself googling over Bibbes as she was speaking, as I recalled she was the mother of Beck. What I found even cooler was that she personally knew Andy Warhol! She actually participated in Andy Warhol’s factory! I! am! so! stunned! And actually honoured to be in the same third space and being in conversation with the members of Second Front. Great opportunity we had here, thanks!!

Research Critique: Second Front

Every week as I embark on writing research critiques, I know I would raise my eyebrows. (Why thank you Randall for the fascinating and hard-to-understand-at-first-glance case studies.) This week, it was no different as I entered into the realm of Second Front, as I attempt to decipher a gist of it.

So, what they’re doing is not a game. Neither were the Second Front members ‘performing art member’ but performance art members. I deem them as performers of artistical critiques of certain issues they aim to raise, using graphcial animation and third space as their stage. One thing surely, is that they rely heavily on improvisation and unintended actions – which actually makes the magic. I’m a goer for that!

Second Life

What drew my attention greatest out of their works was the idea was the new world they created through Second Life. A virtual world where people come together, sell stuff, stage performances with no main objective – it was practically and literally a second life, lived through the third space. The fact that it engaged one million active users meant that it had an incentive for people.

It just made me wonder – Could it be that people are living their alter egos in Second Life? Or is it the fantasy element that people could actually live their ideal lives in the third space that attracts users?

Then again, this isn’t something particularly new as there are similar sites with the same concept, like habbo hotel. No particular objective but a virtual community where people are increasingly bold with the way they interact with strangers behind an anonymous image.

But one thing for sure is that people feel an inclination towards the virtual world because of the fact that they could be anyone else, just like everyone else there.

As my mentor once told me, not everything in art has a meaning behind it so don’t try to hard trying to understand it – trying too hard will spoil the art. Indeed, this is one work/artist group I dont plan to truly understand or decipher as it may be looking too close or too far into the whole picture they want to paint.

But I believe this can be a good thought about how with the third space, things can be real, and yet not real at the same time.

As I did my own research before reading the interview, I found that this quote actually resonates to my previous thought although it was meant for another context

“……a two way exchange between the virtual and the real, through which new hybrid meanings can be made….”

Hence, with the advent of such virtual platforms, it can be said that an amalgamation of the two worlds (real and virtual) have formed, transpiring us into a new ‘in-between’.

Looking into the future, in my take, is this question that we will ask:

‘What is even real anymore?

Cross-streaming Facebook Invite Test

So Facebook decided to up their game and created a ‘invite’ feature for ‘live’ videos, inviting countless ideas to the already many ideas we have for our final project.

This feature helped my partner and I communicate better – it became two-to many from the one-to many. Pretty interesting as we could now give commands to each other without hassle.

Technical errors: Bandwidth and a stable connection is really the core of delivering a good ‘live’ broadcast to a large extent. My partner’s face would be lagged with a failure icon at some points, breaking the flow of the broadcast.

Suggestions for our final broadcast

Work on concepts where latency do not matter
Think of the outcome of grids when collectively performed
Put two pairs together in other to create a ‘cross cross-stream’
Create a ‘two-to-many-ception’ with OBS screen capture

More technical tests to be done to experiment this! Trial and error yea?

Research Critique: JenniCam

Supposedly the first image taken on Jennicam.

Jennicam started as a programming project to test if her script runs correctly where it’ll snap a picture on her webcam every 15 minutes. Who knew it wasn’t too long before it turned into an art project that has taken the internet by storm.

My eyebrows raised when the research on Jennicam started. It raised higher and got even higher as I’m typing the critique now, mainly questioning – what made her do it for 7 years? The main question was still – was she in the right mind? Or is that just her nature to carry out some of the things that she did.

The main main question I had: Why was there appeal?

First things first, Jennicam happened in 1996.

A context where the world wide web was still a phenomenon and many possibilities could’ve evolved from it – and she happened to be one of the phenomenons. She was the first of her kind to have done a ‘Facebook Live’ video of that time, where she herself and her daily life are the main subjects of a site-specific internet project. As she mentioned, she drew inspiration of a man that broadcasted a fish tank and that she thought could only be interesting for 5 minutes. Yet, her stream went on for 7 whole years, with her as the subject matter.

This demonstrates the strong desire of humans of wanting to stay connected with other humans and interests of the lives of others. As compared to animals where people have broadcasted, they are not as intriguing as the human species, as what Jennifer herself mentioned. For Jennifer, it seems that her demand for attention and limelight surpasses any average individual in my opinion.

Voyeurism theory

As stated by the famous Sigmund Fraud, it refers to the idea of looking in order to gain sexual pleasure. This was what was happening on Jennicam. It has been argued that the male viewer’s gaze at the screen is geared to notions of voyeurism in that it is a powerful controlling gaze at the objectified female on display. The fact that the subject matter was female was already a hook for attention. Furthermore, Jennifer is showcasing her private moments, where audience already deem her as a sexual object. Sex appeal was clearly her selling points of the webcam broadcast, as seen from the questions and interest of David Lecherman. I mean Letterman.

Anticipation

There was just something magnetic about JenniCam that drew viewers and high traffic to her site. It was easy to sit there and anticipate the next picture or moment, like a chain that links the next part of the narrative, which is unscripted and raw just like Videofreex, Hole-In-Space and the other works we’ve looked at. Hence, this anticipation during a real-time ‘live’ stream gave audience an added feeling of ‘looking-forward-to-see-what’s-next’, therefore attracting viewers.

Her life drama – a top-notch combination

“Scandal-plus-sex is a pretty unbeatable combination, for traffic” – Jorn Barger, creator of the Robot Wisdom weblog and a Jennicam fan.

One of the events that unfolded on Jennicam during the 7 years that I can’t fathom anyone would do is how she cheated openly to the wide world (very literally) with her good-friend, Courtney’s fiance named Dex. Like what are you gurl?

Appeal for her site waned for a period of time until the stir of her love, sex and betrayal episode.

According to PC Data Online, traffic to the JenniCam site jumped 40 percent between the pre-Dex first week of July and the last weeks of the month; it drew 193,000 unique users the week that ended July 29.

Therefore, these are the reasons that made the pioneering webcam exhibitionist Jennicam so infamously appealing in my opinion.

Just a thought…what if OBS was available at that time?

Courtney should have done a reaction video via OBS while she desktop captures Jennicam’s lifestream. I can already imagine the names of her episode if Courtney did a reaction video. she could’ve superimposed if she had OBS.

Sex with my ex? Sex with my Dex?

The response from netizens

Vitriol spewed and it was no surprise. Outrage wasn’t confined to the internet and this was mentioned of her:

A “red-headed little minx” and an “amoral man trapper.” – The Washington Post

You read that right. The Washington Post called her that.

As her site closed in Dec 2003, here we are today faced with this epiphany:

Now we are all Jennicam.

— Spooky Anil Dash ? (@anildash) July 23, 2014

Sounds familiar. Was it We’re All Videofreex? Credits: @anildash

Well in some ways, Anil’s tweet is true as we’re Facebooking , Instagramming and periscoping our lives than ever before through social media .

In her interview with Letterman years back, she jokingly states how this will replace television. Indeed it has really come to past.

“Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” – Andy Warhol

Also, Andy said it right. Indeed everyone will be famous for 15 minutes – on the internet and new media he meant. With the advent of the world wide web, this was the idea of being famous in the 21st century. As for Jennifer, it was 7 years.

In retrospect, her case can be seen as an experiment of morals and ethics on the internet – how far are people pushing these boundaries online, just because they are in the third space. People are definitely bolder. I feel like I could link this to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in a way, as her entire projects speaks a lot/can be study about human behaviour and their need for acceptance and attention. For her, she is a ratchet case and has sets standards of where do we not want to go as an online personality.

OBS Technical Test (didn’t get posted oops)

Hola.

The technical test ran more smoothly than expected apart from minor connection hiccups and audio levels.

Location – Siewhua and I found a spot in the Thursday classroom for our desktop terminal as we knew everyone else left the class for other locations – leaving more bandwidth for us 🙂

Audio levels – Staying put was good as the connection went smoothly. The only little issue was with the sound in finding the right balance and mix between environmental sound and the background track.

Mobile streaming – In order to portray the nice architecture of our school, I was certain to have the sunken plaza as part of our misc-en-scene. I did a few pans around the area and all was good and fitted well with the chaos and destruction of the green screen until latency occurred. It kept happening a random spots around the sunken plaza which was hard to trace. I guess a beautiful location comes with the price of bad bandwidth. Even with mobile data, the connection was also unable to be received. Hence, just like the very principle of Hole-In-space, bandwidth is very important for ANY ‘live’ stream broadcast, not just large scale screens.

Things to take note for going ‘live’ later:

Do not stay at specific areas of sunken plaza too long! Hop around the upper levels instead!
Watch out for other ‘live’ classmates to get a chance to ‘cross cross-stream’!
Be spontaneous! Be raw and frank just like the videofreex! Perfection isn’t the thing to look at here!
HAVE FUN!

Siewhua’s technical test

Val’s technical test

Hyperessay 1: Cross-streaming

These 6 weeks have been no short of amusement – from being enlightened with different concepts and intentions of example artworks to getting right into the grind of creating and experience the capabilities of the third space on first-hand.

We’ve been enlightened on how an audience can be performers, how media has turned from one-to-many to many-to-many and most importantly, how these works have changed the traditional medium – engaging audience as participants, it turns into an interactive media.

Cross-streaming performance

Our cross-stream project was purely unscripted and raw. I wanted it to capture content that was unfiltered – a capture of on site reporting, just like the Videofreex. It was like a sneak peek into the day of the life in a war zone country.

The beauty of it was how the subjects don’t know what went on back in the TV broadcasting station aka the OBS screen where effects of destruction were blasting freely.

Yet, it synced rather well with the visuals and our concept: reporting the state of a destructed city (North Korea), while the subjects act as victims/north koreans, totally unaware of the level of destruction that their leader has opposed on their country. Like how they are totally lost onthe explosions attacking them over in the OBS studio screen.

On inspirations, Videofreex will be one that everyone references to. As the popular quote goes,

“We’re all Videofreex”

And I can’t agree enough.

They were the pioneers that shaped a new medium in media, documenting hours of real-time footage that captured social and cultural events of the 1970s. The way they told stories and distributed them shy away from the traditional media and direct towards the way we share our media today, – using a portable device and sharing personal footage as seen on the viewfinder.

And here was I with my partner, being reporters onsite a ‘war zone’. As raw as it gets, we were simply documenting the everyday life events of people in a city of mass destruction. Exactly what the Videofreex were doing.

We were bringing personal content to the masses, opening a window to the uncensored and unfiltered world of daily lives. Anything might happen to us as this was an unscripted performance, engaging with the performers.

Just as how the videofreex member was attacked by a police, I was also caught off-guard and ‘attacked’ when a guy jumped out from the corner and carried me to the lobby as I walked out of B1-14.

Hole in Space – audience as performers, unscripted content

Similar to Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz piece, the performers were the open crowd we interacted with. Everything was unscripted in Hold in Space and left to the crowd to take the stage. No one knew what was going to happen next or how the narrative would flow, which was the beauty of it. Similarly in this piece, students were openly expressing their thoughts to the camera ‘live’ to my facebook audience. They were bold in their actions and demeanor. Diana even danced.

However, when I asked them to make a statement about the person ‘live’, she suddenly retracted and did not want to go ahead. This accentuates the different between the superparticipation piece for Douglas David, where audiences were completely anonymous on text and free to shoot everything they wanted to say.

What I think: As for representing yourself in the third space, people tend to be bolder if they are unknown to each other. Knowing about the mutual friends between us, the person was afraid to go ahead and speak free of her thoughts.

Bold3rrr – glitch aesthetics, aberration

I was particularly struck by Jon Cate’s Bold3rrr piece in terms of his ‘dirty new media’ aesthetics. To me, glitch is the new aesthetic!!! I have taken the realization that not everything has to be clean or no error at all to heighten its aesthetics. There is this sense of allurement in the visual glitches and chromatic aberration in Cate’s work. An oddity we hardly come across for most artworks, hence I find this peculiarity captivating.

As mentioned previously for Cate’s piece, it gave me a bad headache from the visuals to the sound. It created a feeling disorientation – something I wanted my viewers to feel and relate to, regarding the state of North Korea.

Hence, the filter and two overlaying tracks were added to add on to the feel of dissonance. This was defitnitely inspired by how Cates added buzzing sounds and multiple audio, on top of his visually glitchy piece.

Overlaying the concepts and aesthetics of these artists works and incorporating them into my own gave me a sense of contentment and I felt that I’ve learnt key concepts from it.

Most importantly, I have gotten a better sense of this module – integrating past work as examples of research, studying them, using exploration, discussion, to get a better sense of how we interact in the age of the internet – the third space.

Implications on the future of art – Integrating the third space in many aspects of our lives

With the wave of possibilities brought upon by the technologies of the internet, I can see the third space taking over traditional platform and being incorporated into different uses such as learning, talks, concerts and such. Integration of third space into new media, progressing from the traditional forms that we currently have.

For example, singers or bands can hold ‘double concerts’ like a collaboration in the third space, instead of the conventional venues of concerts or performances.

Indeed, i’ve found websites that conduct such concert experience, which are ‘live’ and interactive.

Another up and coming trend of internet would be using it for superparticipation. A good example will be Youtube ‘live’ sessions. I recently signed up for a talk and was about to block my calendar, when I saw that it will be conducted virtually. Cool! Convenient!

Annyeong reporting from North Korea. This time with effects.

Posted by Val Lay on Thursday, 21 September 2017

Watch the broadcast here! Be sure to watch it with sound for the dramatization!

Click here for our cross-stream!

Research Critique: The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence by Douglas Davis (1994)

The huge difference between broadcast TV and the Web is the keyboard. With that people can say anything; they have full expressive capacity.

This quote by Douglas David resonated exactly with my thoughts on the whole piece of constructing the world’s longest sentence – people were free to put anything. ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING – that I find it daunting.

I see it as the most open and free and possibly longest comment thread in the world. Or a 1990’s open-to-public twitter feed.

Indeed, things got scary quite fast. Scrolling the first few pages already got me choking on my drink as I spotted some sentences that got rather dark.

You have people scolding their bosses. Some soliciting love and partners. And some even professing funny stuff

Essentially, the web offers unlimited amount of audience and word travels especially fast on cyberspace, with the sharing and tagging we’re able to do. We can see it literally as a web (pun unintended), or like a network of connections branching out and multiplying its source upon being shared. Hence, the amount of super participation is extremely high on a public platform, especially for one like Davis’ piece. Audiences collectively come together to contribute to the sentence in any words of their lexicon – which trigerred some replies to the previous sentence where they tried to lend some help. Others were just plain negative.

In summary

In the bigger picture, I believe this was a work to explore and examine how people interact when they are completely limitless to the content they can type and how this interactions trigger the next portion. They somehow co-relate like a butterfly effect. However, it seems that more negative statements/content can be found in this whole text, holding together what we have learnt in the previous reading – that we may get bolder in the third space as we aware of the lack of physical contact to the other parties we are interacting with.

Ultimately, the anonymity plays a huge part in the content we enter. This is also how the term ‘keyboard warrior’ was formed, right?

Oh I’m not done yet

On a slightly extra note, I think the future development of this piece now is to really look at the conservation of it. It first launched in 1994 – that’s as old as me, and the type of software used to contain the information had several errors as mentioned in the readings. Perhaps the team taking on the project could revamp on the system to store the data and accentuate the user interface and aesthetics of this super-participatory piece. I can see it as a minimal looking website with clean aesthetics for audience to intuitively input their sentence in contrast to the wordy landing screen they currently have.

References

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/jun/12/restoring-douglas-davis-collaborative-sentence/

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/07/arts/inside-art.html?mcubz=1

Desktop Misc-En-Scene: OBS Experience

Video: https://www.facebook.com/wrongval/videos/10155150344678208/

‘Oh man’ I thought, when I found out we had to go ‘live’ again. And oh my, it’s using some new unfamiliar software – how am I gonna wing this?! These are some honest thoughts I had when I first found out about going live, streaming our desktop misc-en-scene and being potential glitch artists.

However, it was helpful that I’m been an ardent fan of trippy gifs and glitch art content. I guess the experience was really helpful in taking it to the next level by creating this content ‘live’ and using the desktop as my canvas.

I wanted to give myself sometime to be familiar with it but a thought just came to my mind while setting my stage – to just go crazy and just go ‘live’.

Hence, I just took it from there.

Art Direction

I’ve decided to always have something constantly moving in my misc-en-scene, as that’s what draws people’s focus and attention on, as compared to a static image pasted around my screen.

Hence, in my art direction I included gifs, and one of the main visual that set the stage was the constantly moving tunnel in the background. It was perfect as it acted as a smooth and cool transition into the videos I was playing.

When I’m on my laptop, I’m usually watching music videos of my favourite bands and CHVRCHES is one them, which I played during the stream.

I decided to put Jesus on my stage too.

I was also trying to be playful and did this

That’s me on top of Jesus’ head. What do you deduce from it?

At the spur of the moment, I decided to look for Randall Packer on YouTube. And amazingly, the video aesthetics fit perfectly into the glitch art and retro trippy vibe I was going for.

It was an amusing experience watching everything unfold before my eyes in glitch! It was extra cool when your prof himself were feeling the same vibes about your creation too

Also thanks for the shoutout Randall!

Look ma, i’m tagged in the same post as Jon Cates! FAXXXXXINATING