Tag Archives: DIWO

Face to FaceBook

Face to Facebook is an installation piece created by Paolo Cirio as a third piece to his series, The Hacking Monopolism Trilogy. In this work he address the lack of privacy in the age of face book. Collecting 250,000 images from different account, they then run a facial recognition algorithm to categories their facial features. He then uploads these images on the a faux dating website, allowing people to see and connect with these people. Many viewers have mix reactions towards the piece many wondering how much data was scraped legally.

The things that happen on Facebook are really pretty meaningless. Not that they can’t have meaning, but simply that they don’t. Or, at least, they don’t until we get our collective hands on them. – D.E. WITTKOWER

Similarly, the creators of this piece mentioned that we put on a false persona on Facebook trying to portray the best side of ourselves.

The vast majority of pictures were both amateurish and somehow almost involuntarily or unconsciously alluring. And they are almost always “smiling”. – Paolo Cirio

On Facebook many present themselves base on Facebook primary function to connect and make friends. By placing these images on a dating website, Paolo Cirio, further emphasises on this shallow quality of making friends on Facebook. In the dating app, users use profile pictures to obtain the first impression of the partner before deciding to date them. These superficial qualities of attractiveness  are also used Facebook friends makings.So if the online persona is false, how can Facebook hold any meaning?

Personally, despite my inactiveness on social media, I still find myself censoring my thoughts when writing my post or comments. My online persona is vastly different from my RL self where I am more direct and crudely blunt. Facebook or Instagram don’t hold much meaning to me, as most of the post and photos are curated. however with the functions such as Instagram story, it allows people to capture that short moment of time, making it more genuine.

DIWO: RESEARCH

DIWO (do-it-with-others) refers to the practice of having a joint project, where like minded people collaborate together. In the case of Furtherfield, they aim to  connects people to new ideas, critical thinking and imaginative possibilities for art, technology and the world around us. Through DIWO, we have striped art making from the contrails of time, space and even drastically changed the role of the artist and the viewers.

TIME AND SPACE:
In the case of the time and space, the internet has allowed artworks to transcend into the third space. A imaginary space which bridges two different parties in different physical or first spaces. A very good example that we have studied is Grand Thief Avatar by second front. through the virtual reality game they manage to collaborate and create a performance piece, despite all five artist being based in different parts of the word.

Second Front, Grand Thief Avarta

Similarly in Furtherfeild, the work DIWO Email Art, strips the work and the artist of their physical space. instead of staging and creating the work through the third space, the email art, makes use of the quality of the world wide web to eliminate the physical space. After completing their work, the artist would send an email to the a inbox with all the other email art compiled. together they form a real time art creating process. through these examples we can see how art making has transcended time and space through the third space.

Furtherfeild: Email Art

ROLE OF THE ARTIST
The role of the artist has been greatly challenged by the notion of DIWO. The traditional context is the artist as a creator and the viewer on the receiving end. however through DIWO the boundary of such notions have been greatly blurred. Artist are now able to engage the audiences in the process of art making. Now the artist do not play a major role in determining the outcome of their works but the audience do. For example, both Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece and Marina Abramović rhythm 0, greatly relies on the audience interactions to determine the outcome of the work. Without the participation of the audiences, their works would have been unable to come through.

Yoko ono’s Cut Piece
Marina Abramović, Rythem 0

At the end of the talk, Mark Garret also pointed out that the role of the artist is ever-changing, and urges the students to explore and combine different aspect and medium of the art. Later Packer also urges the students to refrain from secluded in their studio creating solo bodies of  art. But instead explore and question these concept in a freshly through collaboration, directly engaging and connecting with the  issue.