Tag Archives: third space

A Third Space Fallacy

Project brief:

A Third Space Fallacy is an experimental interaction performance on third and first space that combines the responses collated on the third space through Instagram polls and stories to curate the next move in a friendship conflict between two girls (Bella and Daphne). To make the entire performance as real as possible, both girls had to put up an act in the span of 1 week in the first space, when questions arises from the people around them. Also, to stage that this is not part of our project for Experimental Interaction, our group have created another Instagram account @abracadabrrun, collating uninformed decisions made by our followers, which is part of the narrative of the death of Bella.

How it came about

Our group wanted to explore how people reacted to news and how easily was it for us to manipulate people feelings through social media. So we set the premise about a fight between two girls regarding their friendship. (we did consider relationship drama, but we felt that it was too cliche)

Introducing our main leads

We decided to go with Daphne and Bella account for this project, due to their frequent use of the app. Both me and Jasmine, rarely post on social media and this may raise suspicions on doing a project. In addition, this is fuelled by our goal of carrying out this experiment, without anybody suspecting that it was a experimental interaction project. This allowed us to collate unbiased data. Bella played the role of the victim, while Daphne played the bully.

Their background story:

Daphne and Bella met in secondary school in a Chinese writing competition. They clicked and immediately became best friends. however later in the semester, Daphne left and bullied Bella to join the popular clique. Years later they met in ADM. Having no friends, Daphne stuck along with Bella for the first few months before abandoning Bella again for the popular clique. Upset over the dysfunctional friendship, Bella calls out Daphne over Instagram, creating a drama.

The execution: 

We decided to post over a period of 4-5 days to build up the tension and the drama. In addition, we allowed our followers to takeover the narrative of the project. The direction of the project, the tone and the result of the two friends friendship is all determined by the poll results and comments.

Bella first post
Bella first post

Bella begins questioning her friendship with Daphne and ask if for advise, if she should confront Daphne. Following the poll, Bella begins confronting Daphne.

Daphne follow up

So Daphne sees Bella’s instastory. and indirectly poked at Bella calling her sensitive.

Bella retort
Daphne strikes back

The next few post are targeted at brewing drama Daphne and Bella

final poll determining her action

With this poll we aimed at bring the drama to Jurong Point, where Bella confronts Daphne heatedly.

 

When we head to Jurong point, Bella and Daphne roughly planed out a script and the direction that they were going.

bella’s death, the above text translate to: It doesn’t matters if I leave today, tomorrow or the day after, just as long as you see it its fine.

With Daphne leaving Bella hanging in JP, with the final words of just Gert out of my life, Bella couldn’t contain her sadness and died.

Reflections:

Through this project, I realised how scary social media can be as a tool to convince people. It was so easy to construct a fake personality and get people to belief it. The characters that we built for both Daphne and Bella were a far cry from their usual personality. Through out the course of the project, they received many concerned comments from friends and even strangers. When Daphne visited her church during the weekends, she was comforted by her church friends and group leaders. Apparently many were connived and so invested in our project, that they were afraid to respond to the polls.

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.

Research critique on Grand Thief Avarta By Second Front

Second Front is a performance art group based in a online virtual world called Second life. The social construct of Second life is very similar to reality, you create goods and sell them. This performance art is the embodiment of the third space itself. The third space is a virtual space which integrates two different physical spaces.

“The third space is a fluid matrix of potentiality and realizable connections to the most far-reaching remoteness” – Randall Packer

The characteristic to create anything and everything is especially evident in the above performance. Second Front was able to leverage on the games unique ability to alter the characters appearance and gender to create a totally different persona. In addition to this, Second Font parodied the Hibernia Bank Robbery, by altering the mastermind appearance to look uncannily similar to Patrica Hearst. (refer to figure 1.)  I believe that this is a commentary on how Hearst was not acting with her own conscious but as a puppet to the mastermind of the terrorist group, SLA. This is supported bay reports showing that the SLA threatened Hearst with guns prior to the robbery. The throwing and distribution of the money to the mass may be referencing SLA demands for the Hearst family to donate 400 million worth of food to the needy. I refer back to Packer’s quote, Second Front fully utilized the third space ability to create anything. Staging the above performance, while retaining the different references  would be impossible in real life. In Second life, Second Front were unconstrained by the laws, money, time, common sense and of course the ability to cast, Patricia Hearst (or a look-a-like) to partake in their work.

Figure1: the uncanny similarity of the disguise with Patricia Hearst

However as a social commentary of Patricia Hearst involvement in the SLA, may not come across as effective if it was performed in reality. As it is created in a virtual game, the value of life will never be the equivalent to reality. We have been desensitized to character deaths after all they are immortal. The severity of the issue isn’t as greatly conveyed.

Overall I really enjoyed this piece and think that it was greatly able to unique characteristic of the third space by working directly in the third space itself.

References:
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/patty-hearst
https://web.archive.org/web/20080420055116/http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/News/Special-Reports/Terrorism/SLA/Chronology.asp