Part I
This project attempts to challenge 2 different arguments.
- Internet Addiction
- Reception to Perceptions Online
Internet Addiction
Several times, I have realised many of my peers would be so engrossed with their phones that they tend to ignore the people around them(who are speaking to them concurrently). To be honest, it gets on my nerves sometimes and I find it rude of them to do that. However, most of the time, they do not realise it themselves. I went on and did an online survey on online addiction and here’s the result. Out of ~50 people, 87% of them have ignored someone will being on their phones. (WHAT A LARGE PERCENTAGE)
Hence, I proceeded to do a live show whereby my friend will be reading out comments I received on my live and will also be having a conversation to me at the same time. However, the catch here is that I will be ignoring her the whole time (with my poor acting skills) and be engrossed with my claw catching- online detection. It will be a self-reflection for my viewers of how they look like when they are ignoring their friends or family in real life while being immersed in the virtual world.
With reference to this article by The Strait Times:
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/singaporeans-are-second-most-internet-addicted-people-in-the-world-survey
The article mentioned that Singapore is the second most internet addicted people in the world at 52% Singaporeans saying that they are incapable of lasting more than 12 hours without internet access. In my opinion, I feel that the third space is much irreplaceable in our daily lives and while it is inevitable(due to the progressive IT world) that we tend to rely on it for our work and social networking, it is starting to eat into many people’s activity in the real space. However, we should learn to be more self-aware towards our surroundings and people as they are the ones we are really interacting with and rely on; the ability to distinguish and drawing the line between virtual and reality is important nonetheless.
Reception to Perceptions Online
In my second half of the live, I have my friend situated at the side of the claw machine while I am facing the claw machine. I am not allowed to look to the side of the machine to reference the claw while having the camera at the side of the claw machine for my audience to guide me in catching the toy. It is an experiment to how much we are willing to believe different perceptions online.
I was actually very much inspired by Patrick Hughes’s Perspectivirtuoso that one’s perspective can be very different from the others. Hence, I decided to challenge this idea through a third space.
Picking this experiment up with reference to Please Change Beliefs by Jenny Holzer, whereby she asks the viewer to collaborate in the dilemma of truism by editing the truth, according to personal taste, whim, perception. While my live here was to ask the audience to combine their effort(collaborative effort instead of collaborative artwork) of what they think I should do according to their perspective and own ideas. In the midst of my live, I realised that I can be quite sceptical of what others said due to me experiencing the gameplay in real life whereas my viewers are just speaking from what they see on camera. However, most of the time I will still listen to what my viewers instructed me to do as I couldn’t really see the side view of the claw, I had to rely on them to give me instructions. From this, I learnt that my perspective can never be the justifying view at all times and sometimes we need to pick up different views and opinions too.
Problems
It was hard to find a creative way to portray claw machines in my live stream initially as I only had a rough gauge that I wanted to include this medium in my final project. However, as I explored further, I realised that claw machines can include many social elements like it being a trend these days and how someone is controlling the machine to catch a toy. With the rough sketch of how claw machines, I realised it was much easy to expand into what I want to put across to my viewers and hence, I managed to come to a conclusion for the two concepts I mentioned above.
During the process of filming my live, I find it hard to ignore my friend who was reading off comments from the viewers and despite watching so many toy catching video, I didn’t managed to catch anything in the end. Also, I realised that my phone could only capture my friend’s voice, who is behind the camera and not mine. With some instant response by the viewers, I managed to solve it by asking my friend to repeat what I said again.
Conclusion
I feel that being on live really puts me across to the world of who I am really is in reality and I felt quite exposed and unnatural as the contents we normally post online are curated and vetted before we post them on social media. It will be natural for humans to want to post the most appealing aspect of our lives, however, in this live, it is really how people see me in real life being broadcast to many people out there(some being close friends and some being not).
Also, I learnt that the inability to separate reality and the virtual space is what many people faced these days and we should take the time to reflect about it and determine the degree of internet use that would be appropriate. There will be many commentaries online from keyboard warriors but whether we want to take it to heart or listen, it really depends on one’s perception of the situation. There was one part where my audience asked me to shake the catcher before pressing the catch button, I have actually tried that method and it didn’t really work well. I didn’t think that it is a wrong move and continued using the same method but in the end, none of the instructions work. But, it just struck me that the moment we take a wrong move or listened to the wrong advice, it is really a loss of time and money at the same time which we can see in my live stream.
Livestream
Possible Exploration
After creating this live, I thought about how we can have 2 person playing the claw machines at the same time with one person playing the machine with the help of an online claw machine guide while the other person playing with the help on online social media friends. This exploration can tap on the credibility of online sources, in a sense that whether we can trust online sources vs. friends comments.