January 2019

There were 2 posts published in January 2019 (this is page 1 of 1).

Micro-Project 2: Crowd Sourced Art

INSTAGRAM STORY

CONTENT OF WORK

Deepest Darkest Fears is a mini ‘dare or dare’ show broadcasted on a series of stories on our social media platform. Inspired by Bandersnatch, we decided to create content that would allow our crowdsourced community to participate in deciding the next course of action. We used Instagram as it is one of the more popular platforms that our friends are using, and the insta-story feature allows platform users to have the perceived option of choice.

By having a poll that gives our viewers 2 options to choose from, viewers can choose the next course of action for our player Tong Tong. In the options, we chose 2 dares for every stage that were contrasting in its extremity. Our crowdsourced community for this project were mainly Instagram followers who were fellow friends or classmates.

When all fears are taken away through a virtual space, to what extent would our viewers challenge our player to a dare?

Here are the results:

THE PROCESS

A voting poll is open for 3 mins. The path for each option is designed spontaneously as our viewer responds to the following options. Initially, we wanted to post an insta picture for viewers to share with us their deepest personal fears as we felt like involving the audience would generate more authentic interest as the content are solely created and decided by them. However, given the time limit and complexity involved, we decided to work on a general brainstorm of common fears & decide on the 2 that were most practical in our immediate environment.

Hence, we started by giving our viewers with 2 options to dictate our next move. The first set of question starts off with a choice between 2 of the most common fears.

Later, participants are able to choose the next path of action for our player. They can choose to be ‘nice’ OR ‘nasty’. Between these 2 fears, one of it is more extreme compared to the other, and we wanted to see which option our audience would pick without having to physically go through it.

THE CREATORS

During the process, we realised that although we were the initiators of this project, with intentions of having control over the experiment through careful planning of routes, the whole process of creation in this content was in fact a DIWO situation. Though each set of questions were initially created with a control over the options, our crowdsourced community were partaking in a co-creating process with us simply by participating through a click.

By responding to their clicking decision, we as initiators are responding to their choices, and hence participating in a co-creating process as well.

SOCIAL ASPECT

In terms of topic wise, we decided to choose something that was relevant to everyone. As humans, regardless of race, gender, class and social status, we are all certain to hold at least one fear. By opening the question of fears to our viewers, we give them the illusion of choice through a careful curation of questions.

By involving our audience to partake in this project through making a choice between 2 options, we managed to conjure a heightened interest in this project. With a role to play in this project, the audience were more active in their participation. However, at the same time, knowing that they are not the ones physically partaking in the challenge did help some of them to push boundaries as well, as we realised that majority of our responses were skewed towards the more daring actions. This was interesting to observe as majority of Tongtong’s followers were her friends which we thought would be ‘nicer’ to her.

Some of them were also curious to know what would happen next, and stayed throughout the story to view the process.

CROWDSOURCED PROJECT VS SINGLE CREATOR PROJECT

The whole process of the audience responding to questions, which eventually led to the initiators creating pathways according to the responses, had also made the work more engaging and fun in general. There was an interdependency, where the flow of the story would depend on both the responders and the initiators. Compared to a single creator project where the overall experience from the audience would be to simply observe the process unfolding, there was a more human approach in a crowdsourced project where the audience were a part of the process.

This definitely engaged the community on a higher level, and encouraged more interactions, as seen in some of the feedback we had where f our viewers also gave suggestions and idea, contributing to our project.

As explained by Lei later on during our class discussion, we learnt that most people were willing to choose the bolder choice because of the inbalanced conversion of efforts, where minimal effort was needed on the crowdsource community’s part to participate. The fact that all it took was simply a click for the player to take action (which requires more effort on the player’s side), did encourage them to be bolder in their choices. Had the roles been reversed, some of them may not have chosen the more daring choice knowing that they will be experiencing it themselves.

Overall, taking away the physical experience from the interaction had changed the overall experience of the game. 🙂

Micro-Project 1: Creating the Third Space

  1. Chosen space/ object

I chose this space, due to the significance of this physical area to me as a freshman. I remember during one of our first few classes in sem1, this was the exact place where my classmates and I mingled and got to know each other better during our break. This place, though ordinary, was the area where we first broke ice as friends. Beyond just the physical idea of space, I wanted to capture the people within it in this exact location as a visual representation of ‘safe space’. The idea of friends taking on the form of ‘space’ expressed in its comfort & familiarity. A safe place. Especially during the hectic process of adaptation in ADM year 1 sem 1.

Image wise, I intentionally butchered a whole image into 3 individual posts. Each post was created to position full emphasis on specific subjects (explained below), yet not make any meaning when viewed individually.  However, it is precisely this lack of ‘meaning making’ in the individual posts that allows interpretation to be up to the individual viewers.

(individual 3 images) – Physical Table, Friends, Self.

Overall, the key idea in this was to divert focus from the usual idea of ‘place’ (architecture/location etc) to focus on the core of what makes this place a space.

2. Characteristics of alternative virtual space created collectively

In this alternative virtual space, the nature of the post constantly changes as people interact with it. Initially, I did realise that the likes were really slow, and overall did not gather as many likes as my other posts. However, as people started commenting, the influx of interaction (read: likes) increased. This could be due to Instagram’s algorithm of content display based on no. of interactions, OR could simply be a real life example of a reaction building upon another reaction. 

Content wise, by keeping a little mystery in the individual pictures through intentional cropping, it prompted some of my friends who are truly curious to click onto the #1010ADM hashtag.

However, I feel that as the content was not the typical ‘Insta-worthy’ shots, it did not garner as many virtual attention. This made me realise that in order to succeed in generating signification interactions, the created content has to adapt according to the ever-changing nature of the virtual space itself.

3. Circumstance(s) where alternative virtual space will change?

Previously, my account was private.

For this project, I opened it up to public and gathered some comments from peeps who do not follow me. Through tracking pictures under the #1010ADM hashtag, some of them left comments under my images despite us not knowing each other. Likewise, I also left some likes & comments on some pictures under the #1010ADM hashtag. Simply having images categorised under the same hashtag had helped built a community, where people were comfortable sharing comments and likes with one another despite not knowing/communicating with each other in real life.

Apart from that, I chose not to respond to the comments under the image, as an experimental comparison with my other classmates who have always been actively responding to people in their images. It made me realise that the ‘vibe’ of the virtual space also changes when the creator responds, encouraging more interaction from the viewers.

Also, I feel that the limited knowledge about the #10101ADM also created an exclusive space, which worked as a catalyst of interest within some of the interactions I had with my non-adm peers.

4. Concept of DIY & DIWO

In this simple exercise, the concept of DIY was in the ideation & selection of space to capture and post the image. Initially, I actually took some images of some places on its own, but realise that it was ‘bland’ compared to having people in it. The DIWO aspect came when my friends and I worked together to help each other with our images, be it capturing each other or having each other in the images. This helped us to enrich our images to create more visually interesting content. In terms of the interaction, by having our friends comment on our posts did encourage other people to partake as well, and it is through DIWO that we are able to have a greater outreach.

For those who viewed but choose not to participate in any interaction with the post, that in itself was also a form of response, which could be a measure of the content’s success. Through a simple collection of three images, I was able to direct some of my participating followers onto one single platform, which was pretty cooOoOol.