Experimental Fashun

 

– The Premise –  

———-

|| Using the social broadcasting platform of Facebook live, my group decided to do an interactive project called ‘Experimental Fashun’ (‘Fashion’ stylised as ‘Fashun’). We split our group of four into pairs whereby one person will be the ‘interviewer’ and the other will the ‘model’. The model’s homework is to select 5 pieces of apparel for a number of sections, namely: tops, bottoms, dresses, accessories and shoes. She will then write down a vague adjective describing the clothing. The ‘interviewer’ will have to engage and collect responses from members of the public from different parts of Singapore to participate in our project. The audience member will have to help the ‘model’ to select pieces of clothing to form their own unique combination. Since the descriptors are rather vague, it mirrors the unpredictable quality of online shopping, whereby we trust frequently vague descriptors and pick from cheap websites like Lazada or Ezbuy. From the selected combinations, we will then photograph proper photos of the whole outfits, pair them in categories of the stereotypes of the different parts of Singapore, and post them on Instagram and add the #experimentalfashun so that users of Instagram can vote for their favourite combinations.

 

Link to video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dscw9ljl2ncnhpk/main_FINAL.mp4?dl=0

 

 

For this project, our interviewers Bala and Felicia headed down to the following places respectively:

Bala – Sim Lim Square, Bugis Street

Felicia: Bras Basah Shopping Complex, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore Management University (SMU) and Lasalle College of the Arts

while Farzana and I were the models camping at home. We waited prepared sets of clothings to show the strangers that were interviewed what they looked like. After the outfits were chosen, we had to take pictures of the full outfit for the Instagram feed.

 

– Wardrobe Selections –

———-

Tops: cat, skeleton, checkered, tea, floral

Outerwear: thin (black), hipster weeb(the purple one), woolen, mint,thick
Dresses: checkered, CNY, pleated, floral, zebra
Accessories: Soft toy, ukelele, cap, beanie, glasses
Bottoms: navy (skirt), oriental, striped, PJs, oriental

 

– The Experience –

———-

During the execution of the Facebook live with Bala, I initially tried to make the clothing in the list as crazy as possible so that the participants would have some pretty crazy descriptors to choose from. However, what we didn’t expect is for them to take the task so seriously! A lot of them were really squinting at the descriptors, trying to clarify and asking for more details so that they could make the most suitable outfit to go for an actual party. This was a lot more significant at Bugis Street where there more more fashionable young people hanging around on a Sunday evening.

“What’s ‘tea’?”

Also, we initially intended to put on the outfit immediately after the participant had chosen the outfit, but after we interviewed the first person in Sim Lim Square, we had an awkward moment where the person had to wait for me to change, which probably took about 2 minutes, but there was still a certain social tension that existed even over the Third Space, which was really interesting to observe.

Bala was frantically trying to occupy the stranger while temporarily went off-screen to change.

This project was influenced by Blast Theory’s principles of integrating the physical and virtual world together through the use of new technology and inviting audience participation that would influence the outcome of the project, with an element of an immersive narrative. In our project, we set our premise as a fashion showdown modelled after RuPaul’s Drag Race or Project Runway, but incorporating digital elements! Not only did we empower the random participants to be designers themselves, we also involved the Instagram public to pick their favourite outfit to win the fashion show by posting polls

Our Instagram feed!

Experimental Fashun was influenced by the concepts of the dynamics of social interaction over the Third Space through social broadcasting, DIWO, and Digital Identity.

Inspired by our Telestroll project, we utilised the medium of Facebook Live to carry out an interview-style social broadcast with members of the public. We explored the concept of DIWO by getting them to make our fashion decisions for us. This links to how we allow others to alter our Digital Identity as well, since clothes are probably the most representative subject of appearance, or how you present yourself to others. Personally, I felt like this project really got me out of my comfort zone as well because I usually do not post a lot of Outfit-of-the-day (OOTD) posts on Instagram or Facebook since I’m not really into fashion myself, and my usual style is super stay-home casual.

By putting on wacky outfits and posting them onto our public Instagram page, I felt like I was allowing my digital image to be altered, and it probably is easier to believe that I’m comfortable putting on weird clothing while I was actually really kind of anxious at the thought of wearing them out in public, especially when we had to shoot the photos of the OOTDs, but I thought that after this experience, I’ve gotten pretty numb to any judgement.

Interestingly enough, we also unintentionally experienced the glitches in human behaviour and technology that we learned would eventually surface when we trapped ourselves in the Third Space for long enough, through the works of Annie Abrahams. The main point is that things would never go the way we intended for them to, for example, with that long awkward waiting time I mentioned above, as well as moments when connection was bad as we moved to different locations so it impaired the communication of the interviewer and model during the Facebook live. In the aspect of human-technology relationships, we also explored the mismatch in expectations in online shopping where you might put your trust in a supplier who you have never bought before, purely based on the pictures and descriptions that they provide, and so the products that you purchase may not end up as what you expected, since you never once inspected the product physically beforehand.

 

Online shopping websites such as Ezbuy, Lazada and Wish often offer cheap clothing with clickbait product names (just look at the amount of adjectives in there). We don’t ever know if they actually will fit us, we just see if they look good on the models, and have our perceptions swayed by reviews by other people.

 

 

In conclusion, a lot of negotiation was needed to overcome issues, from the conceiving of the idea, to the execution of it, to dealing with unintended glitches. Our outcome for the project also divulged interesting results; we found out that the older demographic preferred brighter colours compared to the younger demographic, and that people in different parts of Singapore had different attitudes towards fashion. We had involved others into our project, be it as a designer who came up with all the wacky combinations, or fashion director who got to say ‘ay’ or ‘nay’ to the outfits, and successfully executed our online fashion project, Experimental Fashun!

 

 

 

 

  • Summarize by stating how your final project explored the idea of the social and how you designed an interactive experience that included both artist and viewers.

 

Virtual Insanity

[On Social Broadcasting: A Communications Revolution]

 

|| During the Art of the Networked Practice 3-day (or night) symposium that took place from 29th-31st March 2018, I got to listen to very insightful speakers and witness before my very eyes how far art has grew simultaneously with technology. It is amazing to think how unfathomable all of these works would have been way back when the social broadcasting tools and platforms were just made available.

Groups like Videofreex were filming using the Sony Portapaks to create simple films, who would have thought how far this form of art could come?
https://videofreex.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/img_2520.jpg

 

Since then, social broadcasting has been used as a medium by artists to explore how communication and interaction between people can be altered through it. Annie Abrahams mentioned about how this change is not necessarily better or worse, but rather, just different. In her keynote speech, Maria Christochatzidolou (MariaX) questions the development of social broadcasting art by sharing a myriad of examples of works that use social broadcasting to push the boundaries of art even further.

 

MariaX giving her keynote speech on Telematic performances and the ways they have experimented with and changed the way people communicate.

For one, social broadcasting changes the way we perceive interactivity.

MariaX introduced the concept of the use of technology to bring people together into the same ‘Space-time continuum’, where people can transcend geographical boundaries and be brought together over the metaphysical ‘Third Space’ (coined by Randall Packer). This greatly enhances the opportunities for collaboration and allow more artists to practice the art of Do-It-With-Others (or DIWO), advocated by groups like Furtherfield and Blast Theory.

Throwback to our lesson about Furtherfield where we discussed how it hosts artists in a community that allows for the exchange of ideas between people of different expertise, producing fresh and creative ideas, a successful product of DIWO.

Together with DIWO came the concept of giving up the ownership of the performance partially, if not fully to audience members, such that they had the power to influence the outcome of it. One example of this is Kit Galloway’s and Sherrie Rabinowitz’s ‘Hole in Space’, which was part of their satellite art projects in collaboration with NASA. People from different cities were pulled together into the same metaphysical space through the ‘hole in time’ and the way they responded was completely unrehearsed, as with how some of them even started to organise meetings with their family or friends.

MariaX defined the interactivity of social broadcasting as ‘the performer being affected by the audience, and the audience affecting the performer’.Annie Abraham’s Entanglement Training performance was also a far cry from a passive delivery, rather, performers (some of which she has never met) were able to work alongside her.

 

Annie Abrahams and her co-performers whose actions were slightly rehearsed but nevertheless completely unpredictable and out of her control during the performance itself in Entanglement Training: Ensemble.

In the case of the symposium, I was participating in the act of DIWO literally just by typing in the chatroom. The performers were able to interact with the online audience and this allowed for a collaborative act of helping each other understand the works and the intentions behind them. Essentially, this flattens out the hierarchy between performers and audiences and changes the way we perceive artists to work and interact with their audiences (contrary to the idea that artists worked in isolation in their own studio space).

 

Next, social broadcasting has changed the expectations of human interaction as new dynamics are introduced with this new medium.

Social broadcasting nevertheless allows us to be hidden behind our screens in a safer environment that in real life where physical confrontation is a possibility. We discover this and over time, we find ourselves trying to paint the most ideal picture of ourselves online, trying to polish our ‘Digital Identity’, which is a re-imagination of ourselves, and our tele-presence projected into the ‘Third Space’.

 

xXxtra.Princesses’ use of Snapchat filters to paint an idealised picture of themselves as a digital entity.

In actual fact, the use of the Third Space encompasses the technical issues such as connection that come with it. To have the ‘Third Space’ in co-existence and seen in totality with the local and remote spaces would be to also accept the faults that comes with it, just like how we do not act in a perfectly rehearsed manner in real life, for that would be way too unnatural (the word in itself suggests that it is not characteristic of a living creature).

 

Arcangel Constantini also showcased one of his newest projects ‘bakteria.org’ that makes use of technical fault as a style, with the noise distortion soundscape and code glitch as a font type that gives rise to a unique and recognisable style. His little bacteria illustrations also represent how information is spread across the Third Space just like how bacteria spreads amongst people.

 

 

Annie Abraham’s works are quintessential to this very theme. In Entanglement Training – Ensemble, her co-performers followed her protocol to read out the latency in their connections, indicating how all of them are never really existing in the exact same moment in the Third Space, which may be a state which technology could ideally bring us to. However, she makes the latencies the very subject of her work and in turn explores the beauty of this imperfection of the medium to create a rhythmic, choreographic performance that really enchants the viewer.

 

 

“one millisecond”. “138”

“Excellent”

“Status”

“Connection status”

 

Annie Abrahams’ works are about the ‘sloppy’ side of people online and the intimacy between people. She likes to trap her co-performers in a state of ‘No Exit’ such that they are forced to expose their “messy and malleable” sides, prominent in her other works such as The Big Kiss and Angry Women. This shows how the digital medium is far from perfect and by making these faults the main subject of her works, we are continuous exposed to them and they are more normalised. In this way, we learn how to accept and embrace these imperfections more.

Annie Abraham’s work shops with our class!! We learned how it felt like to be following a protocol and it was surprisingly a lot harder than I thought because we could not rehearse any timings with our groupmates and we just had to give up control and let whatever happen happen naturally. This liberating effect was really enlightening and now I really appreciate Annie’s works even more than ever.

 

As the saying goes: ‘to err is human, to forgive is divine’. Then, following this train of thought, artists that work around the concept of the fault in human behaviour and technical glitches have already achieved a certain level of divinity. They have the power to change the way we anticipate the way our interactions online will proceed, and encourage us to embrace these imperfections as part of our newly established communication medium.

 

Last but not least, social broadcasting changes the way we want our new form of interaction to grow towards. 

 

After being aware of these faults and learning how to embrace them, where do we go from there?

 

With a new world comes new laws to maintain some sort of order. New morals and ethics will arise and they will definitely be different from that of the real, physical world. MariaX brings up the issue of “Telematic Abuse” experienced by a performer where although her physical body was not abused, the abuse was directed towards a fictional existence of her real corporal body. How will we define laws that resist this sort of acts? Can they even be counted as legitimate abuse? These are definitely new questions that will arise as we continue to develop in telematic arts.

 

During the symposium, the ethics of respect was questioned when audience members were conversing in the chatroom while the performance was ongoing and apparently some people thought it was rude was others did not. Whereas, it is expected that people stay silent when watching a performance in real life since they are occupying the same space and may affect the performance.

 

During the performance of
#exsanguination, the audience members were discussing about the significance of the leeches in the performances.

 

Social broadcasting also gives people the ability immortalise a moment, as seen in from works like Ant Farm’s Blast Theory. This can be wielded as a tool to call for action by the wider public. We can see this in The Pixelated Revolution 2012 by Rabih Mroue, where a victim continues to film a sniper who is hunting him down and eventually shoots him. The very fact that he does not stop filming shows that he believes that the recorded video will be able to serve as a form of evidence later on. The way that we use this form of evidence is even prevalent today in court legislation.

Telematic Dreaming by Paul Sermon allows the artist to interact with audience members within the intimacy of the bed space. Whether the same social norms and rules apply to this situation is still largely unexplored.

 

 

 

Station House Opera also staged At Home in Gaza and London (2016) which  also uses the technique of ‘dissolving’ to impose two images together to form a mutual performance space, where people could occupy each other’s’ homes, streets and social spaces, such that it focuses on the situation of people in Gaza, contrasting storytelling of Gaza versus theatre in America. This highlights the political isolation of people in Gaza and acts as a coping mechanism with the temporary relief of technology for them.

 

 

In conclusion, social broadcasting has revolutionised the way we communicate. It has changed our perception of interactivity, our expectations of interaction on this new medium and the direction where we want these new developments to head towards. Whether we like it or not, the ‘Third Space’ has already invaded and influenced our real world; whether we want to maintain its position as a partially isolated platform, separate entity, or continue to learn about it and embrace its faults to assimilate our physical world with the Third Space seamlessly is up to us to decide. We must continue to seriously consider the limitation of each form of interaction and find a way to strike a fine balance so that we can enjoy the best of all spaces.

 

 

Resources:

————–

Keynote Maria Chatzichristodoulou, artist Annie Abrahams, and artist Matt Adams/Blast Theory
 
Jon Cates / Chicago performance
 
Annie Abrahams performance
 
Keynote Matt Adams / Blast Theory
 
Social Broadcasting
 
The Symposium Website also has program information and participant bios
Bakteria.org by Arcangel Constantini: http://bakteria.org/
MariaX interviews Annie to gain insight to her work:

Annie Abrahams. Allergic To Utopias

@youthfulyue

For my 1 minute video selfie, I decided to do one of those Take On Me video memes with the icon head turn at the start. The original music video by a-ha depicted two settings, one being real life and one being an sketchy, illustrated fictional setting. By applying this outline filter, I wanted to show that I like to be projected as an imaginary goofy persona online which I may not reflect upon first impression in real life.

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

Parodies:

 

I compounded another meme on top of it by intentionally playing the recorder horribly.

By using memes as a theme of popular culture, I am able to portray my own sense of humour that shapes my art style through this video, in the sense that I do not really adopt a neat, stylistic style of design, but rather one that is just ever so slightly self-derogatory and relatable to other people.

Also, I filmed this video right in front of the lift of my floor, the space right outside my house which is my space of comfort but yet not in a public space. This shows how I’m not really comfortable with completely exposing my weird side publicly, but I like to slightly step out of my comfort zone and take things slowly.

 

P.S.: I was intending to do some sort of a dance cover but then I realised I have no dancing skills… I guess I’m still not too ready to embrace my ‘sloppy’ side on the internet………….

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned

[ On S O C I A L  B R O A D C A S T I N G ]

|| In Angry Women (2013) by Annie Abrahams, female participants had their webcam screens lined up in a 4×3 grid and vocalised their anger in front of the camera. This entire project involved 24 participants, and none of them knew each other.

 

 

Having previously done a research critique on The Big Kiss by Annie Abrahams, I was really interested to see what Angry Women was all about.

 

 

 

Watching this video was pretty unsettling for me, and probably to others too and there’s a reason why.

 

When on social media, we send messages out to our friends, coupled with emotions embedded in our messages. Sometimes, it is also broadcasted to the public, not just our friends. Either way, we are likely to curate an image of ourselves online via these multimodal messages, and more often than not, create an idealised version of ourselves.

 

The emotion of anger is seen as a rather negative emotion since it implies conflict between two or more parties. Following this understanding, it is only logical to conceal our angry sides online. Now this may seem a bit contradictory to the proliferation of rants in online posts, but is definitely different in the sense that we are still somewhat hiding behind anonymity and not showing our faces, which also partially equate to our real identity.

 

In Angry Women, these participants were strangers but had to reveal their faces to each other, leading to them being a little cautious at the start.

 

” It was tough and courageous, but we are moving on 🙂 – very interesting and tumultuous.

We are still struggling to express our anger and we also still have difficulties to co-construct in this situation of lonely  togetherness. It’s exciting and sometimes overwhelming to try to transgress one’s limits.”

– from http://bram.org/angry/women/

 

 

In fact, research has shown that people regularly suppress anger in order to maintain healthy and successful social relationships. [1] Only by being in this space curated by Annie Abrahams under a ‘No Exit’ situation could they take some time to fully unleash their fury (much like She Hulk transformations, which is terrifying to watch).

[She Hulk] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ2Ts4BGs6efsafq1h7yVsVXw6n5HFV1aIcdOCD4jMOVuRmwr4Abw
Exploring anger as an unglamorous side being exposed also parallels how Annie Abrahams works her way around and embraces  glitches on the more technical side of this medium, as seen from how she turns a malfunctioning webcam into an artistic expression. [2]

” So instead of dwelling on the frustrations of the network connection, she finds inspiration, and perhaps more importantly, she sets up compelling situations that allow her and others to make critical observations about connection and disconnection. “

– Randall Packer

 

Since Annie Abrahams has a background in biology, she uses social broadcasting as a tool for investigating and testing out hypotheses that she forms about human behaviour. In Angry Women, the 4×3 grid is a curated  ‘Alone Together’ [3]  setting whereby participants are able to see each other all at once over the ‘Third Space’ (as coined by Randall Packer), and since it is a continuous take, they have to deal with the situation of “No Exit”, where they are forced to reveal unglamorous sides of themselves that they would normally unconsciously avoid doing so to others. [4] This social situation would not be possible without the aid of technology and social broadcasting capabilities.

Perhaps by learning how to embrace our ‘sloppy’ sides online, this could transform parasocial relationships into much more genuine ones in the future.

 

 

Resources:

[1] Riet, Jonathan Van’T, Gabi Schaap, and Mariska Kleemans. “Fret Not Thyself: The Persuasive Effect of Anger Expression and the Role of Perceived Appropriateness.” Motivation and Emotion42, no. 1 (2017): 103-17. doi:10.1007/s11031-017-9661-3.

[2] Randall Packer, Disentangling the Entanglements, Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium Website

[3] Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

[4] Annie Abrahams website: http://bram.org/angry/women/

 

Welcome to my Digital Crib!

 

My desktop is as cluttered as my brain is. (so is my room)

 

I have a lot of junk files and applications that I don’t even frequently use stored on the left of my screen. It’s like an organised mess, you know?

 

My to-do list are always open in my notes.

 

Youtube is ALWAYS on for music.

 

Facebook is always there for distraction and there are various tabs open for school.

 

The background is from one of the only few computer games I own called Life is Strange and I really love the game :DDD

When will my online biography show who I am inside?

|| The term Digital Identity refers to the way that an individual chooses to present and depict themselves in online and digital communities (the Third Space). An individual’s digital identity is largely curated by themselves in order to portray themselves in a favourable manner.

In Eric Erikson’s fifth stage of psychosocial development individuals start to question their identity and personal values starting from adolescence, and henceforth embark on a life-long journey to resolve their ‘identity crisis’. The Internet allows individuals to experiment with self-identification in a virtual space, serving as a tool or platform for individuals to satisfy their innate curiosity. [1]

 

In his article in “Facebook and Philosophy”, Wittkower suggests similarly that:

“Facebook gives us the same richness of interaction because it, too, fails to determine the meaning of our relationships and communications.”

In other words, the customisability of online social media platforms gives people space for creativity to invent new meanings out of any content posted, thus creating new content identifiable with the self. All the seemingly meaningless things that we post onto our profiles contribute to our digital identity and shape this indefinitely aberrating form in different ways. [2] We are able to put up whatever we want to define ourselves, even if it is an idealised image.

Facebook offers users the opportunity to curate their digital identity by providing information about themselves, and using multimodality to accessorise their pages.

The absence of a social context also liberates us from shaping our output such that it conforms to a particular social situation; this gives us freedom to post whatever we want, whenever we want online.

 

In Carla Gannis’ solo exhibition “Until the End of the World”, she explores technology as a medium to depict herself in a virtual context as a character model.  [3]

“Gannis’s process the work should be understood as a conscious interplay between portraitist, portrait and the camera itself. “

With the use of augmented reality in a virtual space, the possibilities for depicting the self visually are endless. This contrasts the mundanity of the image of self in real life in the sense that we are not able to portray what goes on in our minds, as part of our identity in totality. Others are only able to perceive what they see of you.

 

The idea of using the Internet as a tool to better express ourselves is also evident in the gaming realm, where the virtual re-embodiment of players through self-extension and self-aggregation allow them to build a whole new identity that is idealised, yet closely related to who they are in real life. [4]

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft (WOW) have character customisation screens that allow players to edit the features of their characters to their liking.

 

In conclusion, we utilise the Internet as a platform to explore the idea of self. Even though our potrayal of self online may be idealised, there is, to a certain extent, an inherent undeniable truth about who we are in real life, echoing the idea of how technology is an extension of ourselves in an online “global village” (McLuhan).

 

Resources:

[1] Images, Self-Images, and Idealized Identities in the Digital Networked World: Reconfigurations of Family Photography in a Web-Based Mode by Luc Pauwels (Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium).

Pauwels, Luc. “Images, Self-Images, and Idealized Identities in the Digital Networked World: Reconfigurations of Family Photography in a Web-Based Mode.” In Digital Identity and Social Media, ed. Steven Warburton and Stylianos Hatzipanagos, 133-147 (2013), accessed March 04, 2018. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-1915-9.ch010

[2] Wittkower, D. E. (2010). “Facebook and Philosophy: What’s on your Mind? A Reply to Facebook Critics,” Popular Culture & Philosophy

[3] Until the End of the World, Carla Gannis. http://carlagannis.com/blog/prints/until-the-end-of-the-world/

[4] Online identity construction: How gamers redefine their identity in experiential communities.

PINTO, DIEGO COSTA, et al. “Online identity construction: How gamers redefine their identity in experiential communities.” Journal Of Consumer Behaviour 14, no. 6 (November 2015): 399-409. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 4, 2018).

[5] McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964.

Is this burning an ETERNAL FRAME?

|| The Eternal Frame (1975) is a videotaped reenactment of the assassinated of John F. Kennedy’s assassination by Antfarm which seeks to draw attention to the power of the mediated image.

 

Antfarm is a collective of radical artists founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels (1943-2003) that sought to rebel against the conformative style of art in their time and build a community of artists that vigorously experimented with new forms of art.[1]

 

http://kadist.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ant-farm-eternal-flame-2.jpg

 

In an Interview with Chip Lord by Randall Packer over the Third Space Network stream, Chip Lord mentions that John F. Kennedy’s death was the first televised American tragedy ever, and Eternal Frame sought to explore the power of the media to immortalise such a historical moment and ingrain it into the minds of people by converting a real-life event into a processed memory via the media. [2]

 

 

In another interview about The Eternal Frame hosted by Constance Lewallen (2012), Doug Halls states that he resonates with Jean Jacque-Rousseau’s view that something cannot be true until it’s fictionalised, and the interpretation of a memory aberrates as it is constantly reappropriated throughout time, which is possible if an event is immortalised in a digital form. [3]

 

” I think that idea of you kind of grasping to it and extricated into your time, then in the act of doing that, certain truths disappear but other ones begin to emerge.”

– Doug Halls

 

 

Taking the achievements of past post-modern art movements like Constructivism and Futurism to a greater level, Antfarm’s fearless venture into different media and experimenting with different spatial contexts allowed them to successfully added new layers of meanings in their artworks that allowed them to make political and social statements.

 

 

Resources:

[1] Constance Lewallen, Still Subversive After all These Years

[2] Interview with Chip Lord: https://vimeo.com/257224713

[3] The Eternal Frame, hosted by Constance Lewallen: https://vimeo.com/53734504

The More We Get Together

Doing It With Others (DIWO)

 

|| The noble venture by Furtherfield into establishing and investing in a common space that facilitates the sharing of ideas and execution of projects among artists has reaped the benefits of social practice in art.

Furtherfield – Finsbury Park, London
https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Plan-your-visit-600×400.jpg

Before the proliferation of Open-Source culture, artists were seen as solitary creators who worked for their own gain, as in with the case of BritArt which led to a limited development in the field of art (mentioned in Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett “Do it With Others (DIWO): Participatory Media in the Furtherfield Neighborhood,” 2007):

:

“It degraded and smothered artistic discourse by fueling a competitive and divisive attitude towards a shrinking public platform for their practice and the representation of their work.”

Furtherfield provided the opportunity for artists to start co-curation, such as in E-mail Art on Netbehaviour.

 

Mail box showing Netbehaviour contributions to DIWO Email Art project 2007
https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/diwo_mailbox.png

 

This tore down the notion of the artists having a mandatory role of curating the entire viewing experience themselves, rather, it involved viewers to take ownership as well. In class, we explored the act of co-curation with our Collective Body project, where each of us could determine the order of photo upload in order to create the artwork in its entirety.

Flickr – Collective Body microproject

The exchange of ideas also led to technological experimentation as a new medium. Projects like Hole in Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, and Telegarden by Ken Goldberg make use of real time technology to allow people to interact across a Third Space, and also give up ownership of the result of the artwork to the audience, making their outcomes inclusive, unpredictable and ultimately genuinely interesting.

Telegarden by Ken Goldberg

In class, we tried our hands at creating art via the Third Space in our Tele-stroll and Telematic Embrace projects. By negotiating and compromising, we are able to create a digital connection across screens.

Telestroll micro-project: Journey to the East/West done with Francesca. We had to collaborate off-screen to come up with a plan to execute before performing the piece on Facebook live.
Telematic Embrace project: Onscreen Cross screenshot. Our class had to agree on who was going to be part of the cross, and if so, how were their hands going to be aligned on screen.

 

With a conducive space for conversation, Furtherfield artists took the liberty to create projects like Plantoid by Okhaos that utilises the Blockchain system and Harvest by Julian Oliver that explored technology as a medium to get viewers from the public to be conscious about nature and rethink our relationship with technology. These are issues that our generation faces and such artworks allow the current generation to ‘connect with issues in their time’, which, as mentioned by Marc Garrett in his lecture, is one of the strongest virtues of being an artist.

Plantoid (2015) by Okahos

 

Harvest by Julian Oliver. Making use of wind energy to power up graphics cards without burning up the ozone.

In conclusion, the concept of DIWO empowers artists with the capability to break the artist-viewer hierarchy, explore new mediums and better allow the public to connect with their work and the issues we face today.

 

Resources:

 

M̴̨̡̛͖̱͚̭̩̘̠̩̳͍̬̐̀̽͂͌̉̃̍̇̄̏̐̕̕ͅY̸̢͇̟͈͖̜̆̀̈́̈́́̎̅̀͝ ̶̣͍̯̖̥̣̭͙̥͉͉̙̌̇̍͜Ỉ̷̟̘͕̱̯͕̞̫̎̑̒̈̃̋̚͠͝͠Ņ̶̨͎̥̦̲͉̤̣̟͙̈́̌̽́̆̈̒̾̀̕̚͝͠T̷̞͇͍̜̗͓͗͆̊̿͠Ę̷̡̛͇̦̞͎͕̫̙̟͇̭̺̈́̀́̎̽͂̌̉̏̂̊̿̀̓͜R̶̡̲͇͓̮͍̲̉͂͒̂͜Ň̴͈̼̹͉̖͍̤͖̳̲͖̘͛̉͒͐̈͋̃̔͛̃̆̅̚Ä̶̡̧̘̩̯̩́̚L̸̨͕̬̠͚̪̫̫̫̟̣̗͋͂͐̅͝ͅ ̷̡͓̹͍̟̺̺̞̘͈͉̂̽̊̄͊̔̽̐̐͌̈́̔̋͝S̶̛̛̞̻̦͓̬͙̪͔̩̟͋̓̍̎̿̐̂̊̔͆̿̎T̴̗͎͉̪̻̓͆̾͜Ã̶̡̛̗͚̟̦̗͔͍̈́̀͒͒̅͋̓̓̓͗̏͠͝T̷̰̥̰͉̱̘͙̽̈̇̅̉̓̀̅́̀̀͒̃͛̇Ĕ̵͚̺̜̭̥̤̽ – EC, Liz and Jas

|| This week, we did a g̶̛̞͚̬͈̠͖̺͕͔͚̲̩̬͗͗̒̉̋͊͐̉̅̈́͝͝l̵̛͚̤͆̍̏̃̇̈́̕͝ị̶͇̰͓̘͚̤̹͒̄̈́̀̏̓̃̄̐͐̕͠ͅt̶̖̹͎̣̦̩̪̣͌̚͜ç̵̜̦̣̩̲̩̲̬͎͈͌̀͐̂̆͒̑̍̒̓͆̓̓h̵̢̢̟̬̲̼̦̬̰̰͊̊̑̍͂̽͂ project in class!! We selected a photo of ourselves from our previous Collective Body project and surrender them over to our groupmates to destroy them, essentially creating a g̶̡̛͔̬͍̼̻̞̩̳̲͚̯͔̱̟̐̏̀́̔̋̏̉̄͋̋̂̓ļ̷̙̫̭̙̠̦̖͚̞͑́͆̀̿͋̎̎͗̚ͅi̵̧̨̧̢̜̦̭̫͔̫̖̠̎̆̿͒͗̈͒̋̑͘̕͠͝͠ț̴̨͕̺̘̲̘͛́̀́͆͆̏̑́͝c̵̘̍̏́̋̂̀͗̾ḣ̷̨͓͎̦̱̯̦̲͚̅̂̈́̍ ̵̢̨̢̥̖̹̭̦̻͙͈͒̾̑̋̉̎͑̓͜m̸̛͉̱͔̤̞̱̩̠̫̍͂̈́͆̓̎͛̕͘͘̕ͅa̷͚̪͕̞̽̀̓̎͋͜s̴̛̠̙̦͇̪̯̻̠̭̞̞͑̆͛́̏͗͛͐̕͜͠t̴̨͔͇̞͇͖̦̟͇̦̭͚̥̯̓͐̋̈͋̈́̈́̚͜͠ẻ̷̞͕͖̖̖͉̄r̴̢͖͍͉̤͉͐̔̕p̸̛̱̥͇̲̗̤̼̹̝͋͛̔͆̏̀́͗́̎̊̔͐̕͜͜į̵̢̡̮̠̰͚̬̮̻̹̹́͌ḙ̵̡͙̳̥̩̠̝̓̈́͐̃̉̕͜c̶̢̛̘̦̬̜̾̾̒̍̋̐̆͠e̷͎̥̲̥̝͐̔̑̃͒̈́̎͌͌̔͋̚ 😀 This is what my friends made me into:

 

An accurate representation of my internal state.

They know me well.

Like, Favourite and Subscribe!

|| Hello World! (2008) by Christopher Baker is a audio-visual wall installation that comprises of over 5000 videos taken from social media websites like Youtube, Facebook and MySpace. Each of them are a personal video recording from an individual to an imaginary audience (vlogging = video + blogging). The collective motley of voices that results can either seem meditative or overwhelming to viewers who choose to dwell and immerse themselves in the experience.

 

Hello World! (2008) by Christopher Baker.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9mhAEMu7io

Since cameras have been incorporated into mobile devices, increased ownership of the latter would also mean an increase in possession of a camera. Coupled with the increased accessibility to the Internet, more individuals now have the power to participate in social sharing online.

 

“Some forms of computer-mediated communication can lower barriers to interaction and encourage more self-disclosure (Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002; Tidwell & Walther, 2002); hence, these tools may enable connections and interactions that would not otherwise occur.”

– NB Ellison, The Benefits of Facebook “Friends”.

Hello World! fundamentally displays the innate need for social sharing in humans. This behavioural pattern can also be observed in Murmur Study, another work by Christopher Baker, which materialises the abundance of status updates which exist online which may not be directed to anyone in particular.

 

Christopher Baker laments that the experience of social sharing may not be totally reciprocal since people are not taught to be good listeners as well. If we manage to achieve a considerable balance, perhaps more beneficial collective actions can be born from online conversations.

 

Resources:

  1. http://christopherbaker.net/projects/helloworld/
  2. The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends’’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites
  3. http://christopherbaker.net/projects/murmur-study/
  4. Murmur Study video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtDoS2Ab0s