Before the start of this module, the idea of social broadcasting and Live streaming was really intimidating to me and I would probably never do it unless there is reasons that I must, and this module was the reason. After 6 occasion of going on live and broadcasting, it is still intimidating for me to do so, maybe this was the beauty of it, the realness aspect to the Live streaming which made it frightening and interesting.

In the first lesson, we had Real Time Aggregation 

which was also my first facebook live ever. And I was ferociously dropkicked out of the comfort zone to produce my first Live video ever, but through it, I learnt how to use the Facebook Live function properly and upon inspecting my piece while writing the OSS post about it,I notice a few pointers which could be used in the future – to talk morein the video and also the function of switching the phone’s front and back camera, both of it greatly influenced the way the second Facebook Live assignment – Alter Ego : I Am Bonnie whereby Bonnie was born. This was my favorite piece I produced due to the reaction of the audience, Bonnie was well loved(hated) by many!

Lets Start by going through our Critiques

Learning from the past to create the future was always something which I believed in, we did the Videofreex, Hole in Space, BOLD3RRR and world longest collaborative sentence critiques. Out of these, the Videofreex and Bold3RRR had influence immensely in my approached of live broadcasting. Videofreex taught me that for us to create something that is really unique and legendary, we have to put ourselves in a situation where we are outside of the comfort zone, taking risk and breaking rules sometime would result in peculiar outcomes.

I used to think that “Broadcasting” was a concept that I’ll film anything I wanted and put it on broadcast where many audience could view it at the same time, this changed after I saw “Here comes the Videofreex” – in the video, they transit from a “group that film and broadcast however they want” in their early work to the work after they shifted to lanesville where they had their local community to participated in their broadcast, this changed from “I film and you watch” way of broadcast to “Lets create a community and be in this together and we will all enjoy the process” concept. This is where the “Social” in Social Broadcasting” comes in.

And then, comes BOLD3RRR which contradicted everything I just said.

BOLD3RRR is a piece that the artist do whatever what he wants, producing an artwork which hardly make any sense if you watched it once, but is that a good piece?
Definitely!
The fact that I am more captivated by BOLD3RRR than any other Critics we had done in this course… But why?

Because Logic doesn’t explain this piece, there is no visible theory about BOLD3RRR, Jon Cates is a unique artist that made all his work heterodoxically, he not conformed into the mainstreams and social restriction, he produces them as he sees fit. This was what made his work amusing to return to, every time I re-watched BOLD3RRR, I gained something new from it as if watching it for the first time.

Videofreex VS BOLD3RRR in the battlefield of social broadcasting

So, there is two extremes in social broadcasting – something that have the audience to participate in the broadcasting as the SOCIAL Broadcasting, and something that the artist do however he wants and the audience will have mixed emotion as the SOCIAL Broadcasting. Any one of which is better than the other? I don’t know, it is only the matter of preferences. For me, one made sense but I only watched once and that’s it(BORING). another was a total nuts but I watched more than 30 times and still cant fully get it(AMUSING).

What about Hole in Space and world longest collaborative sentence ?

Hole in Space and world longest collaborative sentence are two piece which were really similar. The main artwork was the audience’s intercommunication and what the artist did was to create a platform for the audience to interact with each other. Is that Social broadcasting? Sure it is~ the social(many people) aspect is there, the broadcasting(many viewer on the same time at different place) aspect is there be it the communication medium was through video or text, their essence were the same.

Back to the work I did.

OBS livestream was an evolution for me after BOLD3RRR enlightened me to use pre-recorded clips into my livestream to give it an unique look that many events were happening on the screen at the same time and the audio from the pre-recorded clip will cut into my current live speech. This will slightly disorientate the viewer(I hope) and having them to listen closely if they were watching just like how I did with BOLD3RRR. I also lived up to what I said after the Real Time Aggregation, where I will talk more in the future and getting out of the comfort zone.

Lastly was the Cross Stream -Intoxicated along with the Cross Stream Technical Test.

In this Cross Stream, we had the abstract approach and it will be alright if the user does not understand this piece as we do not want to be conformed into the mainstream idea of broadcasting and wanted to try exploring what we wouldn’t otherwise explore. Our objective was to disorient the viewers by progressing the level of drunkenness through sound, visual and camera movements, all of these were inspired by BOLD3RRR where he used the glitches paired with pre-recorded audios and visual as part of his live stream just like what we did in our OBS stream.

 

In Conclusion

I think that there isn’t one best Social Broadcasting solution that could fit it all as Social Broadcasting come in all platforms and mediums, it is impossible for us to pinpoint what is the purpose or the appearance of Social Broadcasting, it could be in video format, text, audio and I am sure it will soon be possible to broadcast with all the senses(like touch or smell) in the near future . The only common parallels which I could draw from all the critics and my works is that – Social Broadcasting is to communicate and there is no best method for communication. We could simply(arguably) say that, shouting in the public is a form of social broadcasting.

 

Through this half of the semester, this GIF speaks a million words.

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”

-Brian Tracy

 

Critics:
Videofreex,
Hole in Space,
BOLD3RRR,
world longest collaborative sentence

Work:
Real Time Aggregation,
Alter Ego : I Am Bonnie ,
Adobe Connect,
OBS livestream,
Cross Stream