Category: Internet Art & Culture

Telepathic Stroll Final Project with SuHwee, Makoto and Bao

I really like the outcome of our Final Project very much.

This is the link for our video wall, Video Wall on Third Space Network

This is a Screen Record of the Video Wall on Third space Network.

 

And This is What I did before the wall was made in Premiere Pro to get a general feel of what it will look like and to get the exact timing to start each video in the video wall.

 

Lastly, this was my Individual Facebook broadcast, Just to re-emphasis on the point, what made our project really interesting was the video wall, every individual Broadcast doesn’t seemed like much, but when we are linked with the rest, we will produce a piece that is much more than itself.

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Friday, 10 November 2017

we are the third space and first space performers.

The main purpose of our project planning was to begin with the end in mind – To present the four broadcast in a video wall that will be interesting for the viewer to watch, we will be the third space performers by having our broadcasts interact with each other in the third space. Our final presentation in class will be a live performance and I am not taking about the fact that everyone will watch what WAS BROADCASTED LIVE, nor all the audience in class will be watching it in THE PRESENT, but as the timing to click start each of the video must be precise to the miliseconds and will not be replicable when anyone play it again by themselves later as Telepathic Stroll will look vastly different if the time to click play each video are slightly different, so we are making a Live Performance by playing the four video in a way that we think it is for the optimum viewing sensation.

how did we perfected our timing even when not being able to see each other?

This is the reveal of our broadcasting secret! GET READY! CLEAN YOUR EARS(EYES) AND BE PREPARED! We called our system the….*Insert drumroll in your mind*

“THE MASTER CONTROLLER”

so… what is the Master Controller?

Basically, it is a well crafted sound track that is 23 minutes which consist of drum beats that worked like a metronome for syncing our actions and careful instructions to tell each performer what to do at which exact moment and every performer has a personalized sound track because we are doing different task at the same time.

How was it made?
It was made in Premiere Pro and a web based-Text to Speech reader and I screen recorded when it was reading to extract the sound from it into Premiere pro. The whole process to create the soundtracks took more than 18 hours and I’ve lost count of the time afterwards.

 

So how does it works exactly?
On the basic Idea, we will have the instructions preparing us and telling us what to do like “Next will be half face on right screen. Half face on right screen in, 3, 2, 1, DING!” and we will have our actions/change of camera view being executed on the “DING!” so that all our action will synchronize.

It started when we were at the meeting point where we started the sound track at the same time, counting down to 7 minute to walk to our respective starting point and wait for broadcasting to start, first, I will start broadcasting and then Makoto, SuHwee and then Bao on a 5 second interval, this was done so to allow us to have control when we play the four broadcast in the class to achieve maximum synchronization, if we started the broadcast at the same exact time, we could not click play on all four video in class which will result in de-synchronization. After started the Broadcast, we filmed the environment which was to remove the difference the timing from 30 seconds to 15 seconds depending on the time we started the broadcast and have everything happening afterwards at the exact same time.

Afterwards, we will have different actions at the same time, like when Bao and me entered the screen, Makoto and Suhwee will be pointing at us, this was done by giving different set of instruction in the Master Command at the same time, since each of us could only hear our own track and there will not be confusions among individual and clear instructions were given although I was confused for countless of times during the production of the Master Command because I have to make every command clear and the timing perfect, and it includes countdown on certain actions but not those repeated actions. The hardest part to produce was the Scissor-Paper-Stone part in the broad cast as everyone was doing different actions at the same time

at the end of the scissor paper stone segment, we all synchronized to the same action of the paper and Bao and I were counting on 5, so we all were showing our palm.

Towards the end of the Broadcasting, many of our soundtrack was specially instructing us to pass the phone to a specific person like Bao will have it saying “Pass the phone to ZiFeng. 3, 2, 1, DING!” and “Swap phone with Makoto. 3, 2, 1, DING!” this was done just to avoid confusion during our broadcasting rather than going “pass phone to the left” which is quite ambiguous.

Overall, there was a lot of planning and every details must be thought out carefully when I was making the tracks because every small mistake will affect our final presentation to not as good as it should be, I am lucky that I only made one mistake in the Master Command which was the direction where SuHwee and Makoto will be playing their Scissor Paper Stone with and we clarify it before our final broadcasting.

On the actual day of our broadcast.

The whole week will be raining according to the weather forecast so we did our final broadcast in the rain, luckily for us, the rain wasn’t too heavy and we could just film it in the drizzle. We started our broadcasting dry, and we ended our broadcasting wet.

We explored Botanical Gardens for a bit and decide the path each of us will walk and we walked it 3 times before the actual broadcast – the first time we walk when deciding where and how it will be like, second when we walked back, third was right before we started the broadcast as we walked 7 minute to our starting location so our first 7 minute into the broadcast will be us walking back the same path in the same timing.

we did a latency test by broadcasting a timer for two minute right before the broadcast and we could make some minor changes in our timing if there are some latency issue by calibrating the individual Master Controller to the latency before hand, but luckily for us, non of us were lagging and we had the best connection possible so there was no need to re-calibrate the Master Controller. Also, just to mention, Since Bao and I were having calibrated connection due to the previous Telematic Stroll (NOT Telepathic Stroll), he doesn’t have to calibrate with us again since I am doing it, so we filmed his phone ‘s timer.

Some recap of Telepathic Stroll:

 

our project inspirations.

Telepathic Stroll was highly influenced by BOLD3RRR and our lesson on Adobe Connect.

On the First glance, one can see the similarity in the association in Adobe Connect lesson with Telepathic Stroll, we had been pointing to the other broadcast, merging faces and trying to (act) interact with each others in the video wall just like the exercise we did during the Adobe Connect lesson,

This was the seed for our project, to live in the third space and interact with others and have a performance by doing things that is only possible in third space like joining body parts and point at things what seemed to be on the same space when its actually not in the first space.

In our discussion before the final idea, we had many different good ideas that was inspired from music videos like this:

In the end, we only used minimal passing of object (our face) in Telepathic Stroll and we grew our idea from a Magic trick kind of performance to an artistic kind of performance.

I feel really weird to have many of my project in this semester being inspired by BOLD3RRR, not in a sense that the style or the appearance or even the presentation, but in the sense of the preparation and the extensively planning before the Live broadcast as I always liked good planning that leads to good execution which I am really inspired by BOLD3RRR in this, especially in using pre-recorded track and incorporate it into a live broadcast to make it blends into the live aspect of it. This time, instead of using pre-recorded tracks and image over the broadcast like in our drunken piece (which was also highly influenced by BOLD3RRR), we evolved from this idea to using a pre-recorded track in the background for us to sync all of the movement even when not being able to see/hear from each other.

In our multiple occasions of class assignment which we went Live on Facebook, we figured out many limitations of Broadcasting

  1. If you go Live, you can’t watch other’s Live unless you have another device to do so and if you can’t watch others live while broadcasting, two way communication is relatively impossible.
  2. even if we have another device to watch, there will be minimum of 7 seconds delay.
  3. If you co-Broadcast, you can see the others in Live, but if we are doing a performance and yet we discussed through the co-Broadcast, since we can see each other and the viewer could also see it and this is not the effect we want in our final project.
  4. Co-Broadcast will have the quality dropped.
  5. There will be possible lagging in the connection that will cause the “!” during live and skips in the recorded playback. This must be overcome by all means.

This is why, doing individual broadcast with careful planning and our Master Command system will overcome all of the limitation we faced and with the calibration before the final broadcast, most of the problem were solved.

our idea of Social Broadcasting

In Telepathic Stroll, we are trying to present the idea of social broadcasting in a way that is like the real world social – the collective social,

In our individual broadcast, we could not know what the other was doing nor feeling, yet when we are placed together in a location(both the physical and third space), we could interact with each other and do amazing thing that individual can’t do. In Telepathic Stroll, even when just doing our own task without knowing the status of each other, by doing these individual task collaboratively, We united as a group forming as a single unit, every member is as important as all of us and if any of us were removed, the whole structure will collapse into a Problematic Stroll, nothing more than just an individual broadcast

If that wasn’t Social, what is?

Team Telapathic Stroll: Signing out.

 

 

Telematic Stroll to the Sunrise.

First of all, we did not want to use the Facebook Co-Broadcasting function as our goal of this Telematic Stroll is to test out the system for our final project(there will be four broadcasting at the same time and none of us could see what others are doing, yet we will form a piece together.) ANNDD MANNNNNNN~~ THIS WORKS SOO MUCH BETTER THAN EXPECTED!!

Telematic stroll

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Monday, 6 November 2017

This was the Broadcast which I did and viewing it individually doesn’t seemed like much, its just a random walk-around video which wasn’t impressive at all.

But when linked it with Bao’s Broadcast… Things get a little more interesting.

 

  1. Both Broadcast were not edited in any way except for putting them side by side, if we create a video wall and play it directly, it will be the exact thing.
  2. The video were done on the spot through Facebook Live without any feedback of the other Broadcaster available to both of us, we only know what we were doing while unable to see the other party, even if we do, there will be a 7 second delay between broadcasting and watching live.
  3. In conclusion, This is Magic.

But how are we doing it? It’s a secret for now and we shall keep it until our final project. For now we are still improving our system and you should just take it as it is a MAGIC. TADAA!! A sense of wonder for a viewer is what we wanted to achieve. 

This is our one and only try. Most of the times we were uncoordinated and we did not discussed what to film beforehand while there were mistakes made everywhere throughout the broadcast and we did some of the mistakes at the same time which made it seemed intentional, making it even more magical.

To point out some of the wonderful MAGIC we did.

In this Telematic stroll, we had found out what problem there is during the live broadcasting and will improve it for the final project, also, it had been a really long time since I woke up this early.

When I left house, the sky was still dark and it reminded me of my future.

 

I really like this random shot before the Stroll.

After the stroll, when the sun finally rise.

we checked the timing for sunrise and it stated that it was 6.47a.m, but the actual sun came up only around 7a.m which is when we finished our Telematic stroll.

Luckily for me, right after we finished the broadcasting, it started to drizzle. And did I mentioned that we were supposed to do on Monday morning and we woke up at 5a.m. and it was raining so we postpone our stroll, it was really lucky for us that it wasn’t raining on Tuesday morning even when the weather forecast said would.

Finally, I am REALLY impressed when I put the video next to each other, they worked really well and there is improvements that could be made and we all learnt from it.

 

 

Networked Conversations With Second Front Review.

This was a eyeopening Network Conversation with five of Second Front’s member – Bibbe Hansen, Liz Solo, Doug Jarvis, Patrick Lichty and Jeremy Owen Turner  This Conversation was HIGHLY advertised on Facebook by Prof Randall, and I found it really funny that the artists(Patrick Lichty) commented that they sensed danger in it and Liz Solo and Bibbe just found that comment funny and went along with it.

During the live stream, when there was a technical error when Prof Randall disconnected as a host and many disconnected together, I was lucky to remained in the chat room with a few of artists still streaming, they were really excited about the technical error, they Laughed Out Loud and being really thrilled about the fact that “Every where they go, they would crash the system.” JUST WHAT HAD THEY DONE IN THE PAST? I am also really amused with Bibbe with her animated personalities that she felt like a 8 years old kid in a 60 years old body where she gets excited fairly easily.

It is really interesting to see that the artists viewed their Second Life character (Avatar) sometime as themselves and sometime as a separate entity where they would mention what they did in their performance with “I” but also gave third person introduction to their Avatar during the introduction in the Network conversation. I guess they see the body of the Avatar as a separate being but shared the psychological, intellectual, emotions, conscious and all intangible aspect that made us human with the Avatar, this really seemed to be similar with the movie “Avatar”(2009 film) where the “Blue Avatar Thing” shared everything with the main character except for the physical body, and when Second Front logged out of the Second Life, the character will be inanimate and lose their “body” until they logged in.

On the upper half of the poster are the faces of a man and a female blue alien with yellow eyes, with a giant planet and a moon in the background and the text at the top: "From the director of Terminator 2 and Titanic". Below is a dragon-like animal flying across a landscape with floating mountains at sunset; helicopter-like aircraft are seen in the distant background. The title "James Cameron's Avatar", film credits and the release date appear at the bottom

They also mention about the identity within Second Life where they did a work in the past by interviewing the people in real life and recreated the information they gained and place it directly into Second life, They would also change their Avatar appearance to replicate the other member’s Avatar and place a tag with the name of the character they copied and act as them for some time, also to add to this identity within Second Life, Second Front found it really interesting to place unsuspecting Real Life people like Andy Warhol into Second Front’s performance, as mentioned

“There was a Fluidity of Who was Where and Who Was What In Second Life”

Anyone could be anyone at any place, there was no clear boundary of what you can be in Second Life, this was what made Second Life so intriguing to a point that people lost themselves in the game.

 

Throughout the Network Conversation, Second Front talked about topics which were really got me thinking about the third space performance, as they are moving towards the VR, Patrick Lichty also mentioned the possibility that the neuro-plasticity might takes hold, if we gets too engrossed with the Virtual Reality, our brain may be rewired to evolve along with the technology and they briefly mentioned something about Neil Harbisson (I think, my ear-to-brain-to-hand function were not fast enough to write it down, but Patrick mentioned about some guy and I think its Neil Harbisson after I googled) where his brain was rewired because he uses sense that we would otherwise not use in that context, This is why the VR headset will someday affect our visual cortex, and by using VR, isn’t it just putting a screen to the third space right in front of our eyes and transport us directly into the third space? The future will be amazing for sure.

Lastly, I would like to agree the Network Conversation (I cant remember nor did I write down who said it again, and this is not the exact words but what I interpreted and summarized) that

“Performance is all about the body, what if we take the body out, we have emotions, we have feeling.”

When we are in the Third Space, it is real as there are all of what made us human, except the physical body. These panels(the Adobe Connect grids) is a great example of bringing people together through Third Space.”

If there are anything that I learnt from the Network Conversation, It further emphasis that the third space is a very new platform for human to be in and we are still in the process of integrating into it. It may take some time before our brain complete the rewiring so that we can have the thirdspace as a new human sense through the “Evolved neuro-plasticity” which might not even happen, but while the possibility are endless, so why not just learn from the Second Front and to have fun in doing things we all like while enjoying the process of creating something regardless of the end result but only focus on the enjoyment of process.

Nonetheless, the Second Front enjoyed and had fun in the Network Conversation!

 

Final Project Rehearsal

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Tuesday, 24 October 2017

In our final project rehearsal, we are focusing more on the grid appearance and the technical aspect of the overall feel, we also discussed and understand the flow through this rehearsal.

 

In our discussion, we decided on a few combinations like what to film and how should film it, also the passing of phone is rather tricky because we are afraid that we will drop the phone that doesn’t belong to us.  there are many more fine tuning needed to be done, but for now, we will see what these 4 piece will look like together and decide what combination will we do.

 

This is the segment where we pass the phone to the next grid, we hope to achieve an effect that feels like we are moving in a straight line instead of passing in circle, we will only know the final effect when we view it from the grid.

and this, just one video alone wont have any effect, but we hope to achieve a panorama spin effect through this when the grid is out. 

We are just as excited because of the fact that we doesn’t know how the true effect of these rehearsal will be like and we are waiting for a surprise which may or may not be what we would like it to be. The first time we see the final outcome will be the first time our class sees it.

 

 

Research Critique: Second Front

The Second Front performance was extraordinary and unlike anything that we’ve experience in internet art and culture, the performance is entirely within a virtual world(third space) where what was common in the Second Life was totally impossible in the real world that we live in(like physics and such).

To be really frank, I started the research about Second Front by reading the Assignment Post and watching the two video over there, IT MADE EXACTLY ZERO SENSE TO ME, I am like..

WHAT THE SHH IS HAPPENING? WHY DID THEY USE THE HELICOPTER WHEN THE BANK IS RIGHT BELOW THE MANSION? WHY DID THEY SIT ON THE MISSILE HAPPILY? WHERE DID THE MISSILE EVEN COME FROM? WHAT IS THIS FLOATING BALLET DANCER THING?  WHAT IS HAPPENING??
WHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY~~~~~~~~?

“A good piece of art gives you a sense of wonder but a piece of astonishing art make us feel foolish” but I felt really stupid after watching both of the video, because I must be too slow to not get the meaning/message of them. So I carried on in the researches by starting to understand what exactly Second Life is….

Wait… This Second Life is actually a really interesting “Game” that have no boundaries or whatsoever. Users could create their game character anyhow they want, make their character to do anything, build all sorts of structures and items in the game and there are even user using Second Life to raise funds for real life volunteer funding which I think is such a good use of third space as a medium to solve problem in the third world! 

 

Back to the topic of the work of Second Front

I think what Second Front was doing was really amazing as they are all from different country and meeting, planning and executing the performance in the third space while transcending any laws(physic or social) which is only possible in the third space, Grand Theft Avatar felt like a piece that was drove by the inner desire of human, it started with the characters in the “Evil Genius Mansion” with the dramatic music and I think this is a reflection of us dreaming to be a badass in some point of our life like having super power- able to fly, super strength etc. and in the Grand Theft Avatar scenario, they are the “Rich Evil Genius”(rich because of the helicopter which is totally unnecessary) whom disguise themselves to rob the bank with the “Genius brain” that could unlock the safe to take all the Lindens in there, annnnnnnddddd *Plot Twist* they are trying to portray that they are not evil at all but rather acting as the Robin Hood who steals from the rich and “Give” it to the poor as we can see that the money is all scattered from the helicopter soon after they take flight but if it was the money they were after, scattering the money will be the last thing they do.

I really admire that Second Front is an adult group who are really childish(Just to clarify, being childish is a good thing, like child in their heart still survived) and they could make such wonderful performance in Second Life, when I was much younger, I was a gamer who did things which were really similar to the what Second Front were doing but on a much smaller scale, I remembered that I made my friends to wear a set of costumes in the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called MapleSea but in a private server, we dressed up as the Meso Ranger and went around helping(Disturbing) people.

It was fun to be “Someone else” other than the normal character we used in the game and doing something we normally wouldn’t do with the disguise on, this was exactly what Second Front had done in the Grand Theft Avatar.

I would like to quote Alise Iborg  when asked question about the rehearsal vs Improvisation in their work:

If it is better improvised we will probably do that. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

With prerecorded performances, we can fine tune and edit out things we don’t want the audience to see. But with improvised performances, the work takes on a life of its own fueled by the creative energy of our players which really shows through.
Also, many times, it’s the surprises and unintended actions that make the work really come alive!

Isn’t this exactly what we learnt in this module? “Also, many times, it’s the surprise and unintended actions that make the work really come alive!”. Alise Iborg is more likely to have an improvised performance than a prerecorded one (its kind of paradoxical as their work was prerecorded and edited, but the content in it seemed really organic and improvised) and this is the spirit of having a performance(live or not) and if we embrace and accept the possibility that things will not go as planned or even planned to have the unplanned happenings, it would make organic pieces which unique and flavorful due to the shift against logical interpretations.

Afterall, Second Front is having fun making these artwork which some were funny, some were totally illogical, but the main thing which we all can learn is to have fun in the process is more important than having the perfect end result, I am sure Second Front laughed out loud when they were executing their pieces while they were like “FLYYY!! MAKE MORE OF THEM FLYYY!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!”

 

 

 

 

Co-Broadcasting Experience and Thoughts.

This Co-Broadcasting thing is definitely new to all of us!
the best part of the co-stream is that we can communicate to each other with very little lag between in comparison to the usual broadcast where there will be atleast 7 seconds with optimal connections. Co-Broadcasting could possibly be used in our final project as our idea for the final project is to go through the barrier of the broadcase and “appear” on the other side of the stream. When doing our two occasion in the Co-Broadcasting, we’ve got some interesting shots and we tried to build towards our final project.

Co-Broadcasting 1:

Posted by Su Hwee Lim on Thursday, 12 October 2017

 

Co-Broadcasting 2:

Costream test 2 Su Hwee Lim

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Wednesday, 18 October 2017

 

 

This is really interesting as I am shooting SuHwee while she was shooting someone else. it feel like a real time behind of the scene, and SuHwee followed my hand sign in this and it gets really confusing that whose hand is that?

 

Tiffany doing her dance and we somewhat tried to learn afterwards and I zero talent in dancing. also, there is a minuscule lag over here.

 

This is a take from our second co-Broadcasting which we focused on testing for Final project. we did the face merge thing like in the adobe connect.

 

Since we have the same object, we decided to use it as our advantage and “pass” to the other person and merge it on screen so it appeared to connect in the split of the screen.

 

Another Adobe Connect trick, so now our body parts are not limited to spatial restriction and can travel through the third space. (somewhat)

 

This is my favourite part of the whole stream. it looks really good as all the detail matches up, even the hands in the watch are the same(of course, its live at the same time).

 

 

and we tried to synchronize our movement which is REALLLYYY difficult.

 

Lastly, as Makoto suggested, the side profile it kind of difficult but it is really interesting if we can get it to synchronize and turn our face. Which we did and had a relative success 

 

Some Observation I’ve made in the two broadcast.

1 – The lighting is really important, in our first stream, the both video seemed really nice next to each other, but in our second stream, as the lighting is different, it is very difficult for the viewer to believe that we passed the item over since the lighting is way off even when it is the same thing. Like Bao and Makoto’s co-broadcasting, since it was taken in the afternoon, it look really nice because they have similar lighting.

2 – There needs to be communication between both of the broadcasters so that we can coordinate our actions better be simple thing like a count down but we need to think of a way to remove the countdown.

3 – if we want to pass thing over or anything that require the use of the split, we must do it so so both of the broadcaster can slowly merge the object on the split.

 

Overall, there must be more testing for us to fine tune our actions and the difficulty level will be much higher if there are 4 broadcaster at the same time. Maybe one way is that we can use the co-broadcast as a communication tool instead of the final piece so we will have two phone each, both phone broadcasting at the same time while one is in the co-broadcasting mode and another is on the normal broadcasting mode so that we could communicate through the co-broadcast live.

Research Critique: Jennicam

First thing that came to my mind when researching about Jennicam….

It is wonderful that she was doing what she liked by putting herself on the line(ONLINE).. but what if its a ugly man doing the same thing but because he is an exhibitionist, would “Johnnycam” be as worthy as the Jennicam?”

This is just a thought of mine on the thought of “What If” and there will be no clear answer to this.. or is there?

OK Nevermind.

Back to the reality… The critiques.

Jennicam is a wonderful form of broadcast that was developed from a simple test of trying to write a script that takes a picture with a webcam and upload it onto the website, she started to show the website to her friend and slowly, it gained popularity and there is no reason to stop. Then when she became relatively popular, she started to charge a subscription membership at $15 per year, for those who are subscribed to Jennicam, they could enjoy the pictures to be uploaded every 2 minutes while those who are not subscribing, they can only see the new picture every 20 minutes.

Things that you charge people to view must be really exciting so there will be this many audience willing to pay just to see it? NO! As mentioned by Jennifer:

I think if I weren’t normal,  it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

She agreed that Jennicam is full of boring-day-to-day-stuffs and this is what made Jennicam so interesting, because there is nothing extraordinary in it, everything is unscripted and whatever happened on Jennicam just happen naturally and this is the beauty “Livecasting” that Jennifer was the pioneer in.

What might have made Jennicam so popular back then?

I think what made Jennicam so popular to an extent that there were 4million view on a single day at its’s peak was because of a few reason..

Firstly, there wasn’t that much things to do on the web during that time and like our senior Kapi said during his presentation,

90% of the information on the internet was generated in the past 2 years

and I found some source of it for credibility check
It meant that before 2003,(the year that Jennicam ended) the information on the web was so far lesser than 10% of what we have in the current time, this means that the chance of people spending their time on Jennicam are far greater than if Jennicam were to appear in the current time. Also, Jennicam was pioneer to do this online and surely she did gain some popularity because of this.

Next, It gives the viewer a sense of treasure hunting as the selling point of Jennicam was that it is normally boring 99% of the time and there is the 1% which Jennifer would show something that people were waiting for on the Webcam like being naked, having intimacy contact with her boyfriend and she said

“The first time one boyfriend and I did started kissing, the site went down pretty much immediately from too much load”

The beauty of having 99% of the time as being boring and 1% exciting bit made it feel like the good thing are worth the wait, which unlike other webcam strippers, who are naked most of the time so once Jennifer do something out of her ordinary, it will make the Jennicam viewer feel lucky.

Lastly, it feeds on the Loneliness sentiment within people. People who feel alone will feel better if they see someone are as boring as they are in real time as David Letterman said in the video:

“This is really all people want, people are lonely and desperate, they are lonely, desperate, miserable human beings. They are reaching out, they want to see life somewhere else taking place, it’s comforting, don’t you think?”

Yes, I think so too, there are reasons why Mukbang are so popular all over the world.

Jennicam is like a 24/7 Mukbang which accompanied lonely people so that they can see another human somewhere in the world and the more they watch it, the more connected they feel to Jennifer. But this is where things gets weird.. those who are feeling really connected to Jennifer only have a one way connection and they could possibly see Jennifer as a 7 years friend while Jennifer doesn’t even know them. I personally think that this is somewhat similar to fans and idols while some hardcore fans revolve their life around the idol, the idol don’t know they existed. This is really sad for these people whom watch Jennicam due to their loneliness, Jennifer might be all the friend they have in their life, and in 2003, BAM!! ONLY FRIEND DISAPPEARED.

Image result for lonely gif

The Idea of private and public had changed since internet.

In the past, privacy was what was behind the walls and if you close all doors and windows, you will have a private space, but now the invention of the webcam and internet, it opens a window within the private space and on the other side of the your window, there could be countless of viewer who is able to look into the window you’ve opened in your private space and since anybody could just look into your window, doesn’t that made it a public thing since anyone can just take a look and decide to stay and watch it further or just leave?

This is what the Jennicam was doing, she opened a window for 7 years that anybody could look through it, in her own private space but was her private space really private as anyone could just take a look at anytime? Although she said:

“Because I don’t feel I’m giving up my privacy. Just because people can see me doesn’t mean it affects me – I’m still alone in my room, no matter what.”

Yes, she is alone in the room but that doesn’t meant that she got her privacy, imagine that the webcam is an actual opened window and every time a viewer would pop his head on the window and look into her room but can only stay outside.(Jennifer is still be alone in the room) would she freak out? I think she would, at least for the first year.. The biggest difference is that she is unable to see her viewer and have this false sense that she is protected through the barrier of the internet distance. So was she losing her privacy? I think she definitely did since she will have to adjust her life due to Jennicam like when she is having intimidate actions(sex) with some of her boyfriend, they would turn off the light and do it under the blanket, this, isn’t it losing of privacy?

 

In Conclusion

In my opinion, Jennicam is similar yet different from when we do a live broadcast. The Similarity is that both are unable to retrieve what was put on there when the viewers saw it although we could probably delete it afterwards but we are unable to undo what the viewer saw. The difference between Jennicam and our live broadcast is that due to the short time frame of the live broadcast, it is possible to have a general idea of the content within the stream and “Act” upon it but in Jennicam, who we saw is probably who she was as it is virtually impossible to act 24hours a day for 7 years, and we are getting the realest Jennifer as possible.

Jennicam was a work that place herself on the limelight of the internet for 7 years, the popularity she gained might be accidental, maybe she is an exhibitionist who like to show herself naked sometime, but I think that she was definitely lonely because when she wrote her code and uploaded the webcam picture to her website, she showed her friend as a form of attention seeking and she unexpectedly seek-ed the attention from the whole world. Although she did not start with this reason, but she definitely progressed into capitalizing and selling her privacy for some fame and money.(which I don’t think it is negative at all, its really smart to do it!)

 

Hyperessay #1: Concepts in Social Broadcasting

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 

15 min of randomness in adm

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 17 August 2017

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!

I am Bonnie, a Pokemon trainer from Japan. I want to be the very best like no one ever was, to catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause. This is a Alter Ego project for assignment 2, sorry but I hope you don't get cancer from watching/hearing this.

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Wednesday, 23 August 2017

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

Cross Stream Broadcasting : Intoxicated.

Bao as the Mobile Streamer

Cross stream part 2 with @bao

Cross stream part 2 with Songyu Bao

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 21 September 2017

school project: getting drunk with ZiFeng Ong

Posted by Songyu Bao on Thursday, 21 September 2017

Me as the Mobile Streamer

Cross streaming with Songyu Bao

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 21 September 2017

Cross streaming With drunken Zifeng

Posted by Songyu Bao on Thursday, 21 September 2017

 

The concept of our CrossStream was simple, since we know that there will be some inconsistency in the timing of the delay between both live stream, we decided to produce a piece where the OBS(Laptop) user would only react to the visuals of the live mobile stream and create a scenario that timing would not be the focus of the piece, 3 reasons why we produced such an intoxicated piece and totally scraped the idea of the 1st/3rd person view we did in the previous week.

First – By being drunk, the timing will be the least importance due to the nature of intoxicated, people will have a weird sense of time and since we applied filters on the Mobile Livestream, every time the Mobile Livestreamer changed the filter when entering a door, it will be a Cue for the Laptop Livestreamer to progress into the next level of intoxication.

Second reason – The Livestream will be 15 minutes long, and we wanted to have a varying level into the 15 minute to keep the viewer entertained by not having to show/hear the same thing over and over for 15 minutes. Therefore we used the 5 stages of drunkenness to progress the varying degree of visual and audio within our livestream to give it a variance of emotional degree.

Third reason was personal reason for Bao and me, as our way of thinking is usually on the practical side and we could not grasp the idea of abstract, as with the Videofreex whom taught us to step out of our comfort zone, we decided to produce a piece which are relatively esoteric just to explore some of the attributes which we normally wouldn’t, if the audience gets it, Great! If not, well… we tried, and may try again in another approach.

So, Lets talk about the piece in action.

Door 1

The first scene depict a black and white, featuring a guy(me) with shades whom appear to be chill and cool, upon opening the and walking out of the room, I changed to fragmented filter while Bao switched to the second OBS scene where the music started to play along with generally mild graphical art that seems to “morph” into itself with bright solid color with striking contrasting background to represent the stage 2 high when someone is drunk, it turned from a cool and chill environment into the character of valor where the love and hate was showed more distinctively.

Door 2

The Second door transit from stage 2 to stage 3 intoxication, in stage 3, the filter on phone showed the spiral of the background, this is when people gets dizzy and feel like the world is spinning, from the OBS, more intense music was played and the graphic traverse from animation with solid colored background to full screen animation where it felt more chaotic to bring the spinning dysequilibrium to the next level.I also love the part where the effect from the obs spins along with the filter from the mobile streamer.

 

 

Door 3

The Third door transit from dizziness to the start where every thing goes crazy, the camera movement here changed noticeably from slight left and right spin in stage 3 to stage 4 where it is going left and right and the focus on the face is going off, the effect shows the colorful drips and while paired with even more upbeating music from the OBS stream, creating a high contrast chaotic feel.

 

Door 4

Lastly after entering the 4th door, the camera movement became really erratic and not only the camera moves vigorously, both Bao and I are shaking our head violently and we made our self really dizzy in real life. As this is the climax of our stream, the music and the OBS effect exhibits the true nature of intoxication where the world just crumble and it ended in me lying on the ground towards the end and slowly covered the camera to do a manual fade out before ending the stream.

 

Overall, This piece was us, by adding some emotional and eccentric nature into our work was influenced by BOLD3RRR to create a piece which is not suitable for all, but might be loved by some 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 which would be really obvious when placed together.

Some Behind the scene:

Cross Streaming Technical Test (With Bao)

Since the last time we cross streamed during the lesson:

part 2. Adventure in ADM

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 14 September 2017

Video from my phone which I am unable to embed in this post, not sure why but all the setting are the same, >>CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO<<

we noticed that there were two major flaws in the cross streaming system, During that lesson, we used Bao’s Windows Laptop and my phone, both connecting to the ADM internet, since the Laptop were supposed to stream a live video and produce a stream at the same time, we could say that it is downloading and uploading at the same time hence the total bandwidth the computer had was split into two. The biggest problem we found in the cross streaming was that by having the phone connecting to the school internet, every time when the phone goes to a different area in ADM, there will be a short breakage with the connection in the Live video as the Wifi connection changed router, moreover, if the phone Wifi isn’t strong, the quality of the live video drop drastically, The lagginess was amplified by the low bandwidth of the computer, its as good as watching an already choppy movie with lousy dial-up internet, the overall experience wasn’t good.

HENCE! Through reverse engineering, by judging from the quality of the video, we could see which area in ADM have the best internet connection!
The connection in the classroom was the worst. look at the pixelated graphics, I am not moving and yet the terrible quality.
The Internet connection at basement was as bad as in the class, everything was blurry, cant even recognize the people in the video, BAAADD~
The Stairs to the basement doesn’t seem to have good connections and blurry visual doesn’t look pleasing at all.
The Lounge was having generally acceptable connection and hence the better quality
The Lounge’s connection was really stable and the quality is great
IM room got one of the best connection out of all place and the graphical quality was superb even when I was swinging the camera around. (Please scroll up to see the quality of the basement classroom, you will notice a clear difference in the relationship of better internet = better video.)

 

This is why, we will solve it, by hook or by crook.

The easiest problem to solve was when the phone connects to the school Wifi and the connection breaks when the phone switch router among ADM. Since the problem is with school’s Wifi, we tried to use our own phone’s Mobile Data, there was almost no lag and furthermore, the quality of the stream improved drastically due to the faster uploading speed from the phone, resulting in higher definition of the live stream.

Songyu Bao experiment 1

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Tuesday, 19 September 2017

Notice that when I changed zone within ADM, from IM room all the way to the handicap lift near the library, there was no breakage of the connection even in the handicap lift. This, I must say, is a great improvement.

Next, is the problem of watching stream and uploading a stream from the computer and split the bandwidth into two, there is no way around it, the only approach we can do is to find a place with good internet connection and make sure that the speed will be sufficient to produce excellent streaming experience. AND GUESS WHICH PLACE IN ADM HAVE GOOD INTERNET? So, without further ado, we went to the IM room as the internet connection was relatively stable there.

Again, I can’t figure out why the Video doesnt want to embed, so.. >>CLICK HERE FOR TEST VIDEO FROM BAO<< 

but here’s the Screen shot from the video Bao and I Crossstreamed 

Overall through our test, it worked really well with minimal lag and there were no disconnections, quality were much better than we thought and we hope that we could be replicated it during the class.