Internet Art & Culture – Page 2

Research Critique: The World’s Longest Drunk Sentence

Throughout this work of Douglas Davis, the scroll wheel on my mouse worked particularly hard. Good job scroll wheel, good job.

I really like the ending for me in The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence as I’m unable to click the next page due to the black screen at the end(not sure why), the font size just gets bigger and bigger and it goes from readable text to graphical image flashing on the screen.

The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence is an art which is really similar to the Hole In Space as the main gist of both the artworks was to create a platform for people to interact with each other and when they do, the participant/viewers of the platform became the performer which prompt more participant/viewers to response hence having the number of participant/viewers/performer to grow exponentially. The only difference was the medium- Hole In Space was the communication through video call while The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence was the communication through texts.

In this essay, I will focus more on the medium rather than the content even when there are many interesting quote that I really liked, the contents are not a good instrument to analyse this wonderful piece (It’s like quoting a few conversation in Hole in space and say the Hole In Space is good because of it.) As the phrase “The Medium Is the Message” Contrived by Marshall McLuhan in his book Understanding Media: The Extension of Man(1964), the characteristic of the medium is as important as the content itself and without one, neither could exist. As McLuhan said –

“content of any medium is always another medium”

and the basis of text is speech, the typist convert their speech into text on the screen by typing, the text then get transmitted to other screens, the reader reads the text and then forming the speech in their brain, text is just one of the medium that transfer thoughts from one person another.

The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence is a medium for the participant to type in any language with only one rule- No Period(which got hacked later). This “No Period” rule made this artwork really interesting, as The Period is to denote the end of the sentence, which serve as the start of a new one. By removing The Period, the boundary that announce who is the author of the sentence got eradicated and hence, even when all of the participants are just writing with much individuality, the piece could only be seen as a huge, shared text like the Microsoft word developed Artificial Intelligence, got drunk and having chatter with itself non-stop, which is what made The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence really fun to read.

It was very stimulating even while participating as only a reader, for a moment, I was thinking “Is this a new writer? oh wait, its the same one as this one” and then without a stop, bombardment of a new thought by another writer. I feel that The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence is a medium that was made to reflect on life, every participant could not control or change what was typed in the past and the future but can make changes to the present if they contributed. It also reflected how human conscious are, the way that all these words are without The Period, the recalcitrant brain and our train of thoughts without a stop button, there is no Period to block the madness going through our mind, sometimes there are beautiful poetry about flower, next there will be poultry scolding vulgar. It is these unpredictability that made The World’s Longest Collaborative Sentence as well as our life interesting.

OBS Livestream Documentation

I Am Unable to embed the video here as I posted it directly to the NTU OSS Facebook Group, Hence.. >> CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO IN NEW TAB<<

Initially I wanted to tackle on the idea of multi-tasking by having doing many task simultaneously while on live, but after watching BOLD3RRR by Jon Cates, It gave me an idea of having multiple prerecorded videos in the live stream and produce a piece that is slightly chaotic due to the amount of events happening on the screen of the viewer and with sounds from the recordings disrupting my live speech. Originally I wanted to have multiple cameras, one filming me from the front, others will film from other angles like from the back of my head, side view and such, however I’m unable to find my additional webcams I had. So I resorted to having a share screen from my phone whereas my phone is usually unlocked and in the “auto play mode” of some sort of game and recently it’s Pokemon Go so I wanted to show it as part of my life.

Before the stream

I’ve recorded 3 grid of 15 minutes each on different days but I wore the same shirt to give a illusion that it all happened at the same time. Since I’m using my desktop which does not have a webcam installed(my laptop keep crashing), I stuck the USB camera onto a small tripod and placed it in front of me.

In my 10 minute live stream

As I said, I will talk more after the first class assignment,

Note to self: I should talk more in the live video.
-Zi Feng, 21 Aug 2017.

Although I am really bad in English and don’t enunciate words properly, I tried to narrate like living in a third space and interacting with the recordings which I dragged myself in the third space to describe what’s happening on the screen, I remembered that during our Adobe Connect lesson that when the camera is flipped, I had a hard time coordinating my movement so I flipped the live camera(only the live is flipped) to make it a mirror. Also, I am not sure if there audience but went ahead and asked if the audience could hear me, Makoto replied but I only saw the reply about 5 minutes later. (Should check comments more frequently, now I know)
“Live” me flying over to point at “third space” me

The reason that I used this Youtube video from TrainerTips was because it was his first live stream of the series and I was watching and recording it while he was on live. The basic idea is to use a Live streaming video streaming me doing things Live in my Live stream, its like a Live-Streamception.

And then something happened as mentioned by Makoto when he was an audience during the live stream.The top right(pre-recorded) and bottom right(live) goes to the desktop at around the same time and you can see the changes that happened on my desktop within that few days.

As mentioned by Alvin’s comment in my previous post, Gesture is an important factor in communication so I tried to incorporate hand movements into the live stream when I was explaining about something. I was talking about how Korean manga is usually in a long strip format but the website which I read it(MangaFox) cut it into a page format.

Throughout the 10 minute of live, I am kind of lost and got mind blank multiple times, guess this is the cons of going live but also the beauty of it- the imperfections in realtime, I also asked the audience if there is anything they could recommend me to do and I think there were no audience during that point of time so I ended the stream soon after.

Lastly, I think that the future live streams will be posted to my timeline and then shared to the OSS Facebook group because posting directly to the OSS group prevented me from showing the video in this post as the OSS Facebook group is a closed group.

Special Thanks to Makoto and CherSee as they were my live audience and reacted to me during the live stream.Thank you!!! =D

BOLD3RRR Reflection: GLIXCH#^D

Bold3RRR by Jon Cates was a magnificent piece that explored the eccentric way of glitches and recursivities, I found this piece really amazing due to the fact that it was a live streaming and the effect were rendered in real time.

Bold3RRR seemed to me like Jon Cates had planned to give the viewers a sense of cognitive dissonance by establishing it in a non-linear way whereas the message was cut up into parts and overlapped in the later part of the live stream. Jon Cates used our sense against ourselves to trigger a perception of chaos by employing our two main senses – auditory and visually to oppose each other by having them interjecting in a juxtapositional manner which produces a discord in our perception of Bold3RRR.

Auditory, Jon Cates uses noises which we usually associated with glitches (static noise, clicking sound, distortion of speech etc.) and having parts of the dialogue being cut and looped on top of the speech along with the bombardment of sound recordings, phone ringing, QQ messenger notification and “glitch sound” in the later part of the video to intercept the clear dialogue and make it harder for us to understand what Jon Cates were saying.

Visually, there are 3 variety of scene in Bold3RRR,
1) A clean frontal video of Jon Cates in full screen,
2) Typographical rendering of the script and project title of the programs being superimposed to the screen capture of the program/google maps
3) A Glitch scape

Audio and visual coordinated really well but only synchronized on rare occasion where the speech matches the frontal video like at the start of the video and only happened a few times throughout. Other than that, we could hardly acknowledge any connection between our senses when we were bombarded with multiple dialogue of the same tone, “glitch sound”, phone ringing, messenger notification, images and text flashing on the display. Jon Crates knew that he was going to work very much on the recursivities and glitch effect right at the start of the video where he said

“I want to reflect, on real time… I want to reflect on real time renderings. I want to reflect on real time renderings”

This got me thinking after watching Bold3RRR more than twenty times, why did he said that three time? It was not a replay of the same audio clip three time, it was him, saying it three time. Then I got the conclusion that this was the motivation as well as the goals which Jon Cates have for Bold3RRR, Jon Cates was playful towards the technology and saw the human quality in real time glitch and wanted to reflect it into Bold3RRR by the means of using, overlaps, recursivities, distortion of speech and sensory overload which impart a sense of wonder and surprise in a form of “Dirty new media” which is now known as glitch art.

Glitch happened when we have imperfections in the program and it produced results that were unexpected by the programmer. While there are many people who would prevent glitch as much as possible, artist like Jon Cates embraced the parts where these imperfections occurs and explored into these glitches which generated unpredictable artwork by inputting digital information like audio or visual sample into it which seemed to be the underlying “biological” character of our digital world otherwise seem to be the least organic commodity around us. By putting the inputs into a glitchy system, it seemed like the glitch had gave birth to a whole new entity which the offspring is disparate than the parent (the input and the glitchy system). Glitch is also like a crack in a system that will generate unforeseen outcome which represents the imperfections in the system and unpredictability in human nature and Bold3RRR reflected on the idea that there is a human quality and organic character in our digital new media through real time rendering show how human always lived their life- that there is no turning back in time, once it was on live stream, one mistake and the whole audience will see it and there will be no retrieving of the mistake.

Overall, I was inspired to use pre-recordings in the production of live video to produce result more than just what a live video could ever do, Jon Cates had multiple of source file readied before the live skype stream and pumped them into a glitchy system which mashed them up together in the live performance to form Bold3RRR the way it is – eccentric yet captivating.

Adobe connect reflection

I think that our lesson on Adobe was really fulfilling as it really enhance our understanding in the third space. I think that the fact that we could see ourselves in the screen act as a reminder that we should really act appropriately when the webcam was turned on. It was also a great way to have a lesson especially when the lecture would set ground rules that we need to respond when called, this was a really well thought way to make sure that we are paying attention at all times.

The part which I enjoy the most was the last part where we did a collaborative performance which we were supposed to join up with the person beside us to make something interesting.

I also love the part that we could chat in the chat box during the lesson which gave us a form of entertainment as we were joking in it.

Overall, this was a really fun experience for me and i am sure that we would definitely do this again over the normal physical class that we are always having(for other module too).

Research Critique: Hole in Space

Image result for ms-dos — The best computer I could ever buy in 1980 look like: MS-DOS. GIF from https://archive.org/details/msdos_shareware_fb_MDCD10.ARC

If I imagined that I am living in 1980 where the best computer I could ever purchase(if I am even rich enough) are only running on MS-DOS operating system, a period which the first computer that runs graphical user interface only appeared 3 years later(Apple Lisa), and I heard that I could talk to someone else 4800km away- face to face, real-time, I will not believe it until I went down and have the random someone from 4800km away replied to what I said.

This is how insanely amazing I think that the work Hole-In-Space was, this work by artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz was so forward in the time where the audience(also became participant) were not prepared for it and since during the 3 evening of the work, there was no signs or sponsor, no explanation was given to the work, it definitely struck curiosity within the passerby thinking :”Wait, What is this? is this a screen? *stares at someone and he stares back* Hmmm.. *Wave and the person wave back* HOLLLLLYYYYY SH*TTTTTT ITS MAGIC!!!!”

This made me wanted to see how the work was back then and I found a Youtube video of the work which was really interesting in how people communicate through the work.

“Its just, umm, television like telephone, right? …. What a revolution it’s gonna be eh?”

– Random guy from the video A Hole in Space LA-NY, 1980 — the mother of all video chats (8:40)

People were singing, playing charades, finding their family or friends.– Playing charades through the work. From the video A Hole in Space LA-NY, 1980 — the mother of all video chats (13:20)

I think that the fact that the work was placed there for only 3 days with no explanation was just right because on the second day, there was news reporting and on the third day, people were calling their family or friends and asked to “meet-up” over the Hole-in-space this escalated to a big crowd holding signs shouting and screaming, and the whole situation started to get chaotic. The Hole-in-space has the power to bring people closer psychologically(definitely not physically), family and friends saw long lost friend, strangers interacted with each other they normally wouldn’t and this was evident in the reading Welcome to the “Electronic Cafe International”

“Los Angeles’s Korean community and black community traditionally are at odds with each others. As they met and got to know each other through the network, they wanted to visit each other!”

Welcome to the “Electronic Cafe International (Page 349)

That people could gain understanding through meeting in the third space where people could react to each other. Seeing each other face in real time was essential in people opening up due to the fact that they know they are protected from harm however in the reading,

“Still, a person is offended when the virtual-space hand “touches” body part that wouldn’t be touched normally “in the flesh.” In virtual space, we learn the extent to which we “own” our body image”

Welcome to the “Electronic Cafe International (Page 347)

This made me goes to deep thought that since our virtual image are just a group of pixels that formed on the screen, therefore “our” virtual image does not exactly belongs to us, but to the owner of the screen, but is that ethically correct? Just because that these pixels grouped together to look like me and I will go”This is me” while pointing on the screen, but are they really me? Human’s way of possession are too weird.

Back to the topic, I think that Hole-in-space was an amazing work which turns all the viewer into a participant and through it, the interaction between the first space and the third space became a part of the art as people not only talked to people 4800km away, they also talk to those who were beside them and formed a connection due to Hole in space. These participants enable Hole-in-space to transform into a platform for collaborative performance art where all viewer became the art work, without their participation, the Hole-in-space would just be a piece of work that film people walking past the street in a window.

Lastly, I think that Hole-in-space enable people to see the potential in technology which shrinks the distance between people when used appropriately. It filled people with hopes in the future’s technology.– Contented Participant. From the video A Hole in Space LA-NY, 1980 — the mother of all video chats (26:46)

Research Critique – Here Come the Videofreex

I started watching the video with intention of finding out what made them revolutionary in the field of broadcasting, then I notice the common theme that they had since the start of the video throughout – They were persistently breaking the laws and social rules while being driven by their passion to finish what they started.

like how they stole the tapes from CBS 29:34 to 30:50 –

I think its the spirit in them that they film everything regardless of being good or bad, they will document everything and they felt like they had the responsibility to do all of those for the people and the future generation like how they mentioned here –

“There was a Political Obligation that we had to these people, not to let CBS have them.”

and during 48:26

“It was Necessary for us to go to these place where history was being made and to say : Lets have that alternative record.”

The Videofreex were going out of their way to get the record for the people (even committing mutiny against CBS and hijacking the show) and this sense of being a part of something bigger was an important factor for them to go on for such a long time even with measly wages. Because of these, they were doing things that weren’t done by others during that time especially during a period when America was relatively in chaos which many demonstration were happening and Videofreex were not shy in covering the events from within the demonstration and even getting beaten by the police. Plus, Videofreex were covering on topics like Abortion and Death, which none of the mainstream TV would do during that time.

All of these set them apart from the mainstream TV and I am sure that many individuals were inspired by them for the actions they’ve done. With the portability of the Sony Portapak, paired with the guerrilla way of filming which gave the insight of an event happening, anyone could potentially be someone important that document the history, this slowly grew into the need of having a smaller video recorder to make it more potable. Videofreex had revolutionized the way news were being reported from being an “third party observer” to “First party participant” which could be seen in the news where the news reporter traveled down to the place where the event were taking place (e.g. chinese new year, tsunami aftermath) and report straight from the place.

Lastly, keep playing and experimenting with these things like Videofreex and you will get somewhere. For me, I think that anyone could be a social broadcaster, but those who are willing to take the risk for the things that they have passion in will become a legend.

I am Bonnie, The Next Pokemon Master. (Alter Ego/Video Double)

My First idea Diden’t work, but I’ll do documentation on it….

It took me a long time to think of someone to base my Alter ego on, I really wanted someone who is very different from me, relatively well known and have some comical effect, and after a long period of researching what Alter Ego is(from youtube), someone flashed across my mind….
KIM….
KIM….
KIM JONG UN.

Yes. This.Not to be disrespectful to the Respectable Supreme Leader Of North Korea. I kind of love him and thought that I could draw some similarity between us…. Black hair with similar hairstyle, Asian, double eyelid, protruding ears, I may be able to pull off some similarity and could impersonate him with ~~some~~ a lot of ~~makeup~~ prosthetic fats and makeup on, some tape on the eye(classical stereotypical joke). First I will get my hair slightly shorter.Hair cut (sideburn fade) – Done

Next, Style my hair:
Roughly~ will put more gel to press it down after the makeup, Done for now.

Next is to cover my thick eyebrows… I’ve Tried Makeup(Foundation,Cover base, Consealer and BB cream, I don’t know what they does and all seemed to be the same thing but I was told which order to apply them) which I borrowed from Su Hwee and it doesn’t work as my brows are too protruding and the makeup does not hold them down. So I hair gel-ed my eyebrow down and use Plasticine (I blended many colors to produce my skin tone) mixed with Vaseline to give it a mud like consistency and applied over my eyebrow, which I thought it would work.
I’ll makeup over it and draw fake Kim Jong Un brows later.

Now some Fake Cheek Fats:
I thought it look OK now as I should be applying makeup to my whole face later to cover the noticeable color difference.

And then comes the Fake Double Chin:
Fake Double chin supported by using metal wires within the plasticine and with rubber bands holding it at the back of my head, but then…..

FAILURE DISCLOSE!

Up till here, everything look promising… until I tried to blend the Fake Double Chin onto my face using the Plasticine-Vaseline mud mix.. it does not stick to my face if I move even a tiny bit. So I removed the idea of double chin and proceed to the makeup.

Expectation:

This is a Kim Jung Un Impersonator Kim Jung Um

Reality:
My eyebrow cover fell off while I was finishing with the make up, the Fake Double Chin doesn’t work, I look more like a (failed)Geisha than Kim Jung Un……
I am shook and decided to give up on this idea.

And the comes Bonnie.

Bonnie is a Female Pokemon Trainer from the Kanto region of Japan. Trying her best to become a Pokemon Master in the future, She had received her first Pokemon – Bulbasaur 3 days ago from Professor Oak and is currently on a journey to Pewter City on her quest to defeat all 8 Pokemon Gym leaders to earn the right to challenge the best in the region- The Elite Four.

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

Why did I decided to do this weird thing?

First, Why a girl with weird voice?
I wanted to have an alter ego of myself as someone I’ll never be, biologically and psychologically speaking, I will never be a girl but I thought it would be really funny to be a girl temporary, at least in the digital space.
Aaaand about the annoying-feel-like-punching-cancerous voice, I am seriously sorry, that’s the best I can do, if I retake 5 time, 5 times you will want to punch me. But I told myself after the previous live video that I will try to speak more in the video so Bonnie spoke for me.

And then why a Pokemon Trainer?
As the extension of the previous reason, someone I’ll never be.
Pokemon doesn’t exist regardless how much the Pokemon community wanted it, they are only virtual. It was my childhood game, I’ve played almost all of Pokemon’s main series and still plays Pokemon GO now, it’s a childhood fantasy that still lives within me- Travelling, Exploring, catch Pokemon, breed Pokemon, meet new people, fight them, ~~take their money after beating them~~ and be the best like no one ever was.

Japanese?
Japan was my dream destination since young so it’s still the number one country I want to visit. Nipon Banzai!

What’s up with the setting?
The location was set to be somewhere grassy as there need to be tall grass for the wild Pokemon to appear plus Bonnie is on a journey to the Pewter City. I’ve been to this place 2 years ago, both side were tall grass and apparently they chopped off one side now and Bonnie’s sad(lesser wild Pokemon for her).

It is a good place to film this as there will only be passerby occasionally. There’s basically nothing there as it was a train track which stopped working in 2011 and got removed afterwards, so its good for me to do this man-in-wig-blasting-Pokemon-music-shouting-go-Bulbasaur-in-a-cancerous-voice thingy.
I got the oldwig from my mother and that’s the only one I could get, the cap is a Pokemon Go- Team Valor cap, the orange hoodie and the headphone was to give Bonnie the anime feel.
If you watch it without voice, its kind of good actually, and this was from a NG try.. I did a few tries and the one I uploaded was the best… just imagine how ~~bad~~ cringey was the rest.

Best part of this 1 min live video…

The video was SOOOOO ~~bad~~ Cringey to a extend that it might be good.

And this is the first time I saw this in my facebook feed cos I don’t have many friends…..

So if you happened to stay till the end of this long post, here’s a bonus photoshopped photo for you.

A picture speaks a thousand words, but with Photoshop, it tells a thousand lies.

Real Time Aggregation.

15 min of randomness in adm

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Thursday, 17 August 2017

Before the Live Video:

This was the first time I did Facebook Live video and I felt like a cave-man that doesn’t know how does it even work, I don’t even know how set my profile to public since I’ve set it to private years ago, I had, however, took part as an audience for the Live video of my friends and kind of like it due to the fact that people reacted almost instantly on the comments I’ve wrote. But the idea of going live on Facebook was really scary for me as I did not have the confidence to produce quality video which people will like, what if like there is totally no viewers? And also there are people who I am not very well acquainted with in my friend list and I don’t feel good putting the live video where they will probably not get what is going on. But Oh well~ What needs to be done must be done.
*clicks the red button*

During the Live Video:

At the start of the live video, I was really lost and did not know what to do so I followed my classmate out of the class room and was feeling weird as my friends are all taking happily to the phone but I’ve got nothing to say so I only filmed them in silent. The anxiety of putting myself on the web Live slowly dwindle down as soon as I saw our IM juniors, since they are from IM, it feel like there is a connection with them just because I knew they will be doing this the next year, just like how I saw the Senior Nathanael did it last year.

And then, I’m surprise that my first viewer on this live video was also Senior Nathanael, I’m touched that at least someone was watching so I went to say hi to him in the video, at this point of time, I did not know about the function to switch the camera(because I’m a caveman) so I turn the phone physically to show my face, I had no intend to show my face at all as I planned to just film what is happening without showing myself but it just happened naturally.

After me exposing myself in the video(2:23), it feels OK since I’ve did it once and broken the barrier of videoing in a third person, suddenly my phone became something which I am interacting with, (so instead of me using as my phone to record and tell a story, it developed into me talking to the phone and the phone just extended itself from “part of me” into “a separate entity of me”. which is really bizarre as all I did was to show myself in the video and my perspective changed so much.)

After going around looking at what the second year was doing and semi-introducing what I was doing and filming others, it came to a point that I started to do random things and became numb on the fact that people will judge me while I am on live(my anxiety before the start of the Live video), I think this is partly because:
1) People around me were doing the same thing.
2) I’ve did it for a couple of minute and slowly getting used to it.
3) The pace of live video was fast and there wasn’t time to pre-think what to do.
4) The viewers were commenting on random events which gave me a feeling that I am not alone.
5) I felt like I have some responsibility in entertaining the viewers.

Therefore I did some random(disturbing) acts just because I could.(Just to clarify, I don’t go around squeezing people’s butt in real life)

I thought it was funny, and now looking back, its still kind of funny albeit the creepy movements. Just what the heck am I doing. LOLLL

And then I proceed to do normal activities like walking around, talking to people and trying to introduce ADM to the viewers whom are not from ADM like my Ex-classmates and such.

I also really like this part where I was filming what CherSee was Filming and he was on the front camera while I was at the back camera so I could see myself in his screen and I am recording myself recording myself like a video-inception (left), but from the video which he uploaded(right), its only a one way video which he only shoots my face trying to get into the center of the frame while filming him. This is really mind boggling and cool in its own way as both of us are having live videoing it feel like it is a real-time magic or something.

At the end of 15 minute while I was walking back, I went back to the IM Junior table and I only notice the difference when I rewatched the video. I was filming myself!! Comparing to when I just started this live video where I was just filming the juniors, Now I am in the video showing myself to the public. I was talking much more in comparison. (At the start, I was just waving to them without saying Hello and only briefly reply in short sentence about the live video, and towards the end, I am just talking aimlessly.)
*Thanks Bridgel, Tisya and Sylvester for entertaining me.*

At the end of the video, I got a slight panic when I stopped the video as I am afraid that I would do something wrong which accidentally delete the footage since it was live, there is no way which I could replicate it again if it was deleted so somehow, so a live video felt more precious to me than any other video I took.

After the Live Video:

Prof Randall showed us the 4×3 grid video wall of the with 12 of our videos playing at the same time, I love the way that everything overlapped but the non of the video’s time frame was in parallel (the same exact event happened at different timing on the video wall) and it is totally uncoordinated, in a sense, it is chaos, but the rhythm is there within the chaotic mass which made it much more interesting than just looking at one single video at once. The visual and audio of all the 12 video was overwhelming and just when I am focusing on a single video within the video wall, suddenly I heard something interesting happening and I will glance around to find which video produced the sound as there must be something interesting happening in it, this gave me a sense of treasure hunting.

In Conclusion

I love the way that our individual 15 minute effort was placed together to form “something greater than yourself ” piece of work. This 15 minutes of live video was really fun and enriching, it somehow changed me and gave me some confident in the future Live video that I will be doing. At least I won’t start with the Live video with anxiety and getting lost right after I clicked the red button.

Note to self: I should talk more in the live video.