First and foremost, I think that Rose Bond and Matt Adams live by a different set of ideology whereby their project stemmed from.
Rose Bond
Throughout Rose Bond’s career path, she seemed to be focused on one main element which is the projection of animations, since 1982, her major work was animation and since then, she never left that field until now. We could clearly see the progression of technology within her work as she started out painting on 16mm clear film using vibrant color and it was done frame by frame painstakingly, I was really impressed with hard work of her work as I recently started to tryout doing animation to incorporate into my work which was done digitally that was so much easier than physically painting onto a small film, it was however, still tedious and this was the result that I’ve got from many hours of work.
Therefore I really admire Rose Bond’s passion and perseverance for doing such complex and long animation on a small film. As the time goes by, she shifted to digital animation and along with the support of better projectors, she could produce a larger, more vibrant piece of work onto building to catch the passerby’s attention, which I think is really effective as a form of art.
Matt Adams/Blast Theory
In Matt Adams work, I was more impressed by various field of technology Blast Theory used in their work, there was a high level of technological engineering required to complete each work and I was amazed by how every details worked together, it seemed that their research done and planning was superbly executed and there must be many contingency planned before the actual execution to make sure that every work flows like how it should be expected, since their viewers is usually also the participant, it is really difficult to anticipate what will they do, and as Matt Adam said:
“There will always be people trying to break your game”
yes, no matter how well the project was made, there will always be chance that something will go wrong, and this is why backup plan or recovery plan should be always thought before the execution as I think that a faulty installation which is obvious to most of the viewers, will not be a good installation at all. I got inspired in this by Matt Adams and I should really incorporate contingency plan during my planning stage for FYP so that I could be prepared if something goes wrong or spoils, it should be able to be repaired during the show. *Note to self – Include Maintenance and Recovery in Project Planning for FYP*
In Every of Blast Theory’s work, I was awed by how every project seemed simple to the eye of the viewer/participant but the work done to put these “seemingly simple” systems was so well thought, like Karen for example, as a user, it seemed really easy to navigate around the story just by clicking and especially from the start, the reaction of Karen was expected, but like as Matt Adam said, as the story progresses, Karen would bring back the choice made from the past which will surprise the user when they were caught off guard and this was also used in Can You See Me Now? whereby the user was supposed to put their username as someone whom they hadn’t see for a long time and while they play their game and forgotten about it, the “catcher” of the game will called their name(which was their friend’s name) and the player will be caught off guard by having the name appearing suddenly in which reminds of their friend. Such small task like inputting information into the system could be used in such a way, the thought placed into every small details was what made the project great when build on a fully functioning technological system, in short, the technological system is the base structure of the skyscraper, and the height of the skyscraper will depend on these well thought details.
In Conclusion
I think that Rose Bond and Matt Adams/Blast Theory was the type of artist that I mentioned in my first FYP post,
Rose bond is those artist that knew what she like, locking into just doing related project and tried to master the craft of animation and projection mapping.
Matt Adams/Blast Theory is those artist whom ventured into an unexplored territory, doing something new every time just wanting to see how much boundary(social and technologically) they could push.
If I were to choose my future, both artist is great and it’s only my preference, but I would like to become more like Matt Adams than Rose Bond as I think I would be really bored to do similar things for many years and also I really like to explore stuffs on my own.
I personally think that this is a really good read and it seemed to me that Kim Goodwin was writing from the point of view of a designer within a product design company(product could be tangible(physical product) or intangible(service or digital product). As in the corporate world, there will always be a team of people weather big or small, who fulfills the different role within the project like designer, engineer, marketing and so on, this information about designing human-centered product within the ecosystem of structured company would be really useful when we graduate and step into the real world. As of for now, we not only have to understand the role of the designer(which was covered in this reading), we too, must learn everything from the engineering(the coding/construction) to marketing (pitching/selling the idea) prospect that will lead to the completion of a project.
The Design Process:
In terms of project planning and management, I partly agree with the chart which the book is focusing on, the “Process”:
This chart seemed really logical, but I think that in real life designing situation, the research and project should be happening simultaneously.
I drew this chart as I personally think that it would be rather inefficient if we were to plan a project before doing any research regarding it, normally during research, there would changes made to the project which will drastically change the planning of the project or even scraping the idea due to really similar product already existing in the market without prior researches. This is why, I think that the safer way is to research and plan simultaneously to avoid wasting time, effort and resources.( As mentioned in the reading – Project Planning is happening “Before dedicating resources to a project”.)
Research, the good old research.
I always think that research plays the greatest part into designing,
“To solve a problem, you must first understand it. Good research helps you make the best product definition and design decision later on.”
I totally agree with this sentence as a research well done will not only help the designer to understand the situation better, it will also help them to understand what resources is available to them which will help them to complete the work in a more efficient manner. For example, sometimes, outsourcing the productions of parts might be of a better quality at cheaper price and faster than to produce them in house within a certain company, and this information could be found during the research.
In Summary
I really think that this will be a good guidance to creating a human-centered product or services if I am to read the whole book, by reading this chapter, it gave me the rough idea of how to plan for the planning process, as I did not previously know that we were supposed to think about implementation of support to our project/product which we are making.
When I was reading the Principles, it mentioned that “Does it help your user to accomplish their goals?” and ” Will it help the users minimize their work?” as the evaluation of weather a supposed principle is both true and applicable to the problem in front of you, these evaluations are indeed wonderful, however, not all products and service were designed with maximizing user’s convenience in mind, how about in situation where the customer is not the user, do we take the end user or the one who is paying the bill into the consideration?
In the situation of selling service as products, having the best service(above user’s expectation) at the reasonable price would greatly increase the perceived value and customer’s loyalty to an extend, and so is a good marketing strategy. If a good marketing strategy is being considered during the planning phase but not as an after thought (like now we have a good product, but how do we sell it?), could the marketing strategy be seen as the product itself?
I found the Thoughtful Interaction Design really enriching and there were many useful ideas which I could learn from. Although Lowgren was specifically mentioning about the topic revolving “Designing digital artifact”, like he mentioned:
“Interaction design refers to the process that is arranged within existing resource constrains to create, shape, and decide all use-oriented qualities (structural, functional, ethical, and aesthetic) of a digital artifact for one or for many clients.”
Thoughtful Interaction Design?
Good Design?
I did some research about Jonas Lowgren and his main area of expertise includes collaborative media, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials. He focuses on the digital world and “design” to him is very different from how I interpret it. He places huge emphasis on the “digital artifacts” while I am for the inclusion of more than just that. I think that his concept of thoughtful interaction design could definitely transverse from the idea of just within the digital world into the physical world because not only do we interact with the “digital artifacts”, we also interact with the “physical artifacts”, take for example, a normal physical door. By not placing a door handle on the top corner of a two meters tall door, it might seemed commonsensical, but that is “Thoughtful Interaction Design” to me.
I think that for an artifact(digital or physical) to be an amazingly-thoughtful-interaction-designed, it has to be design with the consideration of all targeted user, how and where will they use the artifact, and account for the safety while fulfilling the expectation of the users, the specification of the client, and when it goes above these basic of an artifact, it has to inspire other designers to follow or “copy” the system or the ideology behind it while simultaneously, the original designer/company would improve the existing design and strife for a better version because nothing is really perfect,
Working with design means that you continuously need to define and redefine what you think of as good design. It is a never-ending process of thoughtful reflections.
And when something was brilliantly designed, not only the customer wants it, the competitors(existing or potential) would want it too.
The iPod Generation 2
I think that the iPod classic 2nd generation from 2002 was brilliantly designed in the aspect of thoughtful interaction design, it had also changed people’s life drastically, even though it was not the pioneer of the iPod series, nor the one that made the biggest leap in sales, I personally think that the 2nd generation iPod classic was the breakthrough within the realm of interaction design, not forgetting that there were many iPod generations to come after the 2nd, each had their multiple system updates and then upgraded to the next generation and then came iPod touch, which gradually evolves to the latest iPhone X. (Just to be clear, I am definitely not a supporter of Apple and even dislike it as a brand, but their product marketing and system design sure is amazing.)
The biggest change that apple made from the generation 1 to generation 2 was the inclusion of Windows system for syncing the songs from iTunes, as the biggest downfall for generation 1 was that Apple forces the user to be running an Apple computer system to be able to use the iPod, this resulted in the potential user who doesn’t have an Apple computer to be excluded. In Generation 2, Apple included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user’s music library and transfer music to the iPod which made generation 2 the first iPod for Windows.
I always think that the ipod were magical in a sense that the circular touch-sensitive wheel, these were really the thoughtful interaction design that was mentioned in Lowgren’s book:
Design work is given form and structure by designer’s own thought, consideration and actions.
These circular touch-sensitive wheel was designed in the consideration as of how they marketed the iPod: to”put 1,000 songs in your pocket.”(which was really ground breaking during that time). The designer took the system advantage(also the limitation) into consideration… Imagine that the iPod does not have the circular wheel for the user to scroll through the song list, and the user did have 1,000 songs, how long or how tedious would it take to click the down button or the next button to go to the 499th song in the list?
With the circular wheel, the user could easily scroll through the list at great speed by spinning the wheel.
The whole form and aesthetics, material used, hardware, software, even till packaging, was well thought of for the optimal user experience, the size is just right to be carried around in the pocket of jeans (target audience demographics placed into consideration), the placement of the screen and the directions was ergonomically constructed so that user could use it with single hand operation, back light of screen vs battery life were well balanced to have good visibility and above average battery life so that user could use the iPod wherever they go and it should last long enough until the user could charge it(understanding the target user). Every aspect of the iPod was efficiently designed to suit their target audience. And by watching the advertisement from that time, it is rather clear who the target audience was.
and then came this:
Young active hipster.
In Conclusion.
I think that through the eleven pages of reading, this quote impacted me the most as a designing student,
“We are all living in a world almost completely artificial and designed, and every new addition, every new design adding to this world has an impact on how we experience the whole”
(I like how it goes from a designer’s perspective to a user’s perspective here)
“Design is about shaping the world we live in by creating the conditions” and “it means that you influence people’s work, leisure, and everyday life.” It let me realize that we are actually living in a world that is partially ran by designer, every thing we saw, every thing we touched, was designed by someone at some point of time. We, the designers in making, may hold the power to change the everyday life of the people we’ve never seen in our life.
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.
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
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:
We played Scissor Paper Stone in the third space and ended up having all of us showing our palm.
We merged our faces in the third space.
The four of us walked in sync and filming either the merged face or our legs.
Bao saw me and I saw Bao, its a feeling of relief to know that both of us made it back in time
and the moment we finally grouped together, this was a magical feeling back then and in the video wall.
We had Broadcastception
and we went into a weird dance unscripted.
I wiped the rain water off my phone and accidentally minimized the broadcast, and it gave me a 1.5 second jump ahead of time. luckily this was at the end of the broadcast.
we did the old phone swap thing that we did in the test, only much more fluent in it.
The images flow from one frame into the other frame. its wonderful.
and lastly, to end of Telepathic stroll, we made the probably world first Facebook Live Panorama Broadcast!
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
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.
even if we have another device to watch, there will be minimum of 7 seconds delay.
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.
Co-Broadcast will have the quality dropped.
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
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.
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”
Andy Warhol
AndyWarhol in Second Front Performance, also notice the Campbell soup can in the background which is the reference to one of Andy Warhol’s famous work
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!
Bibbe Hansen thought the network conversation was fun.
Liz Solo thought the network conversation was fun., even though she was lagging. LOL
Patrick Lichty thought the network conversation was fun.
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!!!!”
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
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.”
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?”
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!”
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”
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.
although it seemed really easy, but for a first timer, it took some time away from me.
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.
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)
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 
– Playing charades through the work. From the video 