Mobile Cam Exercise 3

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For my part on the symposium performance, I decided to focus my camera on this area, which is the wall that is next to the basement lift lobby. The wall consisted of posts written by many students, which I found to be quite interesting as they are all part of a big conversation.

It also hints at my location (the unknown “here”). Audience may catch sight of keywords that will give them an idea of where I might be. It is interesting to note that my username in Adobe Connect during the symposium was “here”, an automated name given to me once I log on.

w r now[here]: Cyberformance critique

Having a chance to participate in this cyberformance is definitely one of the highlights of Media and Performance class. By being the key performers of this segment in the symposium, we can better understand some of the concepts illustrated in class regarding performance art and the third space.

w r now[here] allows us to work with a real cyber performance artist, Helen Varley Jamieson. Rehearsals and preparations were connected through Adobe Connect, in true virtual fashion. For two weeks, we went through rehearsals using our mobile phones, testing webcams and our connection settings. Even though the performance takes place online, it is also crucial to take into account real-life circumstances. One of the most important points to take note during our performance was not to show our faces or to show each other. Taking that into consideration, my classmates and I had to make sure that our starting point, the “nowhere” are relatively far away from each other. There were a few of us situated at every level and corner of the school. Eventually, we have to meet in the lobby to slowly make our way to the theatre. This part of the performance was rather tricky as we were already gathered in a group. Yet, we took care to remain out of each other’s viewfinders. It is quite fun and required some improvisation: some of us pointed our cameras to the ceilings, some focused on other people in that area, and then some of us kept our cameras focused on one object. I think we succeeded in this area, after looking at our performance on Vimeo.

Another key point to note is definitely the technical difficulties faced. The university network was down just minutes before the performance was to go live, and we had a little collective moment of panic. Thankfully, the technical situation was fixed quickly. During our rehearsals and our mobile cam exercises that led up to the performance, we also encountered various technical failures such as unable to log in to Adobe Connect. Fortunately, all of us performers were located in the same space during the day of the performance and we made use of the same connection during the actual performance, so we didn’t have these issues.

One important takeaway from this performance was my understanding of some of the artworks discussed in class. For weeks, we discussed about cyborgs, the body as an instrument, the telematic embrace and the third space. One of the works I critiqued in this class was Robert Whitman’s American Moon. After the performance, I felt I could understand Whitman’s work better. Here’s a description of the work from the syllabus page:

“Whitman created a multi-dimensional theater environment that gave viewers differing perspectives on action taking place in a central theatrical area.”

I would liken the sectioning of the audience in Whitman’s work to our webcams during the performance, especially during the moment when we gathered together at last in the theater space, our cameras pointing at the audience.cyberformance1

 

The audience became part of the work, forming an interesting multidimensional collage. I felt that all the concepts covered during the first half of the semester culminated in this moment during the performance, and I thought it was an absolutely amazing to see how it all came together to form such an interesting piece of networked performance.

Mobile Cam Exercise 2

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Canteen 2 at 3pm is the best place to be, and my favourite place in school. I did not choose a location in ADM because I think there is no place in school better than canteen 2. I particularly enjoy being at the alfresco area at 3pm for the warmth, after being cooped up in classes at the air conditioned ADM building. 3pm is also a good time to have a meal for the post lunch crowd had dispersed and it is a beautiful time to be enjoy and appreciate the dishes that the stall holders put together: my favourite is having a korean bibimbap as the lady is not as hassled and rushed as she becomes during lunch time, and she arranges the ingredients of the bibimbap thoughtfully and neatly. The alfresco area is a nice place to enjoy an ice cold coffee and writing about the things. This is my favourite place to be in school.

Mobile Cam Exercise: we R here again

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Mobile Cam Exercise: we r here[now]

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It was rather challenging to work on the mobile cam exercise due to connection issues. Diana and I have tried communicating at two different places: she’s at home and I’m in school. We both decided that we will try this exercise with wifi and not data plan to ensure a more stable connection.

The first screencap is from our communication which lasted for a few minutes before Diana disappeared (second cap). I also experience lag in connection. I was at the ADM cafe area and walking around a lot to test the stability of wifi. It is not too bad, and I hope this works just as well on the day of the symposium!

The next few caps were tested on my data plan on the bus to school. It’s pretty stable, although i must comment that the video quality is much more pixelated on data plan.

Micro-project V: Desktop World

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This is my desktop. There’s nothing on my desktop at all for 2 reasons:

a) Everything on my computer is on Dropbox.

b) I like to open my laptop and be greeted with an image I love, without any icons blocking it. I also reduce the applications in dock to those that I use most frequently. I did this illustration during the summer break of 2014 and it’s one of my favourites. I was at a bar with my friends and I had an especially good time. I went home and did an illustration as a memory of that night – to me it reminds me that summer breaks are absolutely the best: having a good time with my friends, and having all the time in the world to do what I love.

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Here’s my real “desktop” which is my main Dropbox folder. It’s very cluttered and I only do a clean up after the semester ends. Everything bit of data I have is on Dropbox. I can’t do without Dropbox and with it, I can work effortlessly on both on my desktop computer and laptop. It also saves me the trouble of constantly backing up my information on a portable disk. If my computers happen to crash, I don’t need to worry too much about the loss of data as well as everything I’m working on is always being saved and synced with the cloud server.

 

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The “Projects” folder is probably the most important folder on my computer with all my life’s work.

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Some projects that I am working on: the first is an illustration I completed for a magazine. The second one is my blog archive which I recently collated for my final project in this class as well as my Visual Communication core class.

So here you go! My desktop world is my workplace – a really busy and cluttered one.