Self-directed research essay

My method

Almost all my work start with grabbing an emotional moment or fragmented thoughts, memories, which important to me; or sometimes, I use piece of me (my personalities; my behaviors...) then, process it and interpret it in my work. I frequently ask myself why and where those feelings and emotions comes from? And will try to answer this question in bigger context in order to investigate the relation between my personal experience and media theory, group conciseness or phenomenon stand behind it.

critical examination of my own work

For me, the value of artwork contains two important factors. The first one is rather personal: whether the work and the creating process satisfied my eager for emotions and expression release. This important factor is my motivation of creating. The second one is about communication and interaction: I believe that the value of an artwork start at the moment when viewers and audience approach to it and the message of the work has been delivered, in my case is memories and emotions.

Description of recent work - Monolog Machine"

Monologue Machine is a self-communication machine. A machine like human being constantly talking to itself. It simulate human mental statues as self-examination.

Monologue Machine generates sound from reading the change of lights. Then, generates graphics from its sound and read the changing graphics again in order to keep generates sound.

The machine has two parts: one hacked TV set and eight light dependent resistor connected to Arduino board.

Eight light dependent resistors receive lights and through a programmed Arduino board translate the light value into musical scale and send this sound single to a hacked TV.

The hacked TV screens generates black and white trembling lines feeding back to the light dependent resistors in order to keep generate sound single create a non-stop feedback loop.

In this circumstance, it creates a data loop which read, process and generates its own data again and again.

However, the sound and graphics changing every time the machine processing the data.

The only variable make it constantly change its sound and graphic is something we called "noise".

Randomness and unpredictbleconditions and environments. It will keep updating the content of its own talking.

Description of recent work - Dust Narrative

Dust narrative is a 10 minutes 47 seconds audiovisual work I have been working on this Trimemster. The visual part of this work is made of 6593 frames of dust which I have been collecting and scanning manually for two months. I use those dust images as sequence of animation playing in 30 frames per second editing with some digital video footage in the background, in this case those dust not longer stays as still images, but appears as flickering and moving particles. The Intensive visual elements and visual information of this video allowed me to apply "Pulfrich Effects" to create 3D illusion. I made a special glasses which has one darker filter over one eye in order to create 15 milliseconds delay of signal transmission for one eye. (visual system latencies are generally shorter so that the visual system responds more quickly.) In this way, this 3D effect create an illusion for the viewer that the flickery dust movement slowing down and flowing horizontally in space.

The sound part of this work including recorded sound and computer generated sound composed together in separated left and right stereo sound channel.

Quote:

“Originally we had in mind what you might call an imaginary beauty, a process of basic emptiness with just a few things arising in it. And then when we actually set to work, a kind of avalanche came about which corresponded not at all with that beauty which had seemed to appear to us as an objective. Where do we go then? Well what we do is go straight on; that way lies, no doubt, a revelation. I had no idea this was going to happen. I did have an idea something else would happen. Ideas are one thing and what happens another.”

-- John Cage, "Where are we going? And what are we doing?"

For me, John Cage always hold a tendency toward an ambiguous and uncertainty aesthetic. I am inspirited by that. The soundtrack for dust narrative. I use environment noise and combined with electronic noise and minimal style melody. To create the atmosphere of ambiguous aesthetic. The feeling of lost and immerse into dust, however, at the same time have the feeling of seeing something (moving traffic, crowd, street lights), but lose it again after few seconds.. Everything is in between: lost between 2d and 3d; analog and digital; real and fake; virtual and actual. Don't know where you are what are you looking at, but there is no way to escape.

The inspiration of my work and research related to it

My fascination towards "noise" start with my biking experience in a windy and heavy snowing weather in Rotterdam. Intensive snow flares coming towards my eyes with strong wind. I can't see the road ahead. Everything is white and blurry and flickery. My sense was weaken at that moment. I can hear Traffic is passing by. But I don't know which direction they are heading. Coming towards me or passing away? At that moment I feel like I am in another dimension. I don't know where I am. Where I am heading. I am seeing and hearing intensive information, but somehow I feel lost, experiencing silence and void. This experience trigger me to think how we process intensive overload information. Not only in physical world, but also online virtual world. The quick way of browsing; different realities and multiple identities we are frequently switching not longer new to us. When intensive information keep overloading to certain level which beyond we could process. We lose our concentration and ability to understand. In other words, those information become noise to us. When we have everything in front of us in a fragmented way, at the end we have nothing. We are confronting to the fact that our world and ourselves is divided into multiple copies because of overloaded information fragmented realities we are facing every day. The notion of fragmented and overloaded information lead me to the topic of noise, pre-mediated experience, multiple realities, fragmented online information. And, start to investigate what kinds of psychological and sociological impact this delusional and sense of lost orientation react to this noisy overloaded information could bring to us.

An eassy Web Video and The Screen as a Mediator and generator of Reality written by Robrecht Vanderbeeken selected by< Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube> mentioned how this fragmented intensive online information virtualize the truth and how the public constantly observing without digesting information.

“For the most part, our browsing attitude seems to prevent us from putting clues together: we gather bits and pieces of information, but forget to come to a conclusion. In a way, the surfer’s experience often mimics CCTV. We are constantly observing everything, everywhere, but the incentive to reflect properly and respond accurately to what we are seeing remains absent. we keep on clicking, investigating, searching for new information, until we forget what it was that we discovered. We tend to ignore the uncomfortable truth. Or we resign ourselves to it, as one of the many dissonances of life. In sum, as a democratized medium, web video takes part in a process of the virtualization of truth. Ultimately, this leads to a situation of schizophrenia: a lot of hard facts circulate freely, but on an individual basis it is hard to accept them as such. The mediation of truth seems to have shifted from manipulation, to fragmentation, and finally to castration.”

Dust

1- the physical body of “my noise”.

2-the trace of being, evidence of existing

3-trace of our multiple identities

4-element of creating my own interpretation.

One day, I start to clean my black coat with a transparent sticky tape. When I look at those small dust particles through sunlight. I realized this is "the body of my noise". Dust always be considered as something unwanted, annoying or unpleasant. Dust use belongs to something meaningful, like sweater fabric or human skin ... However, when it scatters into small particles isolated from their systems. They become dust flowing and spreading around us. Finally, end up inside vacuum cleaner and threw away. The process of gathering dust for me is collecting my life in a fragmented way or finding a trace of being, evidence of existing.

When I am scanning and digitalizing those dust. I start to wonder: once I digitalised those physical dust. What is changed in the process? What those digital copies stands for? I am using those dust images as an element to creating my own world, my own reality to present to audience. However, I am using digital copies. A mediated material which never has been over-mediated before - the "unwanted insignificant dust". This idea of mediated something insignificant and use it as an element to interpret my own realty immediately attract me.

In the eassy Web Video and The Screen as a Mediator and generator of Reality, Robrecht Vanderbeeken believes that The screens mediates our perception of reality, and it generates another reality in a new, mediated environment. Web 2.0 invites us to ‘immigrate’ to virtual worlds, first via funky avatars and later with our Facebook ego-profile, real-life interaction is delegated to a virtual substitute. editing, uploading, sharing, poking, connecting, replying and updating, our digital presence entails a vast amount of interpassivity: first-order experience is postponed, or even replaced by virtual activity.

Indeed, we are living in the age of multiple realities, we put our self-copies, identities and mirrored self into different realities (online or offline). As I mentioned above, the dust is the trace of being in physical world, then what about those other realities we put ourselves into. If every virtual realities is the mirrored image of physical world. Whether virtual world also have dust? The trace of being we leave in the virtual realities? As we have multiple identities in online social platform so that dust also followed us into those multiple realities. Imaging those blogs, user account we registered years ago, but never log in again. It is unwanted it is isolated and flowing on the World Wide Web. However, it is our trace our evidence of being just like dust in the physical world. Whether I could use the digital version of those dust images as a metaphor and emphasis of being and present in virtual world? At that moment I realised the dust project have potential of further development.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that the dust and noise piling up in both realities (online and offline). The simulation and manipulation nature of those realities change into fragmentation. Facing extremely intense data and confined within a complex mixed reality which full of noise, what left to our psychological experience is silence and void. Without any focus and direction and expectation, we forgot what we were searching for, we just keep browsing into those noise. Expectation and context is absent, we feel totally detached from either world. Left in between, end up nowhere. Generated the sense of detachment from either worlds. Immerse into dust. We couldn't see. It weakened our sense organs. We are facing the void not freedom or self determination. We feel lost. And, this will go on. We have to accept the truth that the world we experienced not only "the one" any more. There no freedom neither imprison. All we got is extremely noisy and silence and void. In short, sooner or later, every user will become socially and psychologically confined within a complex mixed reality. Either lost or immerse into noise and dust.