Month: April 2022

For my final project, I chose to critically explore the topic of advertisements, specifically television advertisements. My inspiration for this project started during our class discussion of NFTs. When participating in this discussion, I began to notice how passionate people were about the topic, whether for or against, even though nobody seemed to have complete technical knowledge of what NFTs were. This attitude was also mimicked when I heard conversations about NFTs with my friends and people over social media. I began to wonder why people were so invested, and I came to the conclusion that people were focused almost exclusively on the consumer aspect of NFTs. People want them so they can own something exclusive, people critique them because they are not real or too expensive, but both these sentiments are focused on the consumer aspect. I then began to reflect on my own opinion of consumerism. I realized that when I was younger, I used to want every toy in existence, and that was mainly because I would watch television so much and be bombarded with advertisements constantly at such a young age. This, to me, was something worth critiquing because of my changed opinion on consumerism. I also wanted to mimic some of the sentiment of Banky’s art which often comments on our society’s obsession with consumerism. To decide how to actually present my  project, I took inspiration from one of our readings, “What is Critical Making?” by Garnet Hertz. The reading states that critical making is focused on “…critique and expression rather than technical refinement and utility”. I wanted to focus on this because I didn’t want something useful to come out of my project because things that are useful are usually advertised, and that goes against my whole critique. Additionally, I knew I wanted to do something with projection, but I didn’t know how. I was inspired after reading “The Poetry of Tool” by Mindy Seu. The author states in this reading, “Digital displays react to the movements of those in front of them—an animism that is met with excitement but no further questioning of its appeal beyond pure novelty. I’ve often felt this failed to make us question how we might interact with digital technology in a conscious, meaningful way. Afterall, technology is only a tool. Better yet, technology is a form of language.” I wanted to figure out a way to execute this display’s reaction to movement, but have it say something, or in other words, speak my message. 

Putting all my inspirations together, I decided to have an installation where an old television would be playing old, black and white ads. In front of the television is a chair where someone can sit down. Behind the person, there is a computer running a Max patch which plays a collection of 4 television advertisements from the 2010s simultaneously. From there, any time the person moves, the collection of 4 ads would start again. In doing this, I wanted to make the viewer feel handcuffed to the chair and forced to watch the black and white ads because if they moved, they would be overwhelmed with many more. I wanted to critique the chokehold that consumerism has on us. To make the 4 videos, I searched on YouTube for ads in the 2010s that had products on sale for the price of $19.99. I then put them into iMovie and cropped and placed them so that they would be in a grid formation for the viewer to see and hear them all at once. If you watch the video through, they all line up when they mention the price of $19.99. I wanted to do this to have one moment of cohesiveness in the video, but have that moment be completely centered on money. This decision came from the idea that all the advertisements want from the viewers is their money, so I wanted to emphasize the money in the videos. The video playing on the old television was a compilation I found on YouTube of ads from the 70’s. Throughout my process of development, my ideas changed quite a bit. During the midterm, I originally thought I would critique the decision college students have to make between choosing their passion or choosing money. I aimed to have 3 projectors on 3 walls and have 3 cameras. I wanted to have videos of different people explaining their choice (passion or money) and why they chose it when the viewer walked up to a camera. In doing this, it would be as if the viewer were walking up to the person and hearing their story. As I mentioned before, this idea changed after our discussion of NFTs, but I also realized that this project was not as critical as I wanted it to be. Although I liked the idea of walking up to hear someone’s story, I didn’t think it evoked any deep feeling in the viewer, as if the work were making them act a certain way.  When originally working on this version of my project, I wanted to have the patch do “blob detection” where the patch would compare the current frame taken from the camera to a base frame and play the videos if they were different. After much research, I was not able to find exactly what I was looking for in Max. I did find some documentation on something similar, which was motion detection, and chose to go with that. From there, my message of keeping the viewer in the chair arose. I am much happier with my final product than my midterm because when I was testing it out the day before the presentation, I really felt like I did not want to get off the chair because I did not want the 4 videos overwhelming my senses. 

I think my project explores the idea of critical making as discussed in the beginning of my reflection. I think it is something that is not useful, rather something that shows critique and expression. On the other hand, I think that I pulled from some ideas of critical design as well. I think that one can exist with the other. In my experience, my making of my project altered my expression and final product. My process itself was a critique, in not making it a useful thing, but it also pulled on concepts of critical design because it is “a speculative narrative to help us rethink designed objects and consumer culture” as stated by Garnet Hertz. 

Midterm Idea:

Final Product:

Reflection:

When constructing this installation, I intended for the audience to experience a sensation of discontent with the mediation of relationships through simulated interactions under digital reality. The overwhelming chaos of scribbles and symbols, two mirrors reflecting each other, and the inevitable endless loop to finish the dialogue, all demonstrate how people are unable to control and conceive the effects that computers and machines have on them. My installation offers a moment to reflect on the impact systems of protocol (Galloway) have in rearranging our lives, how the mundane regularity of existence is a manifestation of our passivity into algorithmic control. The relationship between agency and protocol is central to the naming of my exhibit: STP is an acronym for Select The Protocol. I want the audience to challenge the assumption that AI technology is developed to serve people, questioning how do we know that we are not being subconsciously manipulated? I invert the human/machine binary by merging Amy (the robot) with Amelia (the wife), such that the boundary between human and machine becomes indistinguishable. My installation is an example of radical AI art that creates a “human-as-machine scenario” (Zylinska, 66), where artificial intelligence is inseparable from human consciousness. By positing a scenario where the AI systems are able to manipulate humans, I give agency to machines that are traditionally considered passive, purely computational, actors. The plot twist, where Amy pretends to be Amelia, represents a form of critical fabulation (Hartman) by reimagining reality to give power to passive actors in history (those who the archive renders as agentless). While AI machines might not be considered human, my exhibit intends to challenge our ability to come to such a conclusion. Why is it assumed that human intelligence is not also artificial? By unraveling the distinction between authentic and artificial intelligence, I challenge the audience to think of themselves as algorithms so that they will realize the subconscious control algorithmic protocol has on them. My art piece intends to reconceptualize the meaning of growing up human while interacting with intelligent machines, suggesting that we lose parts of ourselves and kinships with others when media platforms become the primary method of interaction. Since we are trapped within this technological reality, with no alternative method to communicate, the same outcome is inevitable regardless of variation. 

I originally intended for my project to be a mimicry of Amazon Alexa, using an actual Alexa device to manipulate the audience into believing that Alexa was sexually interested in them. First, I wrote the script for how I wanted the interaction with Alexa to occur. I then realized that it could potentially be a copy-right issue if I used the name “Amazon Alexa” (and it’s unoriginal), so I came up with the name “Amy” which merges the names of the two main AI assistants – Alexa and Siri. I wanted to have a feminine name like Amy because it is demonstrative of how AI assistants are made to be women, participating in the patriarchal gender roles of men giving commands while women receive orders. Since women home systems are typically made to follow orders, marketed as loyal servants to the homeowner, I wanted to challenge this premise by having the wife and the home system unite to invert the gendered power dynamics within the marketing of home systems. When decorating my installation, I realized that STP also stands for Stop The Patriarchy, articulating how this piece can be considered a feminist criticism. 

Most of the meaning I have embedded within the installation came from improvisation, happy accidents that encouraged me to develop the exhibition in multiple directions. Not only would I say that the piece accomplishes the original goal of critically interrogating AI home systems, it changed in unexpected ways during the process of creation into something better than I originally envisioned. Instead of buying an Amazon Alex, or using an actual home system, I used paper-mache to create a recognizably unrealistic home system named Amy, which says “Always Monitor(ing) You” on the side. I was inspired by the American Artist’s installation “Black Gooey Universe” because it incorporates physical computers with black paint and artistic expression. Making my own artistic facsimile of a home system enables me to represent home systems without buying one, which would invest in the same AI industries the installation critiques. Using paper-mache provided more space for me to fill with artistic expression, offering more layers for the audience to unpack. My intended audience can be anyone, but it is specifically designed to discomfort people who own home systems. However, the phenomenon of personal manipulation is widespread within the surveillance apparatus and affects everyone in different ways. I recorded the dialogue with my girlfriend, Addie Lowenstein, so listening to the presentation is particularly discomforting with our long-distance relationship where most of our communication happens through digital mediums. How do I know that I am not speaking to a deep-fake AI version of my girlfriend on FaceTime? Last year, while I was sound asleep, my mom received a call from a deep-fake AI version of my voice that told her I was arrested for drunk driving. After reflecting on my personal experience with deep-AI fakes, I added collages with images of people who have married robots/holograms to make the scenario in my presentation seem realistic. Directly above the mirror with the collages, I impulsively added X’s and O’s to a grid of mirrors. I did it with a friend, originally playing tic-tac-toe, but we realized it would be more meaningful if neither of us won – representing how everyone is hurt by the automation of relationships. The X’s and O’s also represent love (XOXO), which is the main theme within the broken relationship between Amelia and Jonathan. To illustrate the fallen love, I painted hearts that were square, resembling pixels, to represent how AI creates a digitized form of love that is simultaneously emotional and barren. I contrasted the square hearts with hearts made out of fingerprints, to represent the contrast between humans and machines and different relationships produced by each. I added a lot of phrases and scribbles also, but I will leave that up to the audience to interpret and decipher.

My installation is an example of critical making because it relays a critical message about AI systems while developing technology to articulate the argument. According to Matt Rano, critical making develops technology embedded with critique. Instead of articulating my argument through words, I demonstrate it through the creation of technology. Making technology that can demonstrate my point about AI enables me to prove my argument through the experience of the audience, making it more personal and physical. Although the technology developed for my presentation is not easily replicable in society, it still bridges the divide between creative exploration and physical implementation. I want to keep exploring the possibilities for creating technologies that enable people to reflect on the consequences of their existence. Technology that sends a social message, which can even be critical of itself, is fascinating because it entails creation and deconstruction. I want to create more art, media, and technology that is skeptical of its own existence to broaden the conditions of possibility necessary for imagination.

Photos:

https://duke.box.com/s/gdpmphd7mlh5dles8k7iotl36w2i04ix

Throughout the semester, as we studied the discourse on various forms of technology, a recurring theme was its likening to a pharmakon, “a gift that is also a threat.” While being a gift that allows “exteriorization or supplementation” of human capacities, technology serves as a threat as excessive reliance on it wanes our human abilities [1].

In this project, I explored the idea of the fundamental duality of surveillance technology. Mark Tribe describes surveillance as one of the technologies that New Media Art attempts to address [2]. Consistent with the theme of duality, surveillance tends to be considered a “necessary evil”, dangerously bordering the lines of the positive from protection and entertainment to the negative from invasion of privacy.

Surveillance is oftentimes referred to as the gaze. The gaze can come in a multitude of forms. While the more recognizable forms that record data apparent to the human eye include CCTVs and police body cameras for law enforcement, our data is tracked more inconspicuously (or not anymore) by big tech companies. Namely, “[sites] like YouTube or Facebook or Twitter sucker people into providing free content, which can then be leveraged into something that can be retailed, such as advertising, personal information, marketing surveys, or surveillance” [3]. Personalized recommendations and successful targeted content algorithmically generated by these companies become incentives that continue to attract engagement. With time, “smaller and smaller moments of human life are being transformed into capital” [4].

Naturally, we are under the gaze 24/7, and all of this data congregates to somewhere connected to the Internet. Simply put, our lives are always “On-Air”. In contrast to the feeling of violation associated with the constant surveillance from the aforementioned forms, we are at the same time consciously contributing to the broadcasting of our lives. Through social media and livestreams, we are constantly broadcasting bits and pieces of ourselves on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. One obvious motivation is the incentive of attention and reaffirmation. The idea of being seen to others’ eyes and acknowledged by likes reveals narcissism. I speculate humans are innately narcissistic, and this seamlessly ties into people’s addiction to social media.

My final project deviates a lot from my initial proposal. Initially, I had planned on creating a virtual world that is unrecognizable to AI. The virtual world would be filled with 3D objects wrapped with 2D adversarial patches that trick image recognition models. For instance, placing an adversarial patch of a banana on an image of a dog would trick the model into misclassifying the dog as a banana. The virtual world was intended to critique our excessive reliance on algorithms and yet the absurdity of a world recognizable to just humans and not machines. Although this is what I had envisioned, given that the installation space allowed user interaction and the tools to interact with a 3D space very limited, I decided to pivot.

With “On-Air”, I aimed to critically inquire about the duality of surveillance technology. I wanted to recreate the feeling of simultaneous desire and disgust for the gaze, more specifically, a gaze that is realized by the object. The title of this piece draws inspiration from The Truman Show. Many turn to this film, which was first released twenty years ago, due to its eerie resemblance to our reality now. Truman’s life is broadcasted in real-time, while an unrealized and anonymous audience watches and empathizes with him. The Truman Show was truly prescient about the gaze that follows our daily lives.

Additionally, the piece was inspired by surveillance methods that pervade my personal life the most—Amazon Shopping and its product recommendations, Doordash and its meal-time notifications, and Duke’s “Panopto” and its questionable name. All three examples trigger a sense of comfort and discomfort in me. Although coming at the cost of my data being collected, I am incentivized by the convenience they offer to tolerate the surveillance. Another unifying characteristic is that they are not intrusive forms of surveillance but are seamlessly embedded in my life that, at first glance, they seem benign.

In order to materialize the visibly benign gaze, I placed a camera inside a Kleenex box. It conceals most of the camera from the viewer and camouflages with the installation space. The use of a Kleenex box was intentional because it is an everyday and commonplace item. It aims to denote both how intimately surveillance pervades our daily lives and how the most trivial and benign objects like a Kleenex can serve as a snippet of ourselves—for instance, your browsing of Kleenex on Amazon today may trigger a recommendation for a purchase tomorrow.

Then to convey the duality of surveillance technology, I divided the piece into the incentive and the threat. For the former, I incentivized surveillance by exploiting the narcissistic nature of the viewer. When a greater than usual motion or sound is detected, it triggers a laugh track. The laugh track is reminiscent of the unknown audience in The Truman Show behind the camera, while, in effect, it is synonymous with the Instagram likes and Twitter retweets that give a pleasing sense of affirmation to the viewer. On top of the audial incentive, a visual element of one’s face being displayed on the screen allures the viewer to continue interacting with the piece. These responses from the work are expected to incentivize the viewer’s engagement with the piece.

I was uncertain about how to best evoke subtle discomfort from surveillance. At first, I considered using another audial cue, an anxiety-inducing alarm, but this made the laugh track incentive less effective. I also considered uploading a snapshot or an unsettling tweet of “You are being watched” to more directly convey that the viewer was being broadcasted. However, ultimately, I decided to go with taking a snapshot every time an anomaly is detected and saving it. These snapshots are saved and played back as a slideshow adjacent to the live camera view. Only after the viewer has interacted with the piece for a while, do they notice images of them showing up. This response alludes to surveillance technology that reacts to particular triggers. For instance, in China, to promote anti-jaywalking, the government used surveillance technology to institute punishments by displaying jaywalkers’ faces on a billboard.

With “On Air”, I offer a critique on one of the widely disputed topics in New Media, surveillance. In the ideation and creation of the piece, I was able to reevaluate a technology that is deeply embedded in our culture. Then in the actuation, the piece mobilizes the technology that it attempts to criticize as the medium itself, which is a strategy oftentimes employed in critical making. With the message challenging the medium, the piece calls on the viewer to also reflect on their interaction with surveillance technology. Furthermore, the piece explores the idea of critical making as it is process-oriented. The piece only evolves when the viewer exists. As more viewers interact with the piece, more data is saved, and the piece becomes more valuable and more dangerous. The fact that the data collected during the exhibition is a part of the art portrays how the piece prioritizes the process. The piece doesn’t necessarily challenge traditional understandings of critical making but rather achieves the conventional objective to “provide a provocative, speculative…vision of our technological future” [5]. By working on this project, I was able to gain a new perspective on art-making and critical-making. I initially believed the hypothetical interpretation of the viewer should not affect the artist’s work. However, in the process, I looked for ways to simplify the art especially because critical making means something is intentional and thought-provoking. I learned that a simple artifact may achieve that best.

Annotated Max/MSP Patch

Prototype of final project displayed on laptop

Final Project Installation

Works Cited

[1] Mitchell, W J. T, and Mark B. N. Hansen. Critical Terms for Media Studies., 2010. Print.

[2] Tribe, Mark, et al. New Media Art. Taschen, 2009.

[3] Mirowski, Philip. The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, With a New Preface. United States, Harvard University Press, 2015.

[4] Paglen, Trevor. “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You).” The New Inquiry, 8 Dec. 2016, https://thenewinquiry.com/invisible-images-your-pictures-are-looking-at-you/.

[5] Hertz, Garnet. “What Is Critical Making?” Current, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, https://current.ecuad.ca/what-is-critical-making.

As we have discussed throughout the semester, the digital world is undergoing major changes. Technological advancements have continuously increased the relevance of the digital world to the real world. One notable manifestation of this revolution is expressed through the rush of NFTs. For many years, digital artists encountered issues in gaining the deserved financial return for their hard works. This is naturally because whenever something is published on the internet, there is most likely an endless number of methods one can use to “pirate” the work or have access to it freely. Therefore, when the concept of applying a blockchain to a digital asset that would make it have something it never did before: Uniqueness; It propelled a movement of artists and others to attempt to make use of this new system for various purposes. NFTs have thus in some become a new “Medium” much like McLuhan’s idea. However, as much as it provides opportunities to digital artists, the movement behind NFTs has ascended into the level of mania. The NFT art market is exploding with assets that do not necessarily express any specific form of critical art by the standards of Matt Retto where a work must exhibit a form of social reflection. Instead, the market is engulfed with many fancy terms and words such as “procedurally generated”, “AI-generated art” and so on.

These works often portray themselves with a specific goal of representing something, ranging from online communities to specific elements in the real world. When only very few maintain the responsibility of what they market till the end.

It is with this perception that I have deiced to make a critical media project upon this subject. However, my intention Is not to discredit the entirety of NFTs. Instead, it is more of a “questioning” on the amount of faith or speculation that people put into them.

I took inspiration for my project’s design upon the ideas of Retto and Mclauran’s. Through their work, I have understood the importance of the medium used to express the ideas behind a critical art piece. While the final product makes the most of a work, the reason why it was done in a certain way sometime can express more. Hence, I wanted to create a work that would resemble as much as possible to NFTs that people would purchase. The idea is to express my critic through a medium that looks as close as possible to a 3D NFTs. To achieve this, I directed my attention to the 3D modules of Max MSP

The core ideas behind the project can be divided into three phases, the discovery phase, the interaction phase and finally the boredom phase. The discovery phase consists of striking the audience with an impactful visualization that is supposed to be generating the emotions that would let people to attribute value to this asset. The second phase aims to recreate the initial focus and enjoyment that people have whenever they purchase the NFT that they were attracted to. Finally, the final phase aims to dissolve the excitement that the audience initially had towards this product. The chosen elements and their specific placements are done in such a way that is supposed to facilitate this effect of disillusioning by presenting the NFT mania in abstraction.

Specifically, I used Max MSP’s jitter and openGL features to enable me to create 3D objects with physical bodies and user interactions. The project itself can be described as a 3d plane that is composed of cubes that have dynamically changing lengths defined by a cos function. This creates a platform that showcase the behavior of a wave. The wave’s frequency is set as in such way that it creates an outward movement. Then, a series of objects are generated above the platform. These objects are spheres that are regenerated over a specific interval of time. The jit.phys then provides these spheres with physical properties. As soon as they are generated, they fall and collide with the platform. The latter then pushes the spheres out to its extremity where they fall off the edge and disappear off the rendering distance. The spheres represent NFTs, and the wave platform represents people’s interest in them. When new NFTs are created, they are in the center of the wave platform, supposedly reflecting their popularity. But as time goes on these NFTs become less relevant and eventually they are replaced with new ones. This implementation showcases a never-ending cycle that raises the question behind the uniqueness of NFT. Finally, the endless pit in which the NFTs fall into aims to show the speculative aspect of NFTs. This distance between the user and NFT is what inspired me to name the project as “NFT: Not for touch”

Unfortunately, this implementation isn’t what I originally sought to achieve. Initially speaking, I intended to attach this patch with a module that webscrapps a NFT sales website to have a synced-up generation of NFTs (spheres) upon the platform. However, due to the lack of technical understanding and skills this was ultimately abandoned. Similarly, I also originally planned to connect the collision mechanism of the physical bodies in the patch with audio feedback but didn’t manage to collect this information is a way that would have worked correctly.

All in all, I believe my project satisfies the condition of critical media in that It does not try to directly influence its audience. Instead, it allows the audience to engage with the work and then provide them with the opportunity to question about the nature of NFT mania. By working on this project, I was able to explore more in the domain of artistic expression with technology. Throughout the course of the semester, we have discussed how technology shapes our current society but, in the end, we are the ones who decided how to use them. The usage of advanced technology especially one like Max MSP where all human perception and advanced technology are united together to create stunning critical art pieces has taught me that technology can be used differently.

If you had told me just a few months ago that I would be enrolled in a VMS course this semester, I probably would have laughed in your face. To fall semester me, I was firmly cemented in the “tech” side of college, not to mention severely lacking in all forms of creativity. Yet looking through the course offerings one late night (or would it be considered early morning?), this course had repeatedly drawn my attention. From the description, it seemed like the perfect marriage of my interests: technology, with a bit of music and art involved. Although my talents never lied within the arts, I was keen on seeing and exploring the intersection between two very different fields of study—one of supposed structure and rigidity, and the other fully free-flowing.

Developing upon my initial interest in this class, I’d been particularly drawn towards McLuhan’s idea that “The Medium is the Message.” I had never really thought about the way in which a message was delivered before. Coming from a background in which the make-up of every product was essentially one and the same, it had never struck me as important the way in which the medium itself could be used to deliver the message. I liked how this expanded the ways in which a message can be delivered: mediums are not just a means to an end, they are, in a way, the end themselves. The medium is as much a tool as it is the final product.

In a similar fashion, I also found myself intrigued by the ideas in Reas and McWilliams’ “What is Code,” specifically when they talk about “thinking in code” and how the way in which you think changes with the medium you are working with. With code, one must approach solutions from the standpoint of using something (ie algorithms, procedures) to allow the machine to achieve your goal, whereas traditional mediums are approached from the angle of producing the result yourself.

It was my aim to embody these two ideas for my final project. The project itself was inspired by what many would call the “sophomore slump.” As the semester dragged on, I observed my friends and I slowly descending into a state of apathy with a constant undercurrent of anxiety mixed in. To us, it felt as if nothing was under our control, that we were stuck in an endless tide of school, work, sleep, repeat. To deal with this, we each began to develop our own habits: ways in which to overcome—beat—anxiety. Despite my harping earlier on, I do have some classical music training under my belt. As such, I’m naturally more drawn towards the applications of technology and music. However for this project, I wanted to do something a bit more unorthodox from the traditional melodies I was used to hearing.

The project in and of itself is not a complete art piece. Instead, it is a blank canvas waiting to be used. Using a different way of thinking, I approached the project not with the goal of producing a product, but a means in which products can be produced. In it, I play with the idea of sound augmentation, of utilizing sounds associated with anxiety to create a masterpiece. In this sense, the medium *is* the message, or perhaps the medium plus the process embodies the message: although we are dealt these unfortunate cards, we are ultimately the ones that take back control, using what is given to produce a piece that is entirely and wholly of my creation. Although the end result of the project is a piece of artwork/music, perhaps what is more important is the restoration of control, of defining a space for “us” in a world that is most certainly not.

original schematics

In terms of the project itself, I deviated quite a lot from my original plan. As can be seen in my original schematics, I had planned for a grid of rigidly planned out sounds, with each button serving as a unification/multiplication of two different anxiety-related sounds. The UI was meant to be quite bare-bones, structured, and straightforward. The goal of this was to further drive home the idea of taking back control, or re-establishing order in a chaotic world.

Starting Screen

Perhaps it is a reflection of how the semester went, or my mental health, but the end product is something much different. The only constant between the plan and final product was the control panel and the foundational idea of buttons. My final product features buttons that start off in a grid (carryover from the initial idea), but these buttons are circular and bounce around the screen randomly. Not only that, but the sounds associate with each button is randomly chosen from a preset list, and from it an associated color is generated. The user, everyday people like you and I, is able to play with the sounds associated with these buttons (SoundCookies), changing its volume and playback speed and “depositing/drawing” them (SoundBytes) onto the canvas. The visual representation of such augmented sounds relate to how they are changed: those with greater volume are more opaque, while clips that have been sped up are larger circles than those of slower playback speeds. When one of the original SoundCookies passes over a SoundByte, the augmented audio of the byte is played. As the user continues to draw, a visual and auditory piece is created. In addition to the preset audio files, users also have the option of uploading/using their own.

A possible project

In the end, I chose to go for this arguable more “artistic” representation of my project rather than my initial vision because I thought that although structure implies control, part of the reason we are suffering is because of the rigid academic structure set in place for us. By allowing the SoundCookies roam freely, and allowing SoundBytes to be created so randomly, we are rejecting the rigidity of society, choosing to show a unique and beautiful representation of ourselves.

Upload own audio

Beyond its unique interpretation of art and the unorthodox method of execution, my project explores the idea of critical making through freeform expression. It approaches art not from the standpoint that it is a one-and-done piece of work, but a constantly growing, adapting, and almost living body of art. Each user that comes by breathes their own life into this project, allowing it to take on the forms of each person it encounters. Using the medium of anxiety related sounds, the project critiques and ultimately rejects the rigidity and structure of society that has caused many to lose themselves, allowing us to instead reassert control and express ourselves in a way that is not defined by anything other than ourselves. However, I do think it’s quite ironic that the project, although supposed to represent a taking control of oneself, is created through technology, and once deleted cannot be retrieved nor recreated. While some might say this detracts from the message, I think it perfectly represents us as living beings: we are constantly adapting, learning, and evolving. The person we were yesterday is not the same person we are today, is not the same person as we will be tomorrow. Just like how the SoundCookies are constantly moving and changing and how each iteration of the project is different, we too are constantly evolving, changing, and growing.

My project does not challenge any ideas we’ve discussed thus far, instead building on them to create something that will be unique for each individual that comes across it.

Click here to see more pictures!

As a junior, about to become a senior, I’ve been reflecting upon my years at Duke and the impact I will have left on campus by the time I graduate, no matter how big or how small it is. One key reason I took this class was so I could find new ways to express myself artistically since most of my classes have been in the science and engineering fields, which value accuracy and formulas and calculations over the freedom of expression and the formulation of opinions. I realized that there was a common thread behind the things that I chose to involve myself in. I always sought out opportunities to experience new cultures and cultivate a better international student life experience on campus. After my first presentation on Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway, I started considering using a map as a medium to convey my message regarding Duke’s global community and the history of international students on campus, and step by step I developed what has now become my final project.

One of my favourite works from this semester is still our first reading, “The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan. I think it was a great introduction into the class, and I really liked his point about a medium being an “extension of ourselves”, a way to help us convey an idea by using materials (whether physical or virtual) to help us broaden the scope of our association with the concept. I am a super hands-on learner, and I think there is great value in using physical models or technology when trying to explain a concept. The use of physical definitely something that I wanted to further explore in my final project. Another topic that we explored that really spoke to me was our module on critical making and new media art, particularly the “Electronic Civil Disobedience” reading by the Critical Art Ensemble, and the “Wage Islands” artwork by Ekene Ijeoma that we discussed during the module. I liked the comparison of traditional civil disobedience and electronic civil disobedience that the reading makes. From my understanding, traditional civil disobedience involves people who are all very politically inclined. Electronic civil disobedience, however, may involve an audience or consumers (for example, NFTs) that are not necessarily looking to be involved politically. I enjoyed thinking about how everyday people can use their own means to critique the world around them and have the freedom to formulate their own opinions, without the pressure of being affiliated with a political group, although that may be difficult at times nowadays. In all of the artist works we looked into, I especially liked the “Wage Islands” piece because it was so simple yet effective. By using a physical model, it was extremely easy to draw a comparison from apartment space to cost, so easy that I can still remember the main message behind the piece even though we discussed it months ago. I also really liked Ekene Ijeoma’s use of the liquid to both hide and reveal, I thought it was very elegantly clever. For my final project, I was inspired to think more deeply about what I wanted to critique in my own surroundings and be as specific as possible.

For my final project, I initially wanted to do a large-scale statistical analysis on the history of international students at Duke. I wanted to collect data on the number of undergraduate international students at Duke on a holistic level and analyze how it has changed over time. I also wanted to break it down and look at the data for each continent, because I had heard from my coworkers at International House that Duke has been struggling with recruiting students from Africa recently and I was curious about the data from other locations. This was all data I could gather from looking at statistics from Duke Visa Services, which publishes information on the number of international students at Duke from every country around the world every year. However, as I got further into my project, I realized that a mere data analysis would not really satisfy the message I wanted to convey with the project. I wanted to critique how the treatment of international students has changed over the years. Therefore, I started to draw upon resources at Duke Archives and I reached out to a few of the librarians.

Ms. Amy McDonald provided me a few sources, which I used for my video pieces. I wanted the video information to be concise but also interesting and use a “show-not-tell” perspective, displaying not just a summary of the timeline of international student involvement at Duke, but including anecdotes and examples to get my point across. I decided to make a physical map to add user interaction into my project and to help solidify the message by allowing the user to scroll through the clips and choose which ones they would like to view first. I also really wanted to learn how to connect the Arduino to Max/MSP because I’ve used the Arduino many times for class projects in my biomedical engineering courses, and the idea of using it in a different context was very appealing. In order to honor my initial idea behind the project, I decided to still include a smaller data section, which shows the changes in the total undergraduate international students enrolled from 1999 to 2020.

My intended audience is the general Duke population, but particularly those who are either unfamiliar with the international student population or curious about how identities they consider themselves us fit into the Duke community. For example, having grown up in a Chinese household, it was very enlightening to learn about the first Asian students at Duke, and it made me feel more at home here knowing that many that have come before me and Duke has made an impact on the education of thousands of Asian students in the past. Although the road was not smooth, it is very inspiring to see the progress we have made in recognizing Asian identities around campus and advocating for the voices of Asian students. I hope that every Duke student that views my work may take away from it that everyone has had a unique path to Duke, and everyone will go their separate ways after they graduate. It is important to understand that the assumptions we draw about people may not define them, the place people come from does not dictate their values, and the concept of home is not always simple. However, many “foreigners” or “aliens” have come to Duke and made a home here nonetheless. I believe that everyone deserves to build a community here and make Duke a home away from home, and everyone plays a part in that. The way the institution views the value of international students has changed in the past few decades, and the amount of support they lend to departments like International House has also changed. These things have monumental effects on how the rest of the Duke population perceives international students, and I do believe that more education and transparency on the history of international students will allow the general Duke population to be more open-minded to befriending and learning from people of various cultures.

I think my project explores critical making by delivering my message through various mediums: electronic circuitry, laser cutting on wood, and Max/MSP virtual software. As we have discussed in class, a medium itself can convey a lot about what the creator is trying to imply. In my piece, my physical representation of the map represents the scope of the data and provides a more memorable design and structure to the project. The project also critiques an aspect of the social life at Duke through an artistic lens and allows me to extend my ability to share with others my own interpretation of the data and history, which we have defined as being a crucial part of critical making and the thought process that goes behind coming up with a project idea. I also think it conveys a critique through the physical realization of an artwork and has helped me think more critically about the topic as well as the artist, which we’ve discussed as being a part of the process of critical making. I do not think that my project offers a very new lens about critical making and what it can do, but it has given me a very new perspective on visual arts. I always thought that my interest in engineering prevents me from dedicating a lot of time towards creativity and art, but I think this project and the concept of critical making has changed my mind. I can see how my experience in Arduino and circuitry and laser cutting has been able to contribute towards expressing my message in a way that I have never associated with art before.

Please see this link for images and videos from my final project process, along with my final Max patch!

Please see this link for my final project presentation slides.