Missing Dog

For the final presentation, Phil and I did a performance in a class, looking for a missing dog and giving out the fliers.

The front and back image of the flier looks like this.

The act of performance was done in this order.

- Giving out the fliers to the classmates.
- Talking about the relationship with the dog and us, how meaningful he is to us.
- Reading the fliers out loud altogether.
- Listening to the short response from the audience.
- Explanation of the performance and feedback.

Apparently the image and text in the flier is machine generated, and there is a disclaimer at the back. Since we was holding the flier showing the back to the audience, not many people bought what we performed. It should be very cautious performance since people hate the prank-like performance about serious issue, (I hate them so much myself.) we can just try in this class setting. Something like Sam Durant’s Scaffold can happen again, especially someone actually have experience of losing their friends, pets, or family members. We intentionally chose awkward photos and text not to deceive audience, and giving a sense of discomfort with uncanny images and text.

Thanks to some classmate, they asked why Don looks a bit weird, while the other audiences have time to look at the flier thoroughly.

The performance started from our small conversation, we were joking about we are getting serious about fictional event. I was upsetting while reading comics and Phil was laughing at movies. However, they are all “fake”.

Fakeness of Emotion

We want our lives to be expectable, stable, peaceful, meaning no drama in life. Meanwhile we enjoy media to entertain ourselves in daily bases. What does ‘entertain’ meaning? It makes us emotional without any harm. We can cry, laugh at, upset about something without any risk of affecting our relationships or being ignorant person to a sensitive political issue. It is like dividing ourselves into rational-real-life and emotional-fictional-life. We cannot be emotional to real matter since they are too serious. But can we call our emotions fake for the fact that we are feeling for the fictional event?

Some people say trying dangerous action, or watching horror films is preparing for the death. They are emotional prepare for death that is waiting for us. In my case, while scraping the photos and words for missing pets, I found myself just imagine about losing my cat, how sad it would be. Is that empathy? or some psychotic delusive habit to enjoy other’s sadness?

Ironically we rarely want to get involved to other people’s tragedy, since we want our live so stable. In my case, I avoid to receive any fliers on the street, even if it is not a commercial one, even if it is looking for a missing person. (Even I don’t give any attention to figure out what the flier is about.)

and what if, we actually feel any emotion to non living entity, can we call the relationship is fake? does it matter? Can we call pathetic to the relationships between hospice robots and patients?

We hope this performance arise some conversation about empathy and relationship with other entities. December 18, 2018

Final proposal

AI created Public Service Advertising

Description including goals and parameters

Published words have power and authority. We generally agree with the purpose of public service Ads for the reason somebody put their effort and money to publish them. Drifting on flooding messages, we don’t have time and attention to filter them critically.
However, do we do agree with their statements? What is the public good and how the public make the consensus on it? Even very basic concepts we accept, such as liberalism or humanism, are subtly framed politically by the zeitgeist. When we look over public Ads, especially those from other historical period or other countries with different ideologies, we sometimes feel they are rather propagandas than public service Ads.

Our goal is to generate copies and images for public service Ads with AI and print them and post them in public places in New York. The data for AI are from various cultural and periodical public service Ads and propaganda, so convey feelings or weirdness and off-ness with inconsistency, for they are generated from all different background and purpose. With the juxtaposition of modern images and old phrases, or vice versa, we hope to raise awareness of social morality and zeitgeist that we are living in.

One of Nazi propaganda print.

a Burger King ad - created to poke fun at AI.

a Burger King ad - created to poke fun at AI.

A modern public service ad for organ donation.

Audience member a.k.a. user persona

Our user persona is a person who feels comfortable and loves to publish their messages through social media. They could have a didactic personality and be a bit nosy. They enjoy walking on the street for commuting in New York, and always gives attention whether some interesting stuff going on the street. They are also very familiar with taking photos and spread them through social media. They might be influencers, and always interpret messages in their own way. (also loves to share that idea with their followers.)

Audience member a.k.a. user journey

November 28, 2018

Create an endurance or durational performance

When I thought about physical discomfort, the first thing came up with me was hygiene issue.

I am struggling with rashes all over my body from some toxic paint, and feeling itchy everywhere especially on my face. The most important thing to me was not letting anything on my face and make thing clean just in case, and to avoid itch. Therefore I decide to explore dirty sensation in daily lives. Even though we don’t have many chances to get into dirty stuff like fiscal, or put mud on your body or something, but dropping sauces on your shirt happens all the time and we all hate doing that. They are just sauces, not actual dirty stuff we wanna avoid, but I thought it is easy way for people to understand that endurance.

Plus, I found a cultural difference that Koreans tend to share their foods as a hospitality, even they feed strangers. Recently the society became more individualized and care about hygiene issue much more, so it is hard to find actually people doing that. But some elderly still doing that, such as feeding their grandchildren or something. I found relatively people here avoid even just sharing foods. There will be a lot of different reasons, such as allergy or they have never experienced that kind of food before... What I guess is the cultural and historical difference that Koreans are relatively has one united ethnic identity, where as North Americans are not. Since they all came from all the different ethnicity and the fear about ‘differenceness’. Apparently, accepting something that the other moving directly into my mouth is not a easy thing unless I have a definite trust on that person. Taste what the other give, eat the thing and move it inside of your body need a lot of courage. I think I couldn’t do if I didn’t prepare my food and waiting people to feed me with their food.

Therefore, I planned a performance that letting people feed my a hotdog covered with flooding sauces while I close my eyes. The hot dog is so much covered with ketchup and mustard, even let the audience feel gross to hold them. Inevitably, the sauces will drop on my shirt, so I prepared on e that I will throw away after the performance. I bet just watching me cleaning my face with my shirt will discomfort them, also actually Jason told me that just touching ketchup with his hand was so gross.

Thing I got more than I expected was, other sensations like smell of ketchup, and the sour taste spreading in my mouth. I couldn’t feel anything but ketchup, that was totally new sensation even though I love ketchup a lot. The feeling touch that much sauce on your hand is not usual, it was so new to me also.

November 14, 2018

Reading response 1

Role playing gives rule, structure and commitment to people who are engaging to certain event on the site. I am taking a Game Design class this semester, and the instructor of that class Greg introduced the social game he made for a museum, I don’t remember the specific name of it, but I guess it was a sort of political museum. The game is senate simulation for high students. When they step into the council, most of them are totally not interested in what’s going on there. They are on the field trip and just waiting for it finishes. Each student will be the senate of each state of America, and learn how to work for their own state as a senate. By doing so they will learn the political stands of Liberal and Republican parties. It’s really hard make people focus on some social event if they are just being there as obligation. So what Greg come up with was making the gamers /participants make an oath as a senate and say the oath out loud, standing a right hand, as actual senates do. What Greg says is, that is the right moment that changes uninterested high school students into senates of the States and giving them duties and responsibilities, and make them feel engaged. The ritual makes people serious and commit to their role since they say it loud. It is interesting that they feel like they are obligated even they knows it is not real and they are not legally obligated. Even very trivial matters, people feel obligated to show consistency with what they said. One example is a scheme of telemarketing, that people feel really hard to say ‘no’ after answering to the greetings like ‘How are you?’ ‘Great’, ‘Lovely’. I guess this is the magic of role playing, that let people act in certain ways without preparing many things. As in the readings this week, people actually punishes prisoner actors even they are not actual prisoners. Playing games make people put themselves into someone else’s shoe much more effectively than just listening to other people’s story. People won’t feel real for Eamon and Ulrike if they just read a article about them, not receiving commands through phone and accomplish them. We don’t need to tell people how they supposed to act one by one. By putting them in a specific situation, people act like what they think they are expected in that context. November 6, 2018