Year 1 – Contextual and Theoretical Studies – Notes

Critical Appraisal documenting the essay writing process:

CTS-Critical-Appraisal-Ana-GrajdeanuDownload

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Gathering evidence and overall research for the Essay:

CTS-Essay-Idea-DraftingDownload

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Notes from each class followed by a personal reflection in italics on materials taught and learned in each class.

Week 18:

Fashion as art piece:

  • Digitization of art -> fast art -> media overconsumption
  • Physical fashion -> fast fashion -> overconsumption -> digitization of fashion -> fast fashion?
  • It is very interesting and important to learn more about digital fashion (XR fashion) 
    • Subcultures and identities through garments
    • Storytelling through fashion
  • Designer uses algorithmic design (automation) in an open, user-led capacity
    • Using it to define potential shapes which the human mind could not conceive 
  • People moving to the suburbs and wanting to connect more with the nature
    • Living in big cities you can learn how to change the environment and help with sustainability 
  • Pangaea brand
    • The ambition of the company is to become ‘Earth positive by 2023’ and the ‘R&D portfolio spans evolution, revolution, and disruption’
  • Flair (designed by Jack. E. Hebden
    • Organic flourishing flora shirt, naturally hand-dyed silk patchwork shirt

Metaverse:

  • Balenciaga collaboration with metaverse VR
  • A non-fungible token (NFT) studio which produces digital collectibles
    • RTFKT, which was founded by Benoit Pagotto, Chis Le, and Steven Vasilev in Jan 2020

New Ways:

  • Can we talk about things, how can we express ourselves in this digital space?
  • Stephen Fung, “She added that the best part about digital fashion is that people can wear clothes with features that cannot exist in the real world, You can wear clothes that float and have no gravity. Ones that glow different colors and that animate with different words or patterns-the possibilities are endless and fun”
  • The Fabricant Studio, the platform was developed to make virtual fashion design accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world
    • Wanted to democratize the way people design fashion
  • Fashion brands have adopted digital methods of prototyping, thereby reducing waste and lead times and streamlining physical production post-lockdown
  • Online personal requires constant newness

Books mentioned:

  • Word of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (1935) by Walter Benjamin
  • Ways of curation by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Today it was the first class with Despina, a bit confusing and very fast paced. I was not sure where we were and what we were talking about at times. She shared with us the idea of using VR in fashion and how the usage of NFT’s can aid in that. Interesting idea but I think for now it is a bit unreachable. I have seen some TikToks which show AR clothing on people but most of the comments sound like they are confused as to why it is a thing/trend. Within the Metaverse I can understand the call for virtual fashion. Despina mentioned some interesting artists and installations focused on how one can express themselves within a virtual and digital space. This was interesting to me but also a bit too abstract in the installation and themes. There were interesting books (for example the ‘Ways of Curation’ by Hans Ulrich Obrist) but overall I was not to interested in the theme of connecting fashion and VR.

Week 19:

Squid and other games:

  • The point of truth and trust within Google Maps
    • Blindly trusting google maps and google search 
  • SEO (Search Engine optimization)

I did not take many notes today since I, once again was lost in the material taught. From what I noted todays class was focused on the popular tv show: ‘Squid Games’ and other games. I did not understand the correlation of squid games to the content taught but I think the overall understanding what that one should not trust games in VR. This was indeed an interesting topic since I started to branch off and think more about how hyper-realistic VR can be and how that could effect ones mental state of mind. I might use that concept or idea in the essay perhaps.

Week 20:

Part 1: Definitions and first thoughts

  • Curation: from medieval latin, ‘To Care’
    • The primary goal of a curator is to ‘interpret the collection in order to inform, education, and inspire the public’
    • Curation in practice steps: Select, organize, and present

Part 2: On technology

  • According to Boris Groys – we need to care about art and collections because we find a similarity or artworks and human body, as both need to be cared and preserved, against time and destruction
  • The idea of reason of re-thinking about curation
    • Rejecting and re-thinking, or “trembling thought” as he described it, is according to Glissant the ultimate characteristic of Utopia, so our natural behavior as “Utopians” (those who live in an utopia) that we are currently according to both Hans Ulrich Obrist and Boris Groys 

Part 3: Extend notion of curation in contemporary – digital world

  • Joseph Beuys
    • His work reflects concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthropology
    • Hans Ulrich Obrist in his talk explains that one being able to sustain one’s self in a universal international landscape – as the internet for an example
      • He references Eduoard Glissant and talks about Glissant’s Archipelago thought of globalization and encourages us to follow the mondalite, where one’s identity floats and connects with others without losing itself. 
    • Instead of becoming art, we are becoming tools to be used

Part 4: Immateriality of art – and reposition of time and space curation and space (physical and digital) – unconventional curation examples  

  • How to keep art fresh and relevant; to build new art installations every year
  • ‘The kitchen show’ 1991 was the first exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. 
    • An experiment in self-organization and an early questioning of the spaces in which one can present art, the exhibition came about during Obrist’s days as a student of political economics at the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland
    • Placed the physical artworks in Obrist’s kitchen as the space for the exhibition
  • ‘Aerei’ by Alighiero Boetti
    • Collaboration with Obrist, they designed a jigsaw puzzle based on images of Cieli ad alta (high skies) the same size as the folding tables of the airplanes and were given to passengers on Austrian Airlines’ flights
    • With this project, the Aerie series proves emblematic of the principles at the heart of Alighierro Boetti’s art: games and chance, order and disorder (ordine e disordine)
  • ‘Do It’ by Hans Ulrich Obrist
    • Began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation between the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier and Obrist himself, who was experimenting with how exhibition formats could be rendered as more flexible and open-ended. 
      • The discussion led to the questions of where a show could take ‘scores’ or written instructions by artists as a point of departure, which could be interpreted anew each time they were enacted
      • Asked 13 artists to send instructions, translated in 9 different languages 
  • ‘Antigone’ MR game/experience
  • ‘Deep Listener’ 
    • Augmentation in more than 1 sense – as if there is a digital living organism parallel to the physical alive space
    • Curating a dynamic-changing natural alive environment (compared to the static museum or gallery) 

Part 5: Onboarding – offboarding 

  • How will we, as VR curators, create an experience
  • ‘We live in an ocean of air’
    • Big screens for photos and selfies, also open to VR, so someone can still watch it from the outside
  • Practicalities of the space: ‘You have to be honest with those realities because you will not be able to overcome them’
    • ‘In the eyes of the animals’
      • Honesty with the medium (example VR isolated you and need special setup – but also work with its limitations)
      • Instead of hiding the equipment building on it, and making it stand out as a contradiction with the forest set up
  • Different audiences from ages to different expectations

This class had many references to the artist and their curations. I think this lesson was focused more on how one can connect to their art (in natural or virtual worlds) and how can they rethink the spaces around them in order to create art. Despina showed a lot of interesting works and installations which question identities and the body. I guess this class could inspire me to write about ones identity in VR and how it can grow positively or negatively within the environment. Who am I in VR, who can I be in VR, who will I be around in VR, how will I design my avatar in VR??? Many questions as such. Anyways we also discussed ‘Deep Listener’ experience which more reminded me of Deep Mind and Alpha Go. Now those are interesting creations, not VR, but still fascinating to me. Overall, interesting class today – I liked seeing all the installations, they inspired me to create on in VR or an immersive experience in general.

Week 22: 

Suggested topics for the essays:

  • VR Futurology
  • Historical perspective
  • Discussions
    • Is vr an empathy machine
  • Decolonization
    • Stereotypes, avatars
  • Games (best in vr) 
  • Immersive technology, computer vision and intelligence for social justice
  • 360 gaze
  • Mediated reality

“If you are there and what appears to be happening is really happening, then this is happening to you!”

  • Realistic realities 

Brian winston’s media “tick box” 1999

  • Send email, world web, imag
  • Generic scientific competence that makes a technology feasible
  • There is a vision of how the new technology can be applied. This video stems from across research domains and locations.
  • Which leads to prototypes as potentially, not as widely recognised or confirmed social technologies yet
  • This technology moves beyond an idea and prototype stage. It becomes a necessity and it finds social acceptance.

XR as new media

  • This technology moves beyond an idea, is it accessible?

Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects (1988)

  • Enhance: what does it amplify?
    • Radio amplifies the news and music by sound
  • Reverse: how does it flip when pushed?
    • Acoustic radio flips into tv
  • Retrieve: what does it bring back?
    • Radio returns the spoken work to the forefront
  • Obsolescence: what does it Obsolescence aka what the medium drives out of prominences 
    • Radio reduces the prominence of print and vision

Augmented reality

  • A technology that “allows the user to see the real work, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world. Therefore, AR supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it”
  • Combines reality and virtuality
  • 2D or 3D content but through its inherent format it is a 3D technology

Rekimoto’s comparison of human computer interaction styles HCI (1995) 

  • What interfaces we interact with from human to computer

Mixed reality (MR)

  • Real environment, augmented reality, augmented virtuality, virtual environment 

Cinematic VR (360 cinema)

  • Touring houses and hotels
  • Virtual reality content made of recordings of live action or photography of real places, people, and events

Concepts of immersion

  • Immersion refers to the technical characteristics of the medium 

What determines the experience of presence:

  • Vividness or the extent of the presented sensory information
    • Field of view, resolution, spatialized audio
    • 3d sound field
  • The level of control the participant has over various sensor mechanisms
    • A turn in a user’s head corresponds to a real-time update of the visual and auditory display
  • The ability to modify the environment 
    • Interacting with virtual objects
    • 3 degrees of freedom (3-DoF)
    • 6 degrees of freedom (6-DoF) – nowadays 
  • Coherent narrative
  • Lack of discovering elements
  • Gender – men are more present than woman 
  • Emotional states
  • Motivation
  • Fatigue
  • Past experience with VR content
  • Type of navigation inside VR
  • soundtrack / voice over 

ASSIGNMENT for 4/19/2022 due 4/26/2022

Pick a VR experience

Did you feel immersed and why

  • Yes, there were 4D effects like wind blowing which helped make me feel like I was in the moment/scene. We could also talk with our teammates and get “close” to them in the VR scene which helped make it seem more “real” 

Did you feel present

  • Yes most of the time. When there was action happening, I was present but in the calmer moments I had more time to think about what was happening – therefore making me step back from the immersive experience

Did you experience a break in presence? Try to identify the sources of break in presence. How can one avoid that

  • We had to carry a backpack with the computer which made the experience virtual reality. At times I could feel the backpack on me and it was heavy; It took me out of the experience. I could avoid this by doing the immersive experience for a shorter amount of time, not for 30-45 minutes. Or I could have a cable for it to be connected to the computer but it would be a bit more restricted in the space I could move then.

Pick another least immersive VR experience

  • I did a VR escape room experience a while ago and it was not as immersive as I would’ve liked. It was more AR than VR and it was only used near the end of the escape room. It would’ve been cooler if the whole room was in VR.

Started off the class with some suggested topics for the essay we will have to write but I think I already have an idea on ethics in VR. We learned about how science helps push technology and vice versa through different inventions like the Tick Box in 1999 and the Tetrad of Media Effects in 1988. It is interesting how when my parents were going to university for computer science, their parents (my grandparents) had no idea what they are learning. I suppose it is the same for me and my parents/grandparents since what what I am learning is very new in the technological world. In class we continued to learn about AR and how its beginning to be used commercially. VR is starting to be used more and more in the professional setting in touring hotel and house tours. Finally, we discussed what makes an experience seem immersive and what can help build a storyline within the experience.

Week 23:

Group discussions: Ideas for the essay topics from Despina’s lectures 

  1. Metaverse and how will fashion collaboration in VR (the promised land of milk and honey)
  2. How will VR curators, create an experience in regards to physical space
  3. Rethinking and curating in a  contemporary and digital world 

Science and Fiction of the ultimate display: VR futurology

  • In the field of futurology, the goal is to study possible, probable, and preferable futures, and to seek a systematic understanding of past and present in order to determine the likelihood of future events and trends
  • Whether futurology is art or science ??? it is not known
  • Sir Authrur Charles Claekw (2001: Space Odyssey) predicted the first Mars landing would occur in 1994
  • Brainman that could be connected directly to the human brain. The idea of the device is to feed impulses directly into the brain in order to provide a multisensory stimulus experience which gets indistinguishable from reality (from the book ‘The Hammer of God’)

Ready Player One book is about a virtual world – I watched the movie before 

Group discussion:

  • How will VR systems and technology evolve within the next 10 years?
    • I think they will become more widespread and more accessible for the general public and for the large companies
  • How far are we away from computer-mediated realities, which are indistinguishable from our real work?
    • I think we are still quite far from these realities but there is definitely the possibility of the happening; the whole Metaverse and such are becoming more and more approachable 
  • What are the benefits and potentials of those VR experiences?
    • Connecting with more and more people and cultures in ways we could not reach them beforehand. There are more ways to create art in films, fashion, and immersive exhibitions
  • How would such a virtual revolution alter our society?
    • There would be more  connectivity from people to people in an online world rather than within a real life world. I don’t know if this is good or bad. I, of course, think that this is bad since I grew up going outside to play with my friends and feeling more connected with the nature around me.

In class today we discussed more broadly the idea of VR futurology. Annie brought up many books and movies which are thought of to be more futuristic in comparison to the usually showcased books and movies. My favorite book mentioned was ‘Ready Player One’ which was also turned into a movie which I have seen. The movie and book did a really good job of showing how the future can be if VR starts being more accessible and liked by a majority of the population. This sparked a group discussion on how will VR be like in the next 10 years. I enjoyed this group discussion with Rosa and Doris and it inspired me to think what might some problems be in the future within VR and AR. I thought of the expected data privacy issues and perhaps some legal issues for if someone gets hurt IRL in VR and vice versa. What happens if someone is permanently scarred from a horror game in VR? Who gets in trouble? The player? The game developer? These thoughts inspired me to think more about this topic and to potentially write about it in my essay.

Week 24:

Basics of Game Design

  • Being fun
  • Target audience
  • The genre and limitations
  • Empowering the player
  • Put the player into a fictional scenario that they wish they could experience in real life

Serious games

  • Serious in content and/or educational
    • Baby shark video (entertainment but not a game)
  • Games for educational purposes
  • Serious games and emotion, music-related edutainment, medical education, and training, game-based learning, applications targeted towards children, serious games for serious purposes 

Group discussion

  • Choose a video game and discuss it in terms of:
    • Ludic elements
    • Narrative elements
  • Does the game tell a story
  • Who are the character
  • What are the rules
  • What kind of agency do the players have (interactivity to affect and change the game world)

Me and Clara choose the game: ‘Animal Crossing’. This game is focused on the character’s decisions and how they interact with their environment and other characters. In a way, the player decides the outcome of their world. There are some set rules for example how the player can trade with others and where they can go to collect trading and building materials, but for the most part, the world is pretty free in the rules department. There were small narrative elements in the beginning to understand who you are, where you are, what are the general objectives of the world; After the start of the game, the player gets to change the world on their own mostly. This was also the last lecture of the class. I found it a bit silly since we were talking about games and serious games such as the recently famous Baby Shark song/video. Overall good class and I enjoyed the discussions and the readings. However, I am pretty sold on my idea for ethical issues in VR as an essay topic.