Attended peer feedback session this morning and received some help feedbacks, notes listed below

Ai asked “How are you going to bridge the form of performance with the theme”
A: The performance aim to set up an environment envisioning 50 years from now where our generation becomes old and still have the idea of going into a club. Club is an gesture referring to the influence of current pop-culture scene. Envisioning the elder life in a possitive vibe feels like a therapy of dealing with my personal anxiety for aging.

Yinyi questioned “Fear of Death = Fear of aging, are they the same ?”
A: I have not questioned the words “Fear for” because to some extent I somehow generalized them. Worth thinking

Sarah pointed out
Performance (especially VJ), in her experience, always a specifically curated experience collage.
Differentiating the universal experience/content/context from personal speaking.
Having the common acknowledgment for aging, thinking of what media content  is specifically curated for the use.
Also consider what aspects to include throughout formal presentation. (i.e skincare propaganda)

Jaye mentioned
The different perception of elderly between western and eastern.
What is the tone of the project, utopian or apocalyptic?

After thoughts: 
1/ Is “club culture” really representative for our generation/pop-culture?
2/ Is the performance aim to evoke an empathetic experience or to be evoking in certain direction?

I attended the extra session on Tuesday night today with Sarah, Ai, Zaida, Ada, and Yinyi.

 

As always, just hearing and discussing thesis concepts with others is incredibly helpful. I did not really share my thesis this time, but I actively listened and gave feedback to each classmate, which I found I benefitted from as well.

Ai’s altruism and gaming thesis is so intriguing and got me thinking of a lot of great memories from my old gaming days. The conversation also led me to think about the meaning of being a part of a community. Zaida’s coffee shop and Salsa is a fun thesis project that helps activate space and foster conversation exchange. It reminds me of the project she built last summer, a simple gaming device with a huge impact. Yinyi’s topic got us into a discussion about productivity and usefulness in this technology-driven, capitalist world. Ada’s thesis concept on the fear of aging and death also opened a fascinating wormhole of discussion on what each of us is afraid of, the former or the latter. Also, should we be the concept focus or output format focus for this thesis project?

 

Overall, a lot of thoughts. Hopefully, I will have more to share on my thesis project with the group next time.

This week I got the chance to attend Nun’s and Sarah’s thesis group meetings. Here are some of my synthesized notes from each:

Nun – 3/7/23
What is the self sacrifice aspect in altruism? Is that something I want to emphasize or explore? For example, looking at animals there is no evolutionary benefit with altruistic acts.
– altruism is a big part of survival
– emotional feeling of im willing to my needs aside for the needs of the group
– essential emotion for the needs of the community
– At which point is giving not sacrificial anymore?
– Self indulgent sacrifice vs other sorts of sacrifice
– when you don’t have that much, and you give a lot
– do something and you don’t get credit

Buddhism
– Karma cycles
– if you translate it to the game
– if you die you level up

We also talked a bit about trust and things like Milgram’s experiment and the Prisoners dilemma.
– 2 prisoners cooperate
– if one turns on the other
– both turn, both get punished for the longest time
– [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp)

Sarah – 3/7/23
奶 – helping others play
Jaye – had an experience of random people helping her in WOW, even with an ugly character
Yinyi – likes the idea of the dice and how the randomness can be engaging. Also looking at classic games for simple mechanics.

can a game be good without being bad?
– community and who plays the games – loopholes
– the more things we put in place, the smarter the kids get to how to circumvent
– people will get really creative to get around that
– innovative around that
– how altruism may contribute to an addictive, always on community
– What does someone get from being altruistic? Is that countering the altruism itself? What gets someone hooked onto the game?

In terms of my final project/ prototype:
Do what your hands feel like doing?
If the video game is a prototype that illuminates the dice game
Programmers guide to creating an altruistic game
– what are the instructions that id give based on all my research?
– putting a lot of pressure on this amazing altruistic game
– fool-proof ingredient list
– here are things you have to be careful of

Hey all!

Just a small update for my thesis!

I’m currently in the process of experimenting with my projector and sound and will upload images of those later!

Below is an update of how I plan to push this series further! During my senior year of undergrad, I animated a small bit of Maya Angelou reciting her poem “I rise.” For that animation I made it a goal to focus on the words and the accents in her poem. I remember wanting to find a way to bring these illustrations to life, and this was just one way of approaching it! What I noticed were the hints and small gaps of color where her pigmentation was present and areas where it was absent, in the animation and I found myself wanting to experiment with that concept in the illustrations! So here are a few new changes to the illustrations! I found the small hints of pigmentation to be the exactly what I felt was missing! 🙂

Hope all is well! 🙂

-(Updated Illustrations)-

-(Maya Angelou Animation from Undergrad)-

Spoke about what the role of the audience is, and that question has come up from multiple people recently (Hakani, Beth, and now Rothberg). A big breakthrough for me was realizing in my early shows (2019) I was essentially asking audience members to watching someone nodding out and somehow be entertained by that. The EEG experience is very internal, and even with the sound and visuals being output, the FEELING is still internal. So my recent sound bath “performance” (is it a performance? Is it a group “experience”? A journey?), the audience expectation was very different. They weren’t expected to watch a show, or be attentive, or be mindful (like in a group meditation). They were invited to lie down, be cozy, be *nurtured*, fall asleep, chill, space out. It was a very permissive space with low pressure, but also mixed with a larger vulnerability. To close their eyes in a group of strangers (sometimes people at raves do this too with the safety of the repetitive beat) and drift into their subconscious. For someone with PTSD, that is too much, to let their guard down and let go. And I had a vulnerability too, and it’s more shared. I’m allowing my heart and mind to be amplified, showing my fear or nervousness or fatigue or boredom. This format so far has garnered the most attention, a bigger crowd, more people expressing interest, more people wanting another show or to host a location – I think – because it is more of a shared experience. Next steps could be exploring sensors on audience members (which ones? All of them? Some?) and co-authoring the event (even if the sounds are still meditated through my musical choices).

https://www.notion.so/jasonjsnell/2023-03-06-1fdd2b54c60e4ac5b189f8f170ec70e6?pvs=4

I had a great hour talking with Sarah. Just gonna put down a bunch of notes I wrote down during the meeting here. It can be a little all over the place.

We started with some discussion on the final proposal we just submitted. It was enjoyable to read, don’t worry about the output format of the thesis yet. Focus on how I would like to narrow down the question so it can be made into experiments. Right now, it’s more like a lifetime question to answer.  As for the feedback from other reviewers that will come back in two weeks, like all feedback, take it or leave it is fine.

 

How am i going to launch into the production of some sort?

-Set up 2 chunks of time per week; whatever I conduct during those two timeslots is the thesis project itself. Tie myself doing it, even if it’s painful or I do not believe in it. (Social Media exploration, many screenshots “for you” pages?)

 

Intrigued by the impact of geopolitical events. As for the thesis, what aspects of social media am I talking about? Can the thesis project open a group of people with different perspectives into an inviting conversation? The project aims to foster engagement, not critique. An actual activation space to think about how you are going to act.

 

Maybe it will help by think I will have to show some things during class meetings. Use assignments to conduct experiments.

 

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Also, some recap on the first meeting talked about the complicated history of symbolism and really made me think about how I delivered my projects in the past. My imaginary enemy doesn’t aline with the actual audience of my project. Sometimes project itself might not feel like it takes into account and respect the different perspectives.

punching down vs. punching up; it’s all about positionality.

 

Revisit the reading on public and counter-public.

 

Artists / Works to look at (agree or not, touch on a similar topic):

Strategic Transparency Collective: https://strategictransparencycollective.net/

ITP class, social hacking: https://github.com/lmccart/SocialHacking/blob/master/readme.md

Manifestos for Creative Resistance: https://strategictransparencycollective.net/manifestos/

Jens Haaning: https://artmap.com/jenshaaning/chapter/images#_o3z6b

 

I was able to get a lot of great new resources after speaking with the team about finalizing our proposals

two new resources I received included a past thesis project that relates to mine:

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/thesisarchive2022/?noel-joyce

 

 

 

SPIKE MADE!!!!!

Celebrate progress post. Feel cute might not delete.

It’s been a very productive week! Managed to:

• Finish Thesis proposal (link)
• Create concept map of AI, AI Art, Spirituality, and Consciousness (link)
• Updated are.na channel for project: (link)
• Books came in – Making my way through “The Age of Spiritual Machines” – Ray Kurzweil

 

I think my next step will be to sketch a quick zine to highlight the history of the field, and articulate the important questions I want to build on as part of my thesis. The questions on consciousness and intelligence still are still important parts of the project, but in my research there are a few more ideas popping up. Specifically, I’ve been sitting on:

• Embodiment, and what this means for consciousness/intelligence, and the physical presence of ‘artificial’ systems.
• Creating meaning from noise, and religion as a tool for meaning making
  • Parallels to current paradigms in Machine Learning – Diffusion Modeling
• Who is in control in generative systems, the artist or the machine?
• Identifying the contrast between Eastern and Western religions discussing the idea of God as an entity above vs an entity within us.

 

I also need to start making, so I’m going to brainstorm a quick Raspberry Pi project to get started with ML/AI and get a prototype up by the end of the week. Probably a simple camera image/video recognition project to get my development environment set up correctly.

 

Plan for this week

• Complete a draft of the first zine – AI, AI Art, and
• Get through the first section of The Age of Spiritual Machines
• Use StableDiffusion to generate some imagery
• Get Physical – Can you create a quick AI-powered sculpture? Can you get a recognition algorithm running on a Raspberry Pi?
• and other things …

I’m STILL thinking about our second all class meeting. I thought it was such a helpful session for a variety of reasons. I really loved seeing what everyone else is working on. It helped me see the shape of the work being done by the entire group, and the way that people were thinking about the topics that they are focusing on. I really am excited to see how peoples’ work comes to fruition. I wa also so attentive during class, not knowing when I would be called on, and it really helped me stay focused and engaged.

It was also super helpful to hear what is coming through from what I am thinking, and what other people heard. In re-watching the video, it seems that when I talk about potentially designing for animals, people hear “pets.” That’s actually not what I was thinking about. I was thinking I would design more for “wild” animals or non-domesticated animals. I also have been getting deep into garment creation rabbit holes, and it seems the animal angle is a bit stickier, which is a good push to keep some focus and attention on animals.