Socially Engaged Art and Digital Practice
Week1-2: 3 ideas for projects that I think act as socially engaged art projects
First thought.
My first thought came from my travels in Philadelphia and passed the Kensington Street, where there were many people using drugs, or people passing out from drug overdoses, which not only became confusing to the neighborhood, but the gahering of people also made the drug problem worse. As we can see from the video, there is a lot of household garbage or repeatedly used medical equipment garbage. I think I can collect the more iconic abandoned garbage or plastic medical equipment by recasting or sealing it so that people can get a closer look at the many places in society that need to be helped and valued by society.
Second thought
The charm of language is to express the narrative, but as time advances, I think there are many things in society now that we are afraid to say. In the modern era of increasing spiritual needs, there are so many factors that we need to care about, such as politics, gender, race, etc. We are afraid that some of our words will offend others and we are gradually becoming silent. But people also need a place where they can speak their mind. I was inspired by the MoMa ps1 exhibit “Stage” and the suggestion boxes in our lives. I thought it might be possible to speak the point of view of people who are unable to voice their opinions through a performer on an independent stage, reading the contents of the suggestion box, which could originate from online submissions or suggestion boxes.
Third thought
The third idea is related to human development and animals. As humans progress and technology develops, sometimes some designs affect the survival of wildlife. For example, hundreds of migrating songbirds crash into NYC skyscrapers, and perhaps if people were aware of this problem when designing, they could find ways to avoid it, for the sake of the overall aesthetics of the building or the spiritual satisfaction of the people. I hope to collect some bird bones or glass that has been hit and left behind to make people aware of this issue.
Week3:
Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet:
- In the course of reading the article, I read that Pizzagate was banned, a man fired a semiautomatic rifle inside a D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong, and I realized the impact of the Internet on social policing in the social media I commonly use, usually posting I have always thought that this is a reflection of the lack of freedom of speech, but now maybe we should reconsider this.
- “No matter how neutral a platform may seem, there’s always a person behind the curtain.” That’s right, and I think that’s also why Congress is so concerned about facebook is threatening user privacy. When the platform is not fair, then the wind of speech will be directed in the direction that the “person behind the curtain” wants, and that could cause serious social problems (the butterfly effect?).
- To join Reddit, all you needed was a username that hadn’t been claimed yet. This reminds me of many of the sites I used to like.
- I think the impact of bias on the creative technologist tool can be seen in this article. In the article, the author mentions the term massive-scale emotional contagion, which I think is one of the reasons why the Internet is now the starting or fermenting tool for many events. But prejudice plays a role in fanning the flames, which may be a bad thing, but from a different perspective, it helps to improve the Internet, or to improve innovative technologies. Because innovation technology in the process of innovation, will certainly break some of the inherent ideas or “commandments”, if not limited, will be like reddit forum once, into a part of the fanatics to spread ideas of the medium, and this may lead to very serious problems. With bias, innovative technology will always be criticized or “pricked”, and this helps to improve the functionality or its correctness.
Week 4-5 digital public space
This is the e-public space I envisioned. I envisioned an open space: for example, Times Square, where people can scan a QR code to access this page (e-public space). Here people can only customize their own color and the size of the orb they represent. The only restriction is that once their object is identified, their photo will be displayed along with the object.
This means that some people can choose to hide in this space as a small object, or as a massive object, but it will be visible to the crowd. I think this electronic space can be a good representation of the relationships in our society and cause different thoughts.
This article explores what the digital currency NFT will bring to our lives from the perspective of environmental protection. This is novel because until reading this article, I had never considered that digital currencies would have such a huge impact on our environment.
I hate digital currency because I don’t really see it as a positive presence for our society. It is not constrained by either investment or use, and even though it is worth a lot of money it does not cause substantial benefits to human society (which I guess is why its value is always up and down like a roller coaster).
But after reading this article, the author describes the huge environmental impact of digital currency: almost anywhere miners can hook up to cheap electricity-filling air-conditioned, warehouse-sized spaces with endless rows of high-powered computers running software to essentially convert energy into wealth. This means that this is happening all over the world and is causing irreversible damage to the planet we live on.
I love the quote the author mentions in the article, “If you are buying an artwork you don’t see those calculations going on.” It’s true. I think this article provides a very original idea, like many rights movements or protests, maybe I need to call attention to this when I’m working on a project, maybe I can make something that illustrates the environmental harm that NFT does to human society, so that people do become aware of this issue.
Week 7-8 project 1: Banned Account Memorial
Week 9-10 project 2: Nftrest
This is a project related to NFT, the main purpose of which is to serve as a transition from web 2.0 to web 3.0.
I believe that many people, like me, web 3.0 for us is distant, the reason for this is not only because it is a new technology, but also because it is too distant from our lives, plus it has too much negative news, resulting in fewer and fewer ordinary users want to try to understand it.
So I want to create a social platform as a transition from 2.0 to 3.0. Let’s recall what web 2.0 brings us the most, for me it’s the community, we can connect with people from different countries with the same interest through the internet, communicate or play games together, and that’s the way we are familiar with.
Back to the platform I was talking about, I will create a platform for users to share the interesting NFTs they see. Users can share the NFTs they find interesting through screenshots, and those who see them and like them can click on the link to contact the author directly to buy them.
First of all, NFT does not depreciate because of the screenshots of users, because it has a certain security, and secondly, I believe that in the near future more and more people will join the NFT creation, and this approach can make more users participate and form a large community.
Although we are now very far from web 3.0, I believe that as more and more people get involved and feel a sense of participation, web 3.0 will become a part of our lives.