Autonomous Driving Taxi of the First Autonomous Work Group Company Service–Supportive Policy for Third Child Policy

Description

This project is a response to the Chinese government’s request to different industries of society to introduce supporting measures and policies in line with the three-child policy. With the announcement of the three-child policy, the Chinese government has asked all sectors of society to provide safeguard measures to support the effective implementation of the three-child policy, as well as social welfare for three-child families. In my observation, the central government has given play to the nature of socialism, mobilizing the country and actively cooperating to promote more births. Then again, it doesn’t seem to solve anything. Even if all sectors of society provide enough welfare for multi-children families, it cannot fundamentally solve the problem of reproduction difficulties, because people’s attitudes towards having more children are hard to shake. Such preferential policies have become comical. 

This project use parafiction to create a fictional promotional presentation for a car company. FAW(China First Autonomous Works) was commissioned by the central government to work with Baidu and Didi to develop a self-driving taxi system for multi-child families. Through the service design of providing different service charging plans for different groups(multi-child families, one-child families, families with no child, and single), it satirizes that even the social mobilization and service under socialism cannot solve the problem of a population crisis.

Research

1. The third-Child policy

In 2021, China releases the third-Child policy to tackle the demographic crisis. As The New York Times’ report, “China’s population is growing at its slowest pace in decades, with a plunge in births and a graying work force presenting the Communist Party with one of its gravest social and economic challenges.” The Communist Party of China starts to take action to raise the birth rate, as the way it controls the birth rate with a one-Child policy. On July 21, “Decision of the CPC Central Committee and The State Council on optimizing birth policy to promote long-term balanced development of population” was released and it is seen as the signal of “Implementing the three-child policy and supporting birth support measures”.

2. Self-driving taxi.

Baidu Appolo, Huawei autonomous driving, and Didi are all developing a self-driving taxi system, which is managed by a cloud algorithm and bid data. As I researched, leading Chinese search engine company Baidu has set up the “Apollo” platform to develop autonomous driving technology. It has received support from the Chinese government and launched a test service of robot axis in the central Chinese city of Changsha last year. The self-driving taxi experiments seem to be closely related to the central government of China. It is possible for me to interpret and create a narrative about the relation between technology, government, and policies.

Documentation

1. Deciding the format

In order to “make believe”, the internal meeting presentations of car companies seem to be more convincing. On this basis, it would be more convincing to invite an internal staff member, engineer, or designer to deliver a lecture for the class. So I decided on the final form of the project: a promotional speech for an automobile company based on the company’s internal documents. Therefore, the major production of my project is to make a extremely real PPT for the car company.

2. Structure of PPT

The PPT format consists of four parts: policy background, industrial structure analysis, core technology and design, and service design. Among them, the policy background is mainly to introduce the three-child policy and the background of driverless taxis to the audience, and emphasize the dominant position of the Communist government in this fictional background. The analysis of industrial structure is to bring all the interests of automobile companies, autonomous driving and taxis into a larger context, so as to highlight the regulation of industries in different links by socialism in solving social problems. The core technology and design serve to solve the big demand of fertility, through the concept of “no driving seat, provide more comfortable travel space for multiple children”, again emphasize the starting point of solving fertility for the audience. Service design is the subject of satire. Driverless taxi services are available to everyone, but payment schemes are different. It’s free for families with multiple children, discounts for families with and without children, and a very strange charging scheme where single people have to pay in full gets my point across.

About Nam June Paik:

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist born in 1932 and died in 2006. He was influenced by the Fluxus movement, whose main aim was to make art available to the masses by involving them and relying on their translation in the outcome of their art pieces.

Nam June Paik and his Buddha TV, 1974, at Projects: Nam June Paik (August 29-October 10, 1977), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1977, photo: Eric Kroll

TV Buddha

In this work, the Buddha is a symbol of meditation and enlightenment, while its placement opposite the TV and camera symbolizes modern technology. Paik, a lifelong Buddhist, uses this work to question the role of the self in an era that intersects spirituality and technology. Each piece in the series consists of a Buddha sitting opposite the camera and TV. Through the projection of a camera, the Buddha stares at his image on a television screen, raising questions of self and humanity in a constant eye-to-eye competition. 

The things I see from this work are our digital existence. This art piece was created back to the time when television just came out. The way I examine this project the perspective people see technology through is different from the previous. We are all quite familiar with the display, camera, and digital technology while the people back in the last century are the first generation who embraced digital technology. It is reasonable to see they had the consideration and thinking on surveillance and humanity in digital form. But what about us? We are too numb to keep ourselves aware that we are under surveillance of thousands of cameras and algorithms. When we look at the self in camera, the experience is just like looking at a mirror. People enjoy technologies without noticing them and also without noticing that the mirror self is a digital version or existence of self.

The project was assigned new values and opinions as to the change of time and technologies. Right now, as Metaverse is invading our generation, we start to think about the question that Nam June Paik raised for people in the 1970s again.

Joseph Beuys is one of my favorite concept artists. He is the one who teaches me to feel an artwork instead of learning or understanding it, feelings or instincts are the keys to art. In his work “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare 1965”, there are too many visual elements that are potentially telling ideas and stories. For three hours Beuys sat in a chair, his head smeared with honey and gold dust, the sole of his left foot was felt, the sole of his right foot was steel, holding a dead hare in his arms, mumbling, paintings hanging on the walls; When the door opened and the audience entered the room, Boyce turned his back and said nothing. Even though there is no direct communication between Beuys and audiences, which they were separated by the window and locked door, every single element of this artwork, and also the performance as a whole, is trying to tell its audiences something, trying to convince. However, the dense and tight information does not tell people something specific. 

This work reminds us of the limitations of human beings: there is a mystery in all things in the world, in the whole nature, that human beings cannot answer. The mystery is deeply rooted in human nature, but human beings cut it off by reason. Art should be felt, not trying to be understood academically or logically. “The watching in silent” reaction from the audience for 3 hours seems to be the expected reaction to an artpiece Beuys proposed. Nothing else matter but feeling when people come to art. There is no need for “explaining an artwork”

The artist and artwork I am going to share in this weekly assignment are quite different from the previous. It is not something like conceptual art or contemporary art. It is photographic art, by Stephen Shore, the photography “Uncommon place”. The whole photography consists of 61 photos that Stephen Shore took on his cross-states travel throughout the whole United States in 10 years. He tries to capture the visual elements that can represent the United States and embraces different colors back to the time when people were still framed by black-and-white photography style. 

The first thought coming to my mind when I first read this is “common”. Everything shot in Stephen Shore’s large-format camera is so common in the U.S and also in the media for non-American people to perceive and learn about America. American-style cars, hotels, gas stations, etc. Find subtle strangeness and beauty in parking lots and billboards that show what they really are; With a story to tell. In repeated viewing, new narratives evolve from the depths of each image; A parking lot speaks to the dreams of the American car industry; The billboard’s iconic image depicts the majestic mountain landscape and mocks the landscape it blocks. Here are the clues to the American dream, shrink-wrapped in intuition.

The thing really stands out for me is that Stephen Shore does provide a texture, a United States texture back to the 1980s for me. It is the texture of images, color, elements, composition; and it is also the texture of the story, which you can read something beyond the photo itself, like a story the photo tells for you. Stephen shore shot so many common things in one frame, but leave a huge space for the audience to explore the details, and imagine, generating their own understanding and impression of “what is America”. And all these thinking, or the imagination, are raised by those common things. Uncommon places, common things.

Project Description

Black Chinese is a biography film, shot with the techniques of a documentary. By applying the philosophy of Parafiction, and based on Ugandan General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni who studied Mao Zedong’s knowledge and won the Uganda Bush War from 1981 to 1986, and served as The Prime Minister of Uganda for 34 years, the film is designed to portray a fictional black character “Dilon” from Uganda who is deeply influenced by Chinese culture because of the real history and came to China to for study. The film mainly records Dillon’s Chinese life in China, why he came, how he lives and his friendships with Chinese and non-Chinese, and also his attitudes towards his own identity perception.

The fictional character Dilon is meant to be a metaphor for sarcasm the current phenomenon in China that: some Chinese are deeply influenced by American culture, mainly black culture, wishing and trying to be like a black people; and at the same time, Chinese citizens also eager for culture export, or culture invasion as America did to China. It can be concluded as “the lack of cultural confidence” and paradoxical psychological state of Chinese that Chinese people do believe in their own history and culture but do not satisfied with the fact that Chinese culture is not around the world. That’s why you can see that the foreigners who express their crazy love to China and the behavior of trying to be a Chinese go virus on Chinese social media and the Internet.

Dillon is the parallel reflection: American already has a cultural invasion of China, what if there is a cultural invasion from China to the world? Therefore, Dilon is the imagination or illusion created for different people. On the one hand, for those who are manipulated by the foreign culture, this film is expected to serve as a tool to provoke them to think about “what they look like in real people’s eyes” and “how other people feel about them” because the black Chinese Dilon is the portrayal of their behavior; on the other hand, for those Chinese who clearly realize why there is such situation in China, this film is expected to imagine and have critical thinking about “what kinds of culture exportation China needs” and “how should non-Chinese learn and enjoy China in the future”.

What is the project about? What are you trying to say with the project? 

The project is about the culture invasion situation, in which some Chinese people try to be like black people because of the influence of Hip-hop music, culture, lifestyle, and fashion, etc, and the fact behind the phenomenon that the culture export of China is not as the way of China’s economic and global status growth. Even though China did a lot in terms of spreading its culture, it is obvious that China is weak in this area. A cultural-patriotic but also paradoxical social atmosphere exists on the Chinese Internet: some Chinese are manipulated by other cultures while some Chinese are sink in the illusion that China has a great impact on the world. 

The message I want to convey through this project is that:

I want to reveal the contradictions psychological states of Chinese that we assume that we should not only just have an impact on the economy but also have a culture-wised influence around the world but the situation is not what we expected. The disconnection between the real and the imagination may cause extremely serious identity perception issues around society because the psychological states may cause two extremes: people’s cultural consciousness and identity perception is under the risk of being affected by other’ country’s cultural policy(culture invasion) and the other people may be trapped by the strong eager for spreading culture so that the eager evolved into a kind of patriotic or racist culture attitudes.

Research

Geographic and historic research:

The research of this project is mainly focusing on “how to make believe”. Since I need to have a narrative that China has a great impact and influence in the world. I started with a question like “what countries would most likely be influenced by China”. I narrow down my view to Africa because of several reasons. First and historically, China maintains a good relationship with African countries. Back in Mao’s time, Mao insisted to stand with African black people. Thanks to African countries’ help, China became a permanent member of the United Nations. Secondly and economically, the achievement of China’s economic growth may already has some impact on African society. There are many infrastructure programs of China in Africa. Thirdly and culturally, the African country is quite similar to China. Like old China, it is very poor, and Africa also has a long history and culture, but there is no chance to spread it throughout the world. It is highly likely that Africa will be influenced by foreign cultures as China is now, developed, and then was influenced by the United States.

After narrowing down to the Africa context, I need to find some real History proving that China does have some influences in Africa. Uganda and Museveni is my research result. In college, Museveni read a lot of works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong. Began a radical pan-African political movement. He founded the African Revolutionary Front of University students and led student delegations to areas controlled by Frelimo in Portuguese Mozambique. There, Museveni received guerrilla training. In 1970, Museveni joined Ugandan President Milton Obote’s military intelligence service. When General Idi Amin seized power in a military coup in January 1971, Museveni and others, including President Obote, went into exile in Tanzania. In Uganda Bush War from 1980-1986, Museveni studied selected works of Mao Zedong, mobilized the masses, established bases, and organized his own army. Put forward the “top ten platform”, covering the establishment of a democratic system, to ensure the safety of person and legal property, strengthen the construction of national unity, safeguard the national autonomous, independent, integrated and self-sufficient economy and improve social services, curb corruption and abuse of power, abolish inequality, in collaboration with other African countries, and set up the system of mixed economy. And finally, he won the Bush War and became the Prime Minister of Uganda and Army General for over 34 years.

Culture Research

To make people believe that the Uganda people were influenced by China, I need to find a cultural symbol, which is iconic enough for every Chinese to quickly recognize and relate. It should be something universal in China. And I found the eyes exercise that every Chinese kid need to learn and do in the elementary educational stage.

It will also add some black humor to my film because everyone knows it.

The importance 

This project is more about delivering a message to the Chinese people. On the one hand, we need to accept and think about foreign culture critically. On the other hand, people need to think about what effect we need to achieve and what means we need to adopt when facing the needs of cultural export. Do we want people from other countries to blindly learn from China? Do we need cultural export to become a political tool to assimilate other peoples? Or do we want people from other countries to really enjoy Chinese culture? Thinking about these issues can help us better face foreign cultures. At the same time, my personal point of view is that cultural export is very important because misunderstandings happen all the time. Only when real culture is transmitted can we reduce misunderstandings. China is in a hurry, but we definitely need to be more patient.

What does the project do for the audience? Does it shock them? Does it humor them? Does it confuse them?

I think my work is black humor and metaphor. I believe that the sensory experience brought to the audience is indirect, pleasant, and thought-provoking. From critique, the audience is generally receptive to my message. I can also hear laughter and see smiles from the audience. But I also realize that for people of different cultural backgrounds, my work is different in terms of communication. All the Chinese present should be able to empathize with my feelings, and it is not difficult for the black students present to understand my thoughts. But our guest Professor Yunmi expressed her confusion. I think this is normal because the target group of this project is Chinese, and maybe black people. But her confusion also inspires me, because cultures are common. I believe that South Korean people are also facing the culture invasion of American culture, and South Korea is also trying to export their culture abroad. I believe the theme is universal. I think how to make people from different cultural backgrounds empathize with my works will be my main direction of improvement in the future\

Last but not least

Hope everyone enjoys this black humor fake documentary.

Special thanks to Professor Inmi for providing me with some conceptual guides

Special thanks to my friend Kevin Chen and Alan Chao for teaching me how to film and edit

I scan my left arm and limb:

Although trauma art is a relatively new concept to Chinese people, the collective memory of trauma and memory obsession is a frequent topic and an extremely politicized existence in China. For this reason, I quite agree with the author’s argument on the expression of trauma art. Even though the subject of trauma art are different (In China they are mostly collective art based on government and organizations, rather than the art run by individuals as mentioned by the author)

For example, China also mourned the massacre. The Nanjing Massacre took place during the Second World War. The Japanese fascists launched a brutal massacre in Nanjing. To this day, the survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, and the recall of that memory, are used by national politics as a tool for patriotic education and a conduit for political ideas. I visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial a few years ago, which displays relics as well as visual art works. As I browsed, I felt sympathy for the suffering and survivors, but as I left the memorial, my feelings were transformed into an overwhelming sense of patriotism and hatred for the war, and even for Japan.

When I recall and analyze this experience, I think the author’s perception of the danger of politicizing trauma art is correct. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall is not “vehicle for the interpersonal transmission of experience” (7), but a tool for politicizing patriotism education. This left the memory of the victims and survivors on the surface, which may be why, when I left the memorial, only a strong sense of patriotism survived. Bennet argued that “Affects arise in places rather than human subjects, in a way that allows us to isolate the function of affect, Focusing on its motility rather than its origins within a single subject (Bennet, 10) “. The mobility of emotion is very evident in my case. My grief for the victims was channelled into a strong patriotic feeling, an emotion detached from the human subject.

Back to my final project, I hope to satirize Chinese people’s appropriation of black culture by asking black Africans to imitate The behavior patterns of Chinese people. In my context, imitation and wearing masks are not really “trauma”. It’s more like a state of mind and a state of mind. I am still not quite sure how I will implement my final project. Through this reading, I have consciously discovered my own unconscious empathy.

Banksy’s shredded artwork is back at auction for nearly four times its previous price.

Banksy is an England street artist who displays his art on public visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces. His work is mostly demonstrated through sarcastic, black humor esthetic, and his social and political commentary has appeared on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. Banksy no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public “installations” are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on. 

The work I choose from him is one of the most famous and impactful ones–Love in the Bin. Banksy is anger about the behavior that people secretly, unofficially auction his street art piece, which is supposed to be public and not for sale. To comment on this, he decided to auction his painting work Love in the Bin officially in Sotheby’s London auction room. After the drop of the hammer with the auction price of $1.4 million, the image began slipping through a shredder secretly built into the bottom of the frame. Half of the painting was cut into pieces. What is dramatic is that the act of Banksy brought more value to this art piece. The art piece was cast as “the first work in history ever created during a live auction”.

This work reminds me of Fountain of Duchen. What is art? How to define art? For Banksy’s street art, the value is closely related to its publicity and the freedom of the street, open walls, and pedestrians. The act of stealing and unofficial auction completely change the way the author expected, it is no longer public, it is no longer sarcastic. The action of destroying an art piece after its auction carries Banksy’s attitude towards his art and his anger, which are the reasons why the value of these pieces of painting goes triple. The message matters, not the action. Action, which is shredding in Banksy’s context, is just the medium that carries the value. 

Reference:

Banksy’s Infamous Shredded Painting Is Out of the Bin and Back at Auction—for Nearly Four Times Its Previous Price

Banksy’s wikipedia

The slide is here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SCVaahYaHbW64NkLg12fmK4HQgWA6swQgQk4JyxHFds/edit?usp=sharing

Assignment:

Select one of the works described by Lambert-Beatty in the article and write a two to three paragraph response to the work on the blog post. Some of the questions you should answer in the paper are: Out of all the works mentioned in the reading, why does this particular work intrigued you? Is the work successful or a failure in your opinion? Explain. The purpose of this reading assignment is to formulate your own opinion about the artwork described in the article and discover what aspects of speculative art interest you. Make sure to provide your personal opinion instead of summarizing it. If you make a reference to the reading or readings you have previously read, make sure to cite them properly and provide visual media when it is possible. 

The work described by Lambert-Beatty in the article that I choose is A Tribute to Safiye Behar by Michae Blum. This interests me most because the way Blum created it and the process is extremely similar to my Project I. The difference between Blum and Me is that he took this artwork as a means of expressing ideas and thinking while there is no core value inside my work. 

I think this piece is successful in defining metanarrative dissonance and parafiction. As a result, although Blum revealed the fictionality in the end, and the public accepted the message, people still discussed this fictional historical figure in the same context as the real history and no longer associated this fictional figure with Blum.  The virtual and the real are interwoven, people can still be aware of what is unreal, but the fictionality has outgrown its meaning, which in a sense Behar is no longer unreal, she exists as a representation of a certain ideology and political historic view.

Another interesting point about this work is that it reminds me that “Make Believe” is not just about creating enough detail and illusion to make people believe, but also about realizing that people only choose to believe what they want to believe, even if it’s not true. Although Blum’s work has obvious flaws that make it clear that Behar is a fictional character, its political and historical messages successfully reached people. That’s why, after so long, people choose to talk about a fictional character alongside real history, people choose to believe in her existence.