Final Project – Mingyue Deng, April Qiu

Project: Survive 1984

Documented By: Mingyue Deng

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~md3606/commlab/finalproject/startpage.html

For this project, we were inspired by the book 1984 by George Orwell and we wanted to remake some of the most famous scenes. 

Since the project has a very dark theme, we decided to make a warning page before starting the game. And we also decided to make a button for emergency escape if someone is uncomfortable to continue to play the game.

Unfortunately, we were not able to reach our goal for many parts of the project. For example, the pop-up window was not supposed to be a prompt window but a dialogue box each time a question is asked in the space. And we would like to have the mouse move in and out of the screen to trigger such box. However, since we could not know the exact location of the mouse when the page is opened, we decided that we would make a prompt window.

We also wanted to make a bed in the living room, but because of the perspective is not right with the screen, we decided to instead make a button with a red door image.

Here is a version of the working website for the first question to be asked in the game.

workingpage_md3606

We also had some problems with loading the audio for the website. And we since the images are too large to load locally, we started to use a localhost server by using python in Terminal.

It was our first time using p5.js, so it was very frustrating when we were trying to draw the shapes we wanted. 

Final Project Proposal – Mingyue Deng, April Qiu

Concept

The topic we choose to address is based on the book 1984 written by George Orwell. The book describes a dystopia where the government closely monitors their people and controls both their actions and minds. Our project will present three of the main scenes in the book: the living space, the working space, and the torture chamber – Room 101. In each scene, the players would be like the character Winston Smith in 1984 and play the game in the first person. They can explore the living space and working space. Their choices may lead them to Room 101 and go through unpleasant scenes of punishment. They can be obedient to the Big Brother or they can revolt with their not-cooperating actions, but there is actually no way out in that awful society. We would like to evoke emotions and cause people to think about their freedom and independence, the relation between society and individuals, or other creative thoughts through our dark project. Also, the project will be easily accessible to the audience who have never read the book.

Sources

There are three sources which we chose as inspirations to our project. As stated as our subject for the project, we clearly took our scenes and settings from the book 1984 by George Orwell. The other two inspirations are from two artists. The first one is Angela Washko’s net art “The Game: The Game”, in which she created an interactive game to show the hook-up and dating culture we have become familiar. In our project, we will make an interactive game similar to the process of Washko’s work. The second artist we took inspirations from is Olia Lialina who created one of the masterpieces of net art in the late 1990s. Her work “My Boyfriend Came Back From the War” inspired us from the way it separated different thinkings as if the boyfriend suffered from PTSD. In our project, we will also create an option for the players to select which will be called “doublethink” as written in 1984, which the player will be allowed to think differently than how he or she acts.

Production

In this project, we will incorporate animations, audio, and interactive choices. The rooms will be in animated formats. Before each choice, there will be audio alerts playing, like in “The Game: The Game” designed by Angela Washko, to command the player. In the living space, there will be a big screen for the audience to interact with. The players will be asked to stare at the screen all the time, which means they need to keep putting their mouse on the screen. If they failed, they will be sent to Room 101 to be punished. In the workplace, there will be brainwashing audio playing constantly. The players will be required to ask questions like “Do you believe the Big Brother?”. If they choose the wrong answer, they will end up in Room 101 again. Another setting in the working place is that there will be colleagues there. The player is not alone but in a group of people who are acting obediently to the authority. We want to use the conformity to add pressure on our audience – to stay thinking independently and keep one’s own personality is more difficult when you are in the group. In Room 101, there will be punishment scenes. The game is an endless loop. It will never end because it is life in 1984. After being punished, the players will be sent back to their living/working place and continue their experience. We will set an ending button that always displays on the screen. The players can click on that button and leave the game whenever they want, in case they feel uncomfortable in the game. Although these settings are dark, we are trying to create the best simulation net art for the players. Also, at the beginning of our project, there will be a warning site to suggest that this website is dark and might evoke feelings of uncomfortable.

Response to Rachel Greene – Mingyue Deng

It is very interesting to know the history of Internet Art and how these artists started pouring their energy into making art online. It seems that the artists need to know a lot of knowledge, not only in the art field but also in the programming field to be able to build these internet arts.

For this article, I have many questions to ask. In the article, Greene gave many examples of successful internet art in the 1980s and 1990s. However, I am wondering about how internet art transformed today since the technology is better and the programming languages evolved. And how people’s expectations when viewing internet art changed that could affect how artists are doing the artworks.

I found this article which is very interesting. The exhibit contains the entire history from 1989 to today’s internet art and how they transformed as digital media grew.

Link: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/2018/02/02/art-internet-ica-boston/

Also, I have found the original exhibition website and there are some gallery photos.

Link: https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/art-age-internet-1989-today

Video Project – Mingyue Deng, Billie Jean, Manal

Project: Video Project – DRAMA NYUSH

Documented By: Mingyue Deng

Link: imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~md3606/commlab/week10/video/index.html

For this project, I was responsible for the technology part. After we came up with what we wanted to do, I rented the camera and recording pieces of equipment from the Equipment Room. Then, I filmed the front side and the lobby of the academic building. When I was filming these places, I could not set up the tripod to a stable condition, so I decided to film by hand and made them be a little shaky on purpose since Billie Jean filmed her part on a go-pro, making it feel like a survival game. I took about 6 videos, but we are only using pieces from the videos. Since I was not able to upload all six due to technical difficulties, I chose the three best videos to share with my group members.

Videos:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R0lJadlcQoeWiwlrUpW5qq_ilV20dkFI

After I finished uploading these videos to the Google Drive folder, we set up a time to film the interview scenes. Before Billie Jean could get out of her classes, Manal and I filmed several scenes in the school featuring some students. Then, we found a study room to do the interviews. I set up the TASCAM recorder and the microphone and attached the camera onto the tripod. We chose to put the tripod on the table to make it stand on the same level as the interviewees. As the interviews went on with Billie Jean asking questions then Manal asking questions, I checked the camera and made sure that the devices are functioning as they should be.

Although I missed the last week of post-production classes and user-testing due to special circumstances, I finished my part of the project before I left. Even though I was not responsible for the post-production, Billie Jean had problems uploading the files, so I asked her to send them to me so I could upload them. However, when I received the files, there is something wrong with the attachment of the video to the index.html page. It starts to download automatically without playing. Since I did not have the time to fix it, I uploaded it like that and I’m not sure if it’s only reacting like that on an Apple computer.

Audio Project – Mingyue Deng, Angel Yang

Project: Audio Project

Documented By: Mingyue Deng and Angel Yang

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~zy1193/project2/project2.html

In this project, we did not have a lot of problems with the audio recording part or the audio editing part. After we recorded the sounds, I was responsible for editing the audios. I cut out most of the irrelevant audios and the silences from the audios but without making them too abrupt using Adobe Audition. I did not have any problems with that part. After that, Angel and I met to discuss what we should keep in the audios for our final project. 

Then we found some logos for the sound samples we have for the project. I edited out the backgrounds of the logos using Pixelmator Pro to make the background transparent so we could put them on the website as the buttons. I had some problems doing that with Pixelmator Pro but I had no problem editing the images with Photoshop.

So I had no problems with my parts. I found some more instruments to make the website contents richer than just isolated recorded sounds from different places. They are from YouTube. These are the links:

I cut out some parts to make the audio samples on the website shorter.