meeting points and disconnects: the cultural nuances of emotional expression.

Last week in China and internationally a lot of media have been reporting on the awful story of a little girl, Wang Yue, who was ran over twice, while total of 18 people passed by, but did not extend a hand or call the police, up until the 19th person, came to rescue her. 7 minutes had already passed since she was hit by the first van. She died in hospital. Some report that people ‘didn’t want the repercussions of getting ‘involved’. Media, especially western media talk about the social values of the chinese, and the Chinese, in the quest to ‘get rich quick’ has lots its moral compass, prompting soul-searching. In the Chinese news there are suggestions for legislation of Good Samaritan Laws, which will protect aiding bystanders, and cash awards to ‘promote’ good behaviour. Its perplexing, pretty hard to comprehend – a sort of Self-preservation vs Empathy. It made me think of this recent link that was sent to me last month by Paul Gilbert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/brooks-the-limits-of-empathy.html?_r=1

In China, it appears the kids are doted upon so lovingly , with the one child policy, you see the one child, trailed by the parents and the two sets of grandparents either side – the children look like little emperors. Pablo also gets a lot of attention, also treated like a little emperor here as well. Although western media reports that money is the new religion and first goal of the chinese, it appear to me that family comes first. Kids seem to be most important thing here. The kids seem to roam freely, safely, and seem to be protected by the other families on the streets – like one big extended family surrounding them. You see lots of kids playing on the street, much like we used to do 30 years ago growing up in Australia before.

However, something else happens on the roads here – Even if the lights say we can walk, and I will be crossing the road with the pram, buses will basically just drive (very fast) straight through the pedestrian crossing, straight at me and the pram, and I have to run to get out of their way. Its absolutely chaotic. I cross the road with one hand out like a stop sign, trying to catch the eyes of the driver so they can see that I want them to stop, or slow down.

Something also shifts in the zones of public transport. As we were leaving the bullet train yesterday, after an easy five hour trip, Pablo starts to walk down the aisle to be near our bag, just as the train was pulling into Shanghai. At the same time everyone got out of the seat to get their bags and leave the train. I started screaming out for Pablo, seeing him getting pushed towards the door of the train as the masses moved out. Interestingly, no one moved, or made much interest in my concern, or made any room for me to get to my son, or allow him to get back to me, or atleast grab him so he would get pushed further away – although it was sort of obvious what was happening. Mother protection instinct shifted into the forefront, I found myself hurdling over the seats in seconds, and pushing everyone out of the way to get to him. It was frightening. Something happens to people on the public transport here – its just fending for yourself. Lots of pushing, shoving and not much caring about the other person.

Its hard to comprehend the harrowing story of the little girl, but there has been a lot of reflection about it in China. I don’t think this is a ‘chinese’ issue, but a global one. People are becoming too scared to help.

We are speeding through China at 300 km an hour on the bullet train – it used to go a lot faster, until the big crash and 35 people dead last month. China is developing at such a speed, it has the most bullet trains in the world, with a desire to build one to London and Singapore – we are going to Shanghai in 5 hours, it used to be 4 hours before the crash.

The landscape out there is sort of desolate, interrupted by incessant building of apartment blocks, however, its all going by so fast that its hard to focus on anything. I have been taking a lot of video footage on the way. I would like to do something with it, maybe mix it with some slower transport footage, going in a different direction. Maybe horse and cart (which you still see on the streets of Beijing).

Looking out the window, you can see about a mile now, but this morning, in our ride to the train station, you were lucky to see 100 metres. It was surreal, and a touch dangerous side – on the huge highways – the cars have no seatbelts here. You just hope for the best. We set up the camera on the dash board, taking a close up shot of the traffic, the forward motion of cars passing us by and speeding into blankness. The camera had a hard time focusing with all of the smog, so it was really blurry. It looked good.

We are heading to Shanghai now to start some new work. I am hoping to find uot more about the development of ‘China’s happiest and most harmonious face’. Since the Olympics, there seems to a movement in the service industry, trying to bring a smile to it.

http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/china-sets-amusing-rules-shanghai-beijing-bullet-train-attendants-287576

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/15/content_12704643.htmhttp://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2011/06/23/Girls-In-Training-or-Speak-English-Feel-Beautifulhttp://english.sina.com/china/p/2011/0615/377796.htmlhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2007-10/12/content_6895958.htmhttp://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/12/21/1198175339045.htmlhttp://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/BeijingInformation/BeijingNewsUpdate/t1173357.htmjapanhttp://www.japanator.com/put-on-your-happy-face-for-japanese-smile-training-technology-10636.phtmlhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/12/content_11538465.htmChinese business ettiquette school 0 course – http://www.aifa.org.cn/en/Training.html

Would like to find these courses.

I have been up since 5am because I had an exhibition in Brighton UK last night http://www.whitenightnuitblanche.com/brighton/even… and we did live video links with Beijing. – I am showing a recent project, Present Perfect, Continuous, its a chat engine (reworked Skype) so people can only talk in`present tense. I am also showing a work, Percolate, I developed with Nokia. So I have been on video and chat to Brighton all morning, while frantically packing the Beijing Studio. We have been here for a month, and with Pablo, it means things are sort of everywhere, and especially where you would least expect them.

It feels way too sudden to leave Beijing. We will be here for two weeks before we head to Chongqing. We went to an opening last night at the Red Gate Gallery, http://www.redgategallery.com/ for the opening of new work by Guan Wei. Brian Wallace, the director of the Red Gate Gallery, invited us to dinner with the Artist. About 40 of us – a huge dinner with heaps of artists from around the world – in a great Yunnan Restaurant.

Beijing is a great city with a huge art scene – everyone is so welcoming. You could get caught here for years, and lots do – they just keep coming back. You need atleast five months more for this city. I don’t know what I expected of beijing, but its much better than I expected – i wasn’t expecting such a huge art scene, and I wasn’t expecting so many friendly people. We will try to come back next year. I could easily make Beijing a bigger part of my life.

Tomorrow will be spent racing around Shanghai – first of all to register ourselves with the police and secondly to get our next visa here. I hope it works out OK.

Sitting over at the Three Shadows Library – which is just a minute away from our studio at Platform China. At Platform China there is a lot of building going on next door – which is getting really loud – and too distrcting to work, so I have left Pablo and Matt to watch DVDs and I have escaped the chaos to got some work done. The library is a great place to work, however today, there are few americans, italians and english people, speaking english, and I find myself drawn to the conversations – eavesdropping – I guess I haven’t been able to listen to conversations for a while. In our everyday, few people speak english around us – and now, hearing all of these english speakers, its really hard not to listen. Its really distracting actually.

Spending some time researching how chinese medicine looks at emotion. There are traditionally seven broad emotions in Chinese medicine: Joy, Sadness/Grief, Pensiveness/Worry, Fear, Anger, Shock, and Fright. Traditional Chinese medical theory believes the body is in the control “of the Five Elements: Earth, Wood, Fire, Water, and Metal. Each element corresponds to a specific organ as well as a specific emotion. The emotions are not believed to always be the direct cause of an ailment, but have an undeniable connection with the progress and condition of the problem. ” In optimal health, ones emotions flow freely, are acknowledged, responded to appropriately, and then we move on to the next “feeling”. Illness only arise when one becomes “stuck” in emotions, – ignore or suppress them.

We took a bus into 798 district today to pick up the glasses project from the Optometrist. The glasses with the mirrors worked well – This work will be a part of the Nowness Series, (working title – maybe Nowness Excercises) – potentially called Ponder. As you look through the glasses the only thing you can see are your own eyes staring back at you. Its hard to focus – my eyes are blurry. Its a bit confronting, a bit dizzying, Pablo loved them. I guess, they are about taking time out – a small tool for introspection, and taking time out to think about essence, about purpose, about the day.

self-re·flec·tion (slfr-flkshn)n.Self-examination; introspection.self-re·flective adj.self-re·flective·ly adv.

pon·der (pndr)v. pon·dered, pon·der·ing, pon·dersv.tr.To weigh in the mind with thoroughness and care.v.intr.To reflect or consider with thoroughness and care.

Ponder is the fourth project of Nowness Series.

The others – Present Perfect Continuous (showing at Pheonix this saturday night) explores present tense – skype changes the conversation to present tense.

Another – Percolate, uses skype video, shifting it, so you can only look deeply into each others eyes at you converse.

Divulge is a chat engine that intervenes by asking a lot of questions.

I have thought of making some sort of mirrored facial wear, but I am not so sure about this yet, how to go about it, what it would feel like to wear.

WE went to the great wall of china yesterday – fantastic. Took the bus from the train station and then a cab – great day. I would like to go again, to find parts of the wall that are still in their older state.

Been spending a bit of time getting ready for an event in Brighton UK this Saturday night.

http://www.phoenixarts.org/events.html
http://www.whitenightnuitblanche.com/brighton/events/like-shadows-a-celebration-of-shyness/

The event is at Phoenix Brighton
http://www.phoenixarts.org/contact.html
Phoenix Brighton
10–14 Waterloo Place
Brighton BN2 9NB
East Sussex
UK

I will be presenting 2 prototypes of new works in the Nowness Series – a series of projects that disrupt habitual communication.

For Present, Perfect, Continuous, this will be the first external testing session. We are discussing whether I will chat from Beijing, early Sunday morning.

For Percolate, a work developed with Nokia Research Center, I will just show documentatio of the first user session which took place at Nokia Research Center in 2010. We just found out our paper we wrote was accepted at http://www.mum2011.org/ MUM 2011, Dec 7-9, 2011, Beijing, China

“The International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM) is a distinguished forum for presenting the latest research results in mobile and ubiquitous multimedia”. Katja, from Tampare University of Technology in Finland will come over to present it.

To be presented at Pheonix:

Nowness Series, Tina Gonsalves
Present Perfect Continuous. Prototype 01 Tina Gonsalves/Matt Iacobini
At WhiteNight, Tina Gonsalves and Matt Iacobini present the first prototype of Present Perfect Continuous.

Liveness involves action in the present, an awareness of now. Speaking in present tense is effective for conveying the immediacy of emotions and sensations. We do not know from the information that is given exactly when the activities started or when they will end.

This chat program will disrupt habitual conversation strategies, only allowing users to speak in progressive present tense. Anything written in past tense or future tense gets converted to present tense. The prototype program works through Skype receiving the chat messages and making subtlechanges before relaying them to the other person. The other person only receives the changed message without being aware of the original one, while the sender is not aware of the changesthat have been made to the original message. A custom built natural language processing engine, designed by Matt Iacobini, identifies parts of the text and changes them in ways that concentrate the communication in the present, giving it a more immediate and continuous feel. The sentences in the past and future tenses get changed into the present and the ones in the present tense get changed to the continuous form, this process is designed to deviate the flow towards a more intimate communication that situates the peoplein the moment together.

Nowness Series, Tina GonsalvesPercolate, Prototype 01, Tina Gonsalves/Nokia Research Center/Tampere University of Technology (Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila , Katja Suhonen, , Martin Schrader, Toni Järvenpää)
At white night festival, Gonsalves shows the documentation of the first user session of Percolate, which took place at Nokia research center in 2010. Percolate uses eye display technology developed by Nokia Research Center. As a phone call begins, a captured image of the conversants’ eyes is transmitted to each conversant via the eye display technology. The conversants look probingly into each others eyes as they converse. After analysing the results of the user study, the overall experience of using the system was reported by the participants as personal, intimate and feeling like being close to the other person. The most used terms to describe the system were interesting, different, intimate, new and surprising. Users described the experience as “a strange sense of intimacy”, “pleasantly strange” and “tranquil”. These terms resonate well with the original artistic motivations of the system: Taking the people out of their ordinary conversation situations and habitual responses, and to create intimate communication. The eye did not reveal too much of the communication partner’s emotional state – a broader view of facial gestures would be needed to interpret those emotional cues. Still, the eye seemed to function as a means to prevent distractions from the focus of the discussions, and thus helped users to stay in the moment. “You couldn’t get distracted visually to anything. It kind of helped you to focus on the matter at hand. … It is not as if you could start reading a newspaper, which I sometimes do when I’m using Skype. I’m beginning to wander off to other things.” another reports “It felt a bit like being closer to each other than in normal telephone conversation.” and a “A strange sense of intimacy.”

The days are passing way to quickly. Its getting cold out there, and the sun sets around 5.30 now.

Today was a sort of frustrating adventure – an hour wasted spent talking to the Australian bank about the excessive fees – ‘international’ fees for withdrawing money, and then you can only get small amounts of money at a time, (the daily limit), so you need constant withdrawals, and more ‘international fees’ for using a credit card. These are excessive – sometimes sitting at around 120 AUD for a large equipment or flight purchase. This call didn’t acheive much, but its amazing how these accounts don’t suit people who live out of the norm.

Then it took an hour to print out a map – the address kept changing depending on whether it was google or http://www.baidu.com/ which is popular here. By then I was running late for a lunch appointment with the cultural team from the Australian Embassy, which meant I had to catch a cab. I find the cabs in Beijing, are frustrating – you need to be armed with maps (I had three) the address written in english and chinese, and then the number of a chinese speaking person at the destination who can guide the cab driver. I had all of the above, and after an hour in the cab, and him driving around in circles, and four calls to the embassy to work out where he was and where they were, he was still lost. He was stopping on the streets to ask pedestrians where he was. Then he just stopped and sort of motioned for us to get out. We motioned ‘no’ and wouldn’t move. An hour later, late for lunch – he found the embassy which is situtated on a very major street, near a major subway station in the chaoyang district. The taxi drive apologised. But, lesson learnt, from now on, unless your with someone who can speak chinese – I think buses and subway are the way to go – atleast you can keep a bearing of where you are. i haven’t felt so frustrated for a long time.

Lunch was nice, in the embassy district in the sunlitan area in Beijing at a usual sort of expat place, trying to make a pannini with dried out bread and not much else. After the panninis were sort of dumped on the table, we had to search through the inside of the panninis to work out which ones we had ordered. We met with Amanda and Katie, Cultural Relations Officer at the Australian Embassy in Beijing. I think its best to stick to chinese food in china.

We went to the a visa office to discuss our visa issues. With a payment of 880RMB per person, we will extend our visa for another month, and they will deal with the opening of bank accounts and transferring of funds. We will go in on Tuesday and they take our passports for a week, as well as marriage certificate and pablo’s birth certificate.

Yesterday we searched around 798 district for optometrists. We were armed with maps, and also Viki, from Platform China, had translated what we wanted into Chinese and printed it out for us.

So after visiting a few, and just getting puzzled faces and amused sort of grinning, we found one that seemed to understand what we wanted.

Translated note to optemetrist:

“I am an artist, and for an art project I would like to create a pair of glasses with mirror lenses on the inside. So when a person wears the glasses they can only see their own eyes in the mirror.
Is this possible?
Do you have a good choice of frames?
How much would this be?
How long would this take?
I would like to create 6 of these.

I would also like to create glasses for my husband, Matthew Wild and myself. We have attached our prescription from our optometrist in Australia.
How long would this take?
Do you have a good choice of frames?
How much would this be?

So 200 dollars later are now making three sets of glasses. This being my first set of glasses that I need for distance. Matts are bi-fold we hope. And the mirror glasses – if they are good, I will order more. Who knows what they will be like, but we can pick them up tomorrow.