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

Note to Matt about how to proceed with Present Perfect Continuous, a chat engine that subverts text into present tense. We showed the work last saturday night at the White Night Festival in Brighton UK. We aim to finish the work over the next month. Its been over a year in development.

HI Matt

So – this is great that you feel it was successful. And it was really good it fell with in the concept of shyness exhibition at pheonix.
When I was using it, my initial thoughts is that it is ‘too’ subtle I guess I would like to see it become a little more potent. I sort of felt it had more ‘charge’ on the friday when we tested it.

I like the fact that people didn’t know it was happening – this is important – I would like to think of it as a slow realization, or gentle shift – however, in order for this to happen I do think it needs to have a stronger effect than it currently has – is this possible? It would be great to learn more about why people were swapping seats.

My aim is for it to work with in people’s homes, like a downloadable widget or something – I like that it can be involved with festivals – and its nice that someone is there to talk the users through it, but I think chatting works best when it is done in private spaces. I like the idea of taking ‘art interventions’ into private spaces, out of gallery spaces, into ones everyday life. I like to think of this as a tool that challenges our conversations – The original idea for this is to ‘disrupt habitual communication’ – take as out of our usual responses and thought processes – therefore I think this would work best chatting between friends, family , etc – pushing past the barriers of relationships, moving them into new grounds, new questions, and new ways of looking at each other. Like Chris Frith’s book – Making up the Mind – we tend to fill in the gaps with past ideas, past experiences and project them onto present situations – I would like to shift this a little, making it not so easy to fill in the gaps. I agree about more privacy, its certainly an awful feeling writing when someone is looking over your shoulder. if we set it up again, with in a gallery space, we could either do it where the computers are on different levels, or in different countries, or different galleries. For example – we could have had one in lighthouse and one in pheonix. Or, can we make it work on facebook chat. I know you don’t use facebook – but it does have a chat option as well.

i like your approach to analysing it = especially the learning more about if the shift of tense naturally happens in the conversation – Is there an easy way to analyse this ?
How can we have this running live constantly – do we need a dedicated server that is on 24/7? I have a few mac mini’s in my studio in berlin – one could be utilized for this. I won’t be back in berlin for a while though.
I think we finish this work in the next month, then move onto the next one – then compare the impact of the two. I will start searching around for another event – I do have a solo exhibition coming up in Cairns in December that we could do something there – but would need to suss out a lot more first. This exhibition goes for a couple of months though.

So – lets talk – just grab me online -the earlier the better for me – I tend to start switching off around 6pm shanghai time.

Thanks heaps matt – I am really glad we did this event.

ON Saturday night, I showed a new work, called Present Perfect Continuous, in Brighton, UK, as part of the White Night Festival. Present Perfect Continuous is a chat engine – it reworks scype, changing everything you have written into present tense. I have been working with Matt Iacobini to program the work. The development of this work has taken over a year or more now. This event was the first time we had tested the work. As I was not there, I chatted to people from Beijing, I am trying to get a sense of how it was recieved. Apparantly the event had 4000 visitors in the one night.

I asked Matt to write his thoughts

– I felt it was a success on many levels, very satisfying. …I had the feeling it was conductive towards people experiencing facets and nuances of shyness at many levels. They weren’t sure what the installation was doing so that made them feel less secure they could speak with me and they didn’t know me or to each other, to the people that had tried it before, and they didn’t know each other much either.

Then there was the chatting and chatting with other people watching what you are typing can put pressure on and generate bashfulness etc.. There were some people that were a bit older or in general with very little experience of technology that had the chance to try chatting for the first time, and I could see on their faces that it was throwing them into some pretty deep thought while coming to terms with the new social realities of digital communication… There was certainly the potential for people realising that when they are in the privacy of their own home chatting away to their friends there is no reason to assume that there aren’t people reading what they are typing.

Then there was the fact of not knowing if they were chatting to a person or a computer… Were they really talking to the person behind them or was it a hoax, or perhaps the subversion went so far that the lines would be burred between chatting with the other person or the machine. There was certainly a dimension of the appropriation of the tool that we will be able to peer into better once we look at the logs and get the data in interviewing tasha and carla. I think this is a hallmark of successful design when people can appropriate it and use it in surprising ways. They were messing around sending weird and wonderful messages to each other, switching places without the other person knowing… There were points in which it wasn’t clear if it was a man or a woman they were speaking to…

I would say that most of the people that we didn’t tell that the computer was making changes didn’t actually know it.

There were various artists and psychologists sociologists linguists etc.. That passed by in the night and I had a chat with and presented the idea, and most of them had a very positive reaction.
There is also a whole lot of stuff we will be able to see looking at the logs, for example if people tend to use the present tense more at the beginning or the end of the chat, and no doubt we will discover many things we didn’t notice.

I had a feeling that the idea was excellent and that it is versatile and has a lot of potential applications. In an art gallery context an artist suggested we could go along with an idea such as having booths to make people feel safer and make the experience be more immersive and anonymous… The factor of doubt and wonder was strong as I saw it in their eyes and is very easy to play on both through the way the layout and installation is made and the way that the people are briefed or not briefed beforehand, this would no doubt have a strong effect on the experience and what people may get from it.

On the other hand there are also many possibilities purely online, and that has a lot of potential for gathering a lot of data.

Let me know when you want to talk, it would make it easier for me if I know what direction we are thinking of so that I know better what questions to ask.

Hope to speak with you soon.
Kind regards,
Matt

Headed to the M50 district yesterday – the Art District in Shanghai, near shanghai Railway station. It was onnce an old textile mill but now the complex houses galleries, studios and art spaces. Its a strange mix, some good a lot pretty average. In particular I wanted to see Shanghart

http://www.shanghartgallery.com/

Just my luck closed for installation – but there is the opening next saturday. Feeling a touch dissapointed, we jumped on a cab and headed to Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art.

http://www.mocashanghai.org/

By this time it was pouring rain. We got soaked trying to find it on People’s Square. mmm.. closed again – there was a PIXAR exhbition on, which had just closed a few days before. Surely the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art would have a permanent collection? Anyway, no matter how much I tried to explain this to security – my Chinese is zero, and their english zero – I couldn’t work it out. They tried to guide us up many flights of stairs with the pram to the restaurant. We left, dissapointed and frustrated – I was somehow thinking I was about to see an amazing collection of contemporary chinese art. What happened? Can it really show just a pixar exhibition? I will ask around a bit more, it just didn’t seem right.

We then headed to the Shanghai Museum of Art, home of the Shanghai Biennial. This had closed in January. The buidling was a British-built race course, and the museum building was the jockey club. Some of the details on the ceiling of the building are gorgeous.

http://www.sh-artmuseum.org.cn/

Pablo fell asleep in the pram and we saw a few good shows. On the third floor was a lot of propoganda etchings from western magazines like Harpers bazaar documenting the colonial life in Shanghai. There were no english captions, but the images were an intriguing insight into the times. On the second floor there was an exhibition be austrian artist, Xenia Hausner. A lot of the works use photos as a starting point, then oils are layered over the photo. The technique was intriguing and the colour palettes beautiful. The works profiles strange, loving, and violent relationships. On the first floor there was an exhibition by Xue Song. His works are seducingly textural,and for me, with my love of collage, I found them beautiful. Built up by layers of collage – torn pieces of paper, some with their edges burnt, others ripped. In the early 1990s Song’s studio burned down destroying all his works. He took the ashes of his old works and used them to create new works. Xue Song carefully chooses the material of his collages from newspapers, magazines and books. He mixes images and text, western and Chinese, selecting the fragments depending on the subject of his work. He uses projectors to sketch an outline of a figure, (usually a political figure, an image made famous through the press, a culturally charged icon, a commercial product). He will then collage the inside of the line differently to the outside of the line.

We made our way to the old city and found somewhere on the street to have a few beers and ponder the day, while Pablo slept. We made our way back home on subway – right a peak hour. The sea of people moving was incredible. We managed OK – yesterday, Matt got caught with the train door trying to close on him and the pram with Pablo in it. I panicked when I saw what was happening. I shoved everyone back into the train so hard, to quickly make room to let him on. Its amazing what happens on the public transport here – shoving and pushing to make some room is just part of the process – I have been here over a month now, and I am shoving and pushing like the best of them.

We have moved into an apartment – indoor stadium area, about five stops out from People’s Square. It has two bedrooms and 2 bathroom – so Pablo is in Heaven. He has overtaken our bedroom as the designated play room. We are on the top floor, the 18th story, and our view is a sea of apartment buildings, interweaved by superhighways and overpasses. Walking on the street is an intense experience of traffic noise. From the 18th story, its just a constant hum. Apparently there is a heated pool and gym somewhere in this complex.

After the hard living of the Platform China, it feels like luxury. Also, its been nice to have Pablo wanting to bath – the shower at Platform china meant showers became screaming sessions for Pablo.

We spent yesterday just moving in, finding a supermarket, filling the fridge for the next couple of weeks.

I still seem unsure of how to proceed with my work here, feeling a bit frustrated about it. but more suggestions from my day of emailing on Tuesday are starting to pay off. Some are, some aren’t. Jacky, who owns this apartment we have rented (through airbnb) is a TV producer, so I thought I would email him with a few of the ideas that i was hoping to pursue in Shanghai (see last post). I don’t think he understood what I was after, and this is the response I got.

Hi Tina,

1. There is no fast train between Shanghai and Chongqing, only 13 hours normal one.

2. Prettiest, happiest and most harmonious faces are the kids: no matter kindgarten or school.

3. Servie industry in China is poorest.

4. There is no similar “Women Venting anger store” in Shanghai, neither in China. It’s not Chinese culture or tradition, it copied from developed country – Japan.

5. I don’t know any strange barber in Shanghai, Shanghai is a commercial city instead of creative.

Best,
Jacky

Brendan Linnane, a london based artist we met in Beijing, suggested we should get in contact with a friend of his, Mathilde – we will hopefully meet over the next couple of days. Brian, from Redgate gallery sent through a few contacts as well. I also heard back from Island6 – an arts organisation in shanghai who used to run residencies. I have also written to the Australian consulate, etc, and have a few shanghai based expats

Its interesting in China – it seems emails are not really responded to, and most ‘business’ is done over a mobile phone. It takes a lot to get me on a phone, but I am trying to change my ways. For example, I keep emailing Organhaus, to finalise the Chongqing residency. I ask if they have recieved my emails, and Yang Shu, the director, tells me he hasn’t even looked at his email :). Apparently the next important communication is texting – I rarely respond to texts, but was told by Gordon at Where Where space that not responding to texts is the ultimate no no – considered very rude. Will have to change my communication methods. If I want things to speed up, the phone will need to be my friend and I will have to keep it charged and close by.

So, just off the phone to Organhaus in Chongqing – and Yangshu, the director is flying to germany for six weeks the day after I hope to fly in. He promised he would email the curators contacts through. I am looking at flying to Chongqing on the 14th of November or so – will organise in the next couple of days. The 13 hour train could be a bit difficult with Pablo, so I flights may be a better option.

We are heading off to M50 today – an art district near Shanghai Railway Station.

Well, visas are done. It took about an hour and 160 rmb in Shanghai. In Beijing we were asked to transfer $3000 USD per passport into two chinese bank accounts. 9000 USD total. Well, wasnt possible – and then we were negotiating with visa agencies to do it for us – would have cost about $400 – they wanted marriage certificates and birth certificates, etc. Instead, we came to Shanghai. Well, I recomend to anyone – do not extend a visa in Beijing. We will pick up our passports on Monday – I hope it all goes smoothly.

Shanghai is an incredible metropolis – very different to Beijing. Sky Scrapers sit next to art deco buildings, and behind them are lots of alley ways selling street food and everything else. You get lost in Shanghai with all the winding streets. It has hints of its colonial past. Many people speak english – this is shocking after Beijing. This city is very different to the wide streets of Beijing, surrounded by ring roads. Both cities are monsters, however shanghai feels a lot more cosmopolitan. It looks like there is more money in Shanghai.

Today I have spent about six hours emailing anyone I know who knows more about Shanghai than I do. I think we will get a translator for a few days to make things happen. Nick, a friend from Australia has suggested a great Barber shop under a highway for the barber shoot. Jason, a friend of Matt’s from Australia is suggesting a good interpreter and more people to get in touch with – he suggests a production company. Brendan from Beijing suggested another woman who seems eager to help. The Australian Embassy suggests I should get in contact with the Australian Consulate in Shanghai. I wrote to a few galleries as well.

We move into an apartment tomorrow. After a supermarket shop and settling in, I will attempt to begin the next project.

1. prettiest, happiest and most harmonious face.
In Shanghai I am hoping to research the idea of performed emotion -I have been thinking a lot about service industry in China, and how the chinese are trying to bring a smile to it.
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/china-sets-amusing-rules-shanghai-beijing-bullet-train-attendants-287576http://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.htm
Looking at Chinese business ettiquette school course – http://www.aifa.org.cn/en/Training.html
Would like to find the course – apparantly Their senior teacher, Lu Yanzhi, is credited with inventing the ettiquette ‘book’, paper and chopstick regime that will help China show the world its prettiest, happiest and most harmonious face.
2. Women Venting anger
there is store is in shenyang that allows women to smash appliances to vent anger. The women pay 30 RMB and get five minutes, a helmet and baseball bat to smash apart appliances. This will become a video work, shot over two days most likely. The store in Shenyang has closed down – and I thought there may be something like this in Shanghai?
http://www.womenofchina.cn/html/report/95707-1.htmhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295893/Hell-hath-fury-Rage-cage-opens-Chinese-shopping-mall-women-vent-frustration-men-allowed.htmlhttp://thegloss.com/career/there-is-a-furstration-venting-store-for-women-in-china/http://www.twirlit.com/2010/07/16/women-only-venting-store-opens-in-china/http://cocoperez.com/2010-07-15-china-mall-opens-a-venting-store-for-angry-womenhttp://www.trendhunter.com/protrends/interactive-retail-stores-focus-on-customer-engagement-as-primary-business-
3. Barbers

1 x shoot in barber shop in Shanghai. We have been shooting them over the world. Last one in Turkey, then Beijing. We just put camera infront of person getting haircut and let the camera run. Know any really strange barbers in Shanghai?