Event: Untitled (The Drop), performance in Performa 17 by Barbara Kruger

Kruger Fans were disappointed—yes, I just labeled the new wave of followers and lovers of Barbara Kruger’s art Kruger Fans—they’ve written about it all over the internet. From Vogue to Artsy, these ‘art critics’ were not impressed with buying tickets to wait in a long, slow-moving line, just to buy “skater” fashions. But they did it anyway (Yotka, 2017).

Barbara Kruger is a Performance Artist Now?

The setting for the performance was a pop-up shop featuring a limited number of Volcom-brand tees and sweater, a special MetroCard, and even a skate deck, all printed with Kruger’s new work, for sale. Tickets were $5. Attendees became the actors, waiting outside to get their turn to make a cameo in the shop. No, really. The performance was us, standing in line, waiting to be let into the pop-up shop. For what? To make a purchase. That was it.

Barbara Kruger is a Non-Performance Artist Now

The focus of “The Drop” performance and her other installations became the resurfacing of Kruger’s drama with Supreme. The over-hyped, clothing brand relies on promoting the anti-authoritative, skater subculture, but it’s mainly just an exploitation of their aesthetic and caricature of their masculinity. Buyers consist of young males, who wait in long lines for expensive clothing. These particular events are known as ‘drops’. The brand is accused of having ripped off (read: stolen) Kruger’s typographical design treatments to come up with their brand identity. Later, they turned around and sued another brand for appropriating and using a version of their logo. The irony is unreal. If it’s not apparent, her partnership with Volcom is in direct, market competition with Supreme (Zuckerman, 2013).

On the surface, the pop-up was Barbara Kruger’s turn to give her middle finger to Supreme. She did this by not only ripping the brand’s style (and the idea of branding a MetroCard), but also by appropriating their sales strategies of building an air of great desire for limited-quantity items that promise a certain lifestyle. In a way, Barbara Kruger took back what is rightfully hers, and took a few other things along the way (Hodge, 2017).

Quickly criticized as anti-climatic, the internet dubbed “Untitled (The Drop)” a lack-luster non-performance. Meanwhile, Kruger’s other site-specific installations, especially “Untitled (Skate)” at Coleman Skatepark, garnered all sorts of attention and acceptance. I believe the reason that the skatepark was more successful, is because Barbara Kruger actually appropriated a whole skatepark, including the skaters. She served Kruger Fans an easy-to-digest performance: no surprises, provided the en vogue actors oozing the right aesthetic, and plastered war phrases and terms on a school bus. What a spectacle (Indrisek, 2017).

An Open Letter to the New Wave of Art Fanatics

You are the jerks that Barbara Kruger references in her work. You immediately succumbed to Kruger’s own version of brands’ manipulation tactics used to convince you to buy forgetful, useless products. “Untitled (The Drop)” is meant to be a reminder that we are capable of recognizing the audacity of certain groups’ actions, yet, are so quick to accept this information and move on with no action. We never really acknowledge the core of the problem, or attempt to protest and correct those situations. Instead, we become part of that problem. Even if you insist that you know it’s wrong or inappropriate, you still follow the masses (Williams, 2014).

Of course, those that study Kruger’s art are fully aware of the dualistic nature of her work. It intends to attack consumerism’s veil, while at the same time setting us up to succumb to the manipulative sales strategies, and enacting those consumerist-driven tendencies. They know her work is a call to action to apply self-reflective, critical thinking to the approaches we take in our daily lives (Canelo, 2016). We should get to know the institutions that we interact with, beyond the public-facing marketing campaigns. The underlying message here bears a reminder to go beyond consumption of information and no-action.

I urge the new wave of art tourists and Kruger Fans to not rely on art to teach them about culture. Culture is not a category defined by an institution. It does not come in a neat package, nor is it framed, hanging in some Chelsea studio in the gentrified New York . Culture spans the schools of thoughts. You can’t rely on any one institution to teach you everything you need to know about it.

Art is an industry maintained by consumerism—just like fashion and retail. Museums rely on event and ticket sales to promote agendas. Nevermind that you are unaware of this psychology. Your responsibility is to apply critical thinking and art theory to all works—which many bloggers, magazine editors, and art spectators miserably fail to do so more and more every day (Gottshalk, 2017).

Does it even matter that Barbara Kruger donated the money from sales to charity? Nobody wrote about that. Find the real problems that need solutions, or you might just miss the point.

---

Sources

Canelo, M. J. (2016). Art as social commentary: visual syntax and meaning in Barbara Kruger’s collages. Ways of seeing, ways of making seen, 70.

Gottschalk, M. (2017, December 08). Is Culture in the Americas in Trouble? Arts Leaders Say Yes. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-culture-americas-trouble-arts-leaders

Hodge, K. (2017, November 07). Barbara Kruger Takes Aim at Supreme With “The Drop” Pop-Up. Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/11/07/barbara-kruger-supreme-the-drop/

Indrisek, S. (2017, November 09). I Went to Barbara Kruger’s First-Ever Performance-and Left with a Skateboard. Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-barbara-krugers-first-ever-performance-left-skateboard

Williams, P. (2013, May 04). Artist Barbara Kruger Responds to the Supreme Lawsuit. Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.highsnobiety.com/2013/05/02/artist-barbara-kruger-responds-to-the-supreme-lawsuit/

Yotka, S. (2017, December 08). Was Barbara Kruger’s The Drop a Success? Retrieved December 09, 2017, from https://www.vogue.com/article/barbara-kruger-the-drop-supreme-perfoma-2017

Zuckerman, E. (2013, May 02). Artist Barbara Kruger Is Not Cool with the ‘Totally Uncool Jokers’ at Supreme. Retrieved December 10, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/artist-barbara-kruger-supreme/315652/

---

References

Barbara Kruger. (n.d.). Retrieved December 09, 2017, from http://17.performa-arts.org/artists/barbara-kruger

Barbara Kruger. (n.d.). Retrieved December 09, 2017, from http://17.performa-arts.org/artists/barbara-kruger-the-drop

This year, the largest virtual reality experience center in North America-VR World, landed in New York, right close to the Empire State Building. Visitor can try out 50 unique VR experiences in three floors, including gaming, film, art, music, etc. I went there a few weeks ago, experiencing some games and movies, and also observing players’ behaviors from a user experience standpoint.

Visitors are handed disposable eye masks for the purpose of hygiene when using public VR headsets. Each game has guide staff there to assist each experience, ensuring players have a full understanding of the equipment and experiences. Depending on the experience, each should last between 5-10 minutes. Most gaming bays have a big-screen TV where you can watch the action that’s happening in the headset, which makes it convenient to observe players’ behaviors and responses.

Experience types

There are different types of the VR experiences in the VR World, including gaming, film, art, and music, etc. Undoubtedly, gaming is the most popular one and usually needs to wait for playing.

All experiences require a headset and headphone. The simplest experiences are you can just sit and watch a film or documentary. The most common ones are those require controllers in hands and your body movements, such as “Raw Data” which lets you shoot droid with controllers, and “Tilt Brush” which lets you paint in virtual reality. Some special experiences normally need other equipment to interact with, such as steering wheel, “paraglider” and “spaceship”.

Children and adult have different experiences in VR games

Kids love VR game! During the 3-4 hours I was visiting, nearly half of the visitors are kids and they keep coming back to the game they found interesting. They are very excited and not stopped by the frustrations they came across. I can see a future where a place like this could become a “theme park” like Disneyland and Universal Studios.

One interesting thing I noticed is children and adults have different experiences in VR games, majorly because of the height and learning curve.

Even though in the same game, we can see the angle of view from kid and adult are different. Adult’s is higher and kid’s is lower because of the height, which actually influences their performance in games. The broader view you can see, the better you can handle the situation, such as the enemy in the game. To improve the experience for kids, designers may consider providing a “child mode” and lifting the angle of view for them.

Same for the experiences which require other equipment. In the below example, the kids were struggling with pressing the brake. He cannot sat comfortably when his foot touched the brake. When kids are playing games, they actually consider themselves “an adult/hero” who can beat everything, then why not help them remove the constraints?

(Notice from VR World about age requirements: “VR World isn’t an all-ages attraction. In fact, children under age 7 aren’t admitted and certain games have age requirements, while a couple of others are geared toward those over 5-foot-2.”)

Female characters are missing

Having game characters controlled by players is very common in most games, especially in role-playing games. While if you play alone, you may not get the chance to see what you look like in the game. If you have teammates who play with you, then they can see you and potentially collaborate with you.

When I was playing the shooting game called “Raw Data” with one friend, even though I am a female, my friend still saw a man in the game which is not appropriate. It reminds me of a discussion I’ve been through about  “feminist theories of technology”, which mentioned how women’s needs are less met by new technologies because there are fewer women worked in the tech industry, either as designers or developers. The situation I came across in the game is just a good example for that. Virtual reality aims to make people feel real, but if women cannot behavior or been seen as a female, how can it be real?

Emotional Impacts and Learning Curve

Another two things I think the UX designer of VR games should consider are the emotional impacts and learning curve.

People react differently to the games, some calm and some exciting. Fear and frustration are the two major negative emotions I found when observing other people play. Although negative emotions don’t mean negative impacts, because people could actually be excited about experiencing vivid feeling in the VR games, the emotional impacts are still something needs to be paid attention. VR is emotion amplifier because of the immersion, which can also lead to motion sickness when players lose control – I felt once when I was playing the racing game and suddenly lose the control of the steering wheel.

Giving control to players is very important for the user experience of VR game, which connects the second aspect – learning curve. Different people have different learning curves, and different games also have different learning curves. First-time players can act very differently while playing. Currently, every game in the VR World has guide staff there to explain the instructions before each one plays. Therefore, how to make the games intuitive and self-explanatory, and help players master the techniques quickly are good challenges to tackle. When players are comfortable with playing it without assistance, VR games or places like this should be much easier to scale up.

 

References:
1. VR World NYC: https://vrworldnyc.com/

2. Wajcman, J. (2009) “Feminist theories of technology,” Cambridge Journal of Economics http://wiki.medialab-prado.es/images/4/4b/Wajcman_Feminist_theories_of_technology.pdf.

3. Moor, J. H. (1985). “What is computer ethics?” Metaphilosophy 16(4): 266–275.

Tour of the American Museum of Natural History’s Library and Special Collections

Micaela Walker

On November 17 I was lucky enough to attend a tour of the Library and Special Collects at the American Museum of Natural History which was arranged by Pratt ASIS&T chair Heather Hill.  The library is located on 2 floors of a building within a courtyard surrounded by other buildings.  The tour was given by the Senior Research Services Librarian, Mai Reitmeyer and she began by showing us on several archival drawings and photographs where, exactly, we were.

The AMNH is notoriously difficult to navigate and now I understand why; the museum is comprised of 28 buildings interconnected over an area covering 4 city blocks. There are buildings within buildings, buildings that can only be accessed via certain elevators to certain floors.  It is a labyrinth of knowledge.  The museum began in 1869 in a building within Central Park, which it quickly outgrew.  Calvert Vaux, one of the architects of Central Park, helped with the initial design of buildings on the site where the museum now stands. However, new buildings and facades were being added and redesigned until 1936.

 

Along with the library, which is in building #1, the museum has over 200 research scientists and curators working in earth and planetary science, astrophysics, paleontology, anthropology, zoology, invertebrates,  several vertibrate departments, one of the largest frozen tissue labs in the world, and a PhD program in comparative biology.  This is, of course, only behind the scenes workings – the exhibits and educational programs  that are open to the public are immense and expansive.

The physical library holds over 1 million photo items including prints, transparencies, and contact sheets organized in rows of filing cabinets and cataloged by area of study (ie geography).

 

 

Digitizing their existing collections of prints, negatives, journals and field notes is an ongoing process that has to be done carefully by hand.  The library has this clever device to scan books, with two cameras and lights placed at the perfect angles to capture pages that are gently pressed into a glass V called the Book Eye scanner.

 

They use EAD as their encoding standard entered in XML when adding the scans and their metadata onto their digital archive, a low res version of which is then uploaded to their online archive, which currently has over 25,000 items in it’s database (http://lbry-web-007.amnh.org/digital/).

They have partnered with Internet Archive to offer images through their platform, which has nearly 4,000 AMNH scanned items (https://archive.org/details/americanmuseumnaturalhistory).  Additionally, they have a Flickr photo stream that includes everything from collection items to student drawings from it’s education programs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/amnh/).

They are currently scanning field notebooks from various 19th and 20th century anthropologists and scientists, which will all be available to the public online.  Ms. Reitmeyer, as with nearly everyone I have met in the field since starting the MSLIS program, is more excited about the opportunities that all of this open access affords the museum to connect within it’s own community of scientists and researchers, and to the general public, than fearful of any possible copyright violations or misuse.

Next Ms. Reitmeyer took us to the rare book section which is accessible only with two staff members present to open the door. It looks like an old safety deposit vault only less grand and more utilitarian, with metal shelves surrounding a high central viewing table.

 

 

There are some seriously big books. And very old fragile ones. The textures of the various crinkly, thick papers feel more like pelt than pulp. Among the treasures she showed us were a page from Charles Darwin’s manuscripts, books from 1551 and 1558 complete with spines intact, books of outrageously whimsical hand colored fish by Louis Renard, a rare copperplate of an owl by Alexander Wilson, and John Gould lithographs.  Each item is encased in an archival box that is custom made by the conservation staff. All told we had a firsthand tour of 400 years of printing methods in about 20 minutes.

 

 

 

 

On our way out we got a look at the negative storage lined up perfectly in identical archival boxes and an entire room of audio and film storage covering nearly every format created. The goal is to have everything digitized and, where possible, made available to the public.

 

We finished the tour as the museum was closing up so I went to say hello to the Titanosaur and catch a glimpse of some of the iconic (if ethically troublesome) animal dioramas. As I left the building I caught sight of this gem by Teddy Roosevelt, carved into the gargantuan wall above the check-in.  I took a picture because I thought my sons could use a bit of fortified, timeless advice like this, but actually I think we would all do well to follow it.

 

I never used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram before, one main reason is my friends almost do not have this social software, and are not being allowed to. Correspondingly, for the social interactive needs, we use Sina Blog and Wechat. But what I want to talk about is not network firewall. I want to bring about such a change today from such a new Internet that is not suited to this era. In particular, what kinds of problems and challenges have arisen from the various revolutionary changes brought about by Social Media and Social Network? And those things we are going to prepare, our society is ready (in a worldwide range)? Maybe we are not ready, are not we all imaginary about the constructive imagination in each of us all?

Network Information environment offers us a more transparent and malleable culture form. (Benkler, Y., 2006) Like every new thing is faced with the subversion or collapse of civilization, the social network changed us from information collection. When I was little, my parents and I gathered information and news from the newspaper, they are boring, with limitation, but in some perspective, trustful.(We may not see everything from it, but what we already saw is real.) Right now, since the explosion of social media, people have more channels to accept news and information, they think it’s great to get diversity views. However, depends on their social circle, people would like to interact with somebody who has the same values. In this pattern, information from social media with bias and subjective, sometimes even made up.

The more serious situation is when people get into reading, thinking, it causes discussion. A discussion in social media mostly plays around with the same circle called” The echo-chamber”. The echo-chamber effect is a condition arising in an online community where participants find their own opinions constantly echoed back to them, thus reinforcing a certain sense of truth that resonates with their individual belief systems. Participants within online collaborative spaces will always act in human ways: that is, people will gravitate toward and will be more comfortable communicating with those who share their ideas, conceptions of the truth, cultures and communication styles.(McRae, P., 2010) People have the autonomy to choose the channels of information, but individual choices with emotions and positions still lead to the homogenization of information. More adapt to social identity and carve them into a “safe place”. (Baym, N. K., & Boyd., D, 2012) An importance sense of community with a network and overlapping social ties.

Even though this situation is not such serious apparently, it reminds me to think of Hannah Arendt’s talk about people began to lose the ability to judge independently, do things what themselves cannot believe. (Arendt, H., 2005) Same as The Lucifer Effect in real life, the digital interactive of homogeneous network environment could cause cyber violence in a potential damage.

In China, one typical cyber violence called: Human Flesh Search(HFS), is a type of collective online action aimed at finding with certain events and Publication of collective online actions related to the specifics of targeted individual facts. It related to tracking and posting may help to solve a crime or disclose someone who is allegedly engaged in the corrupt or unethical behavior. (Ong, 2012) But it’s more serious currently, the public can do almost anything in a cyber environment to support or discredit individuals, even beyond the moral threshold. Even more frightening is that they are real user groups, not bots.

For people who violate morality without breaking the law, society informality punishes them by the Internet. When we talk about punishment, there are roughly two kinds of sanctions in the civilized society now: One is to punish a criminal in the state system by law; The other type of punishment is social informality, which imposes a punishment through various social rules. What needs to aware is the second one’s rule is subjective and sometimes arbitrary. Because of the homogeneity of social media, people’s voices are actually self-protection or self-noble embodiment, they depend on social media as a board platform, do justice. However, what I am thinking is the fair of compensation. When public use Internet to spy on people’s privacy, nobody considers who should do it, who has the right to do that critic and at the same time, in what way. In the end, the result can be unexpected. Peter Steiner’s famous cartoon in The New Yorker in 1993 once said “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” (Steiner 1993). Through the current Internet, even dog would not have privacy.

Ironically, the physical reasons why people judge crucially on the Internet is similar to massacre behavior in real life.

Firstly, they believe the responsibility could be separate to each person, that means they do not break the law, and it’s hard to figure who should take that responsibility, in some range, they are faced the pressure of majorities, neutral also embodies the attitude of support here (Jensen, R., 2008)

Secondly, they believe they are one of the “noble” community, a justice behavior of words and deeds will have more supporters from society since everyone wants to be ethnic. Thus, bringing self-satisfaction to people.

Furthermore, they have the obligation to speak freely(power). More than these, Internet blurs each person’s identity, makes them could not directly face the target people. Physically, let them express boldly.

Pathetically, this is not a social media or Internet problem, but rather digital media that exposes social issues. So, except understand the function of algorism and logical for prevent being taken advantage by the commercial and political community, at any time, keep an eye on the environment and society in which we live.

 

 

Benkler, Y. (2006). “Introduction: a moment of opportunity and challenge” in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 1-18. http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks_Chapter_1.pdf

Arendt, H. (2005). Responsibility and judgment. Random House Digital, Inc..

McRae, P. (2010). Forecasting the future over three horizons of change. ATA Magazine, (90), 4.

https://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA Magazine/Volume 90/Number4/Pages/Forecasting-the-Future-Over-Three-Horizons-of-Change.aspx

Baym, N. K., & Boyd, D. (2012). Socially mediated publicness: An introduction. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(3), 320-329. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2012.705200

Ong, R. (2012) “Online Vigilante Justice Chinese Style and Privacy in China,” Information and Communications Technology Law 21(2): 127–45.

Jensen, R. (2008). The myth of the neutral professional. Questioning library neutrality: Essays from Progressive librarian, 89-96. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.523.4060&rep=rep1&type=pdf