How I would like my current work to be presented in the digital realm

I have been using the SUBMIT testing site to work out the following:

a) whether all of my digital pieces look good together

b) how I would want to display my three key films online

I am not going to talk about curating the virtual showcase that we are having later on in the year, as we (the students) will have very little creative and curatorial control over how our artwork is presented.

option 1 – layering the videos

https://k4rsten.wixsite.com/website/cataclysmic-glorious-ideation

option 2 – Masking

This type of masking adds another potential level for glitching. It’s visually interesting but is very impractical considering all of my videos have text in them and it will be difficult to read the text with these masks. I just wanted to point out that it is something that I have explored. If you would like to see what it’s like in action you can find the page here.

https://k4rsten.wixsite.com/website/option-2

While playing around with various masks I discovered that you can produce a mask from any vector ever. This was fun to play around with but still hugely impractical for the videos that I am presenting.

I also played around with coloured masks which ended up being a bit naff. I think the quality of my video far exceeded the low resolution filter that they apply.

I’m not going to lie though, the heart one is kind of trash in all of the best ways. I like how shit it is, but that’s just me and my questionable aesthetic. I know that putting that on my final piece is just as tasteless as spray painting Godzilla on the side of Windsor Castle. (Okay possibly less tasteless than that.)

option 3 – imbedding the videos

https://k4rsten.wixsite.com/website/option-3

I have already used this on the real SUBMIT website and I think it looks the most sleek and integrated. What I like the most is that you don’t get the red YouTube play buttons. I kind them very aesthetically nightmarish.

http://k4rsten.wixsite.com/submit/our-work

It’s completely fluky that I used this way of presenting my work on the real SUBMIT website, it was selected without much thought. However, now having explored the alternatives this does genuinely seem like the best option so far.

option 4

https://k4rsten.wixsite.com/website/option-4

Putting the video as the backgrounds. From the cults point of view this is subliminal messaging. Another opportunity to further engage potential members in the website. In addition to putting the videos as the backgrounds of the pages, they will also be found in their entirety on the “Our Work” section of the website.

Reminiscent of MARTINE SYMS‘s website. That website subverts your expectations of how you think that website is going to function, as all of the text is behind the images. Functioning as wall text, but digitally.

In addition, there’s an aesthetic logic as everything is in keeping within the same colour palette. This colour palette is inspired by the colours used in Inside Pussy Riot, Plastique Fantastique’s rituals and Hyper-reality. A mixture of primary colours, pastels and neon colours.

I decided to divvy out the films to pages in the following way:

home = Introspective
Reasoning: This is the start.

how to become a member = introspective
Reasoning: This is the introduction and so is introspective.

our answers = nucleus –
Reasoning: The page is about how to be a good member and so is nucleus

our work = Postlude
Reasoning: Postlude is the last video in the series and since this is one of the places where the series will be presented, I feel like it makes sense for the last one to be the background.

scripture = nucleus
Reasoning: This page is an example of present worship and so is nucleus.

members = postlude
Reasoning: once you’re able to see this page you are already indoctrinated and you are already a member, which means that I feel as though postlude is the most applicable.

In conclusion, I’m using both option 3 and option 4 as I would like people to be able to browse through my videos, as well as not so subtly include them on all of the pages on the website as the backgrounds.

Martine Syms – Mythiccbeing and Notes on Gesture

From language to photographs to cinema to TV sitcoms to gifs and vines to Twitter to lecture-like performances that take on the air of TED talks, but are not annoying. Syms strikes a difficult, powerful balance between grave, funny, startling, Scathing.

page 48 The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption

Similarly to Cecile B Evans, I discovered this artist while reading “The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption”. This artist’s oeuvre is one that I align myself with. Marine Syms has an absolutely massive range, as illustrated by the quote above. I aspire to produce work as great as Martine Syms.

Sym’s subjects occupy a liminal zone in their own right, no the gray economy of Bitcoin or the digital soup of libertarian pirates but one that charts difference as the relative value of all values, in the ways that memes are their own fungible currency and hashtags license distinct meanings for their respective subscribers.

page 49 The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption

In this section of “The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption”, the author, Pamela M Lee, is dissecting Martine Syms’s piece “Notes on Gesture”. This is a 10 minute video that is comprised of a series of gif-like loops. Pamela M Lee notes that the repetition in this piece is exasperating.

I would argue that this repetition is provides opportunity for abstraction and is more ritualistic than frustrating or frustrated. The ritual of gesture. The gestural cliches we find ourselves using.

Like a meditation on a verse or singular word, like singing your favourite song for the 1000th time or repeating your name to yourself in the mirror. These words dissolve into obscurity over time, becoming a series of sounds. Similarly to the piece “I am sitting in a room” by Alvin Lucier. Becoming more abstract. This is what I perceive.

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While looking through Martine Syms’s website I discovered her piece Mythiccbeing.

Mythiccbeing, a black, upwardly mobile, violent, solipsistic, sociopathic, gender neutral femme…. Like all models, Mythiccbeing travels a lot, has a strict diet, and is obsessed with their image.

https://martinesy.ms/projects/mythiccbeing

I interpret this piece as being about the mythological perfect body. By which I mean the myth of achieving impossible body and beauty standards. This piece also explores fame and online culture. This piece reference online culture by including ‘thicc’ in the title. (Christ, that sentence makes me seem like I’m much older than I am, I’m gen Z I swear!) For those who don’t know what thicc means, it’s interchangeable with the word curvy. In fact the title Mythiccbeing, could be broken down into my thicc being.

On the screens we encounter the protagonist Mythiccbeing either as the conscious ego, embodying the postures of his Los Angeles life, or the shadow self, a digital avatar of the artist herself.

https://martinesy.ms/projects/mythiccbeing

This piece is unbelievably self-conscious, exploring the ego of the artist through literal aspirational projections.

Which on the flipside makes me think of online culture encouraging narcissism and vanity. Online culture rewarding people that are more narcissistic and vain. Relating to my research into narcissistic artists.

Through SMS conversation with a chatbot programmed by the artist, gallery viewers can control the appearance of animation, image, and text across the monitors, engaging in live-editing the narrative of Shame Space. Viewers can engage in text conversations with Mythiccbeing on their phone. She’ll respond, unless you tell her not to.

https://martinesy.ms/projects/mythiccbeing

This is remindful of Agnes by Cecile B Evans and my Odin Bluebeard project.

Agnes by Cecile B Evans is a chatbot that was commissioned by the Serpentine gallery. You can find my post about it here.

Odin Bluebeard project was also an exploration of fame and online culture through mythology. It also played with this same sense of liveness.

Grand Calme, 2019 Installation View at Sadie Cole’s

While looking at this work, I can’t help myself but think this is how I would like SUBMIT to be displayed in a physical show. The amount of space that Martine Syms has to immerse the viewer in this piece is enviable. Similarly to Martine Syms (if I could even compare myself to such a great artist), I produce vast, immersive, digital universes. The SUBMIT project is an example of this. Throughout this project one of my biggest struggles has been trying to visualise how I would present it in the real world. So I’m glad to have found an example of someone who has executed the transition from the online realm to the physical one, effortlessly.

The golden ones by Reactor

took a more studiedly chaotic approach, playing out a series of tangentially linked textual and visual skits around an audience corralled within their Cosmic Care Home, set up inside a studio theatre.

http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2017/01/sexual-desire-pantomime-horses-cosmic-care-homes-a-weekend-of-weird-reviewed/

This is reminiscent of my grandma’s artwork about what she imagines getting old will be like in the future:

Karin Karsten Sinnott (2019)

The Gold Ones suggested an intention to work as both absurdist satire on the corporate marketing of privatised services and a pure spectacle making nods to Dada and Futurist cabaret, drawing along the way on video-game aesthetics, aspects of the theatre of Samuel Beckett, and a range of participatory and post-internet strands in current performance.

http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2017/01/sexual-desire-pantomime-horses-cosmic-care-homes-a-weekend-of-weird-reviewed/

Similarly to my grandmother’s artwork, The Golden Ones is absurdist satire with clear “nods to Dada and futurist cabaret”. Specifically, the audio, costumes and masks that are used in this piece is very redolent of Hugo Ball’s work, such as his performances of Karawane. In addition, their use of computer generated imagery “video-game aesthetics… and post-internet strands” links to my research into Martine Syms’s work and my piece Proem//Postlude which I am currently producing. Bearing some visual and thematic similarities.

Presided over by a masked figure named Max Gold, The Gold Ones played like an exercise in sensory overload rather than a work of precise choreography, with digital projections, live and recorded voices, elaborately costumed characters and makeshift sets, some partly demolished by the performers as the event proceeded.

http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2017/01/sexual-desire-pantomime-horses-cosmic-care-homes-a-weekend-of-weird-reviewed/

I know that Plastique Fantastique collaborate a lot with this collective, and this description of the piece reminds me of the extensive nature of both my artwork and the artwork produced by Plastique Fantastique. Reactor is an example of another maximalist collective. Producing an immersive and extensive universe.

The quote above is in regard to when this piece was performed at Loughborough University. Alternatively, the quote below explains that this piece has also been presented by a 10hour edit.

The work was presented as a 10hr edit at Bonington Gallery as part of the ‘Video Days’ programme of screenings.

https://www.reecestraw.co.uk/latest/2018/5/28/100518-reactor-the-gold-ones

Both the way this piece was presented at Loughborough University and Bonington Gallery requires endurance. Although, no one is expected to watch 10 hours of this footage in one go. 10 hour edits like this are designed so that it can continuously run during a galleries opening hours with no loop. Which means that each time a gallery goer enters the space where the film is they will see a different section of the film. [Provided that this viewing happens on the same day, obviously if the gallery goer come back the next day there is a possibility that they might see the same section of film. ] This randomises what the audience is going to see and experience. Which is a great way to capture the chaotic, randomness of live performance in a prerecorded video piece.

Engaging, in a deliberately cartoon-ish manner, and occasionally intense, this was nonetheless probably no more a weird performance than a work made in line with immersive multi-media strategies that have long recent histories in the visual arts.

http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2017/01/sexual-desire-pantomime-horses-cosmic-care-homes-a-weekend-of-weird-reviewed/

Since I’m moving into 3D animation due to having a digital degree show, I thought that it would be a good idea to research a collective that does exactly that. However, throughout my research into this collective I am more similar to them than I first realised. Especially in terms of the way their style and approach to producing and presenting work.

http://reactor.org.uk/projects/the-gold-ones

Why did I stop compressing videos?

Long story short, I’m going to start compressing videos again.

This is because I really liked the effect that it produced on my videos (and it does make the files smaller which is an added bonus). This is just for some experiments, although I might end up using this process again more frequently.

This is my original post from October where I demonstrate and explain this process fully.

https://karsten27.com/2019/10/04/organic-data-mutation-through-data-loss/

The only thing that has changed since then in terms of how I use these softwares is that ironically the video compressor that I was previously using doesn’t compress videos of the size that most of my videos are these days. So I’ve started using a new video compressor to compress the file down to a size where I can use the old compressor.

new compressor:

https://www.freeconvert.com/video-compressor/download

old compressor:

https://www.onlineconverter.com/

My worry about the new compressor was that I wouldn’t be able to “break” the video as easily as most of these websites want to avoid data loss and glitching as much as possible. However, the new website doesn’t have any kind of limiting on it. Therefore, I might end up using it more often. On the other hand, the reason why I used that old compressor and why I love it so much is because you can state precisely what size you want the output to be. Which does mean that you do get a certain level of control that you don’t get with the new one. As with the new one everything is done in percentages.

The only true way of being able to see the difference would be to compress the same video to the same size using both compressors. Luckily for you, I have. You will find two videos below displaying the difference between the two compressor. The best way to see this difference is to try to set both videos off at the same time.

As mentioned before the issue that I have with the new compressor is that it does everything in percentages. Which means at this present moment in time this is the maximum I can compress a file (boo!)

Where as below you will find a this same video compressed further (to 1.8MB) using the old compressor.

I would argue that this 1.8MB video is the most beautiful of the three.

This is what my dilemma is. Either use the new compressor and achieve more or less what I want with minimal faff or I use the old compressor where I have more control so therefore can achieve precisely what I want but with infinite more faff.

This will be explored further in the future.

Here’s hoping that I don’t get too many viruses on my laptop by the time I graduate. There’s enough of those floating around at the moment anyway.

KEIICHI MATSUDA – Hyper reality

2016, 6:15 MINS

I aspire to be able to produce video art as technically brilliant as this one.

This piece presents the viewer with a very seductive and enticing AR/VR world. With products such as Pokemon Go and Google Glass, this rendition of the world isn’t as far-fetched as you would like to think.

Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media.

https://impakt.nl/channel/films/hyper-reality/

This piece presents the viewer with a world that overwhelms, overfeeds and overstimulates. I can see visual inspiration from the neon signs in 1980s Hong Kong.

Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

This piece is also reminiscent of Plastique Fantastique’s oeuvre both in terms of the colour palette used and the statement this piece is making about technology and religion.

Throughout this piece there is the malevolent glitching. Making the audience feels as though the technology is untrustworthy. Dropping hints as to what the ‘real world’ looks like. Introducing the audience to the ‘dark side’.

This could be viewed as a comment on how technology is a privilege. Having access to fast internet and high quality technology gives you advantages above people who don’t have access to those resources. Access to good technology provides you with access to certain jobs, services and lifestyles. Technology can be seen as classist.

Therefore, the universe that Keiichi Matsuda is presenting us through this piece could be seen as a metaphor for this. Since, if you can’t afford to have this technology that provides you with this beautiful, colourful and engaging augmented reality world, you have to live in a grey, dull and boring real world. You get to see the crushingly grey and mediocre world that they character lives in during the reboot sequence and glimpses of it during the glitching of the software. Which in itself could be perceived as a modern interpretation of Plato’s allegory of the cave. (or maybe I’m reading too much into it.)

Throughout this piece there is a lot of playing with language. Following the idea that now that translation software is getting better, faster and more accurate, that in the future no one will need to learn additional languages to their mother-tongue. As someone who is bi-lingual, I don’t think this is a realistic concept, especially when considering immigration and multi-cultural families.

At the end of this piece, the character approaches the catholic church when they run out of points. The church which is covered in advertising for people to join. Making me question whether they approached the church just because it provided them with additional points or whether it was because they genuinely felt the spiritual need to. The thought that it was only for the points felt uncomfortable and morally wrong. Which throws up interesting questions about gamification, advertising religions and using religion as a tool for power.

A lot of the love and respect that I have towards this piece is because of my awe of their technical prowess. I wanted to include this piece in my research for exactly that reason. While watching and rewatching this piece, I still can’t work out how it’s made. Either it uses an insane amount of motion capture and depth maps, or it’s largely computer generated. It hurt my brain thinking about how precise and organised you would have to be able to produce this piece.

Cecile B Evans – disembodied arms and GOOGLE DOCS AS ARTWORK?

Thread the needle of virtual and embodied, repeatedly passing across that threshold… A radiant mandala of hands that floats along and gans out, Kali-like, against the velvety, virtual depths.

page 95 and page 96 The Glen Park Library: a Fairy Tale of Disruption

I discovered this artist while reading “The Glen Park Library: A Fairy Tale of Disruption.” The book references Cecile B Evans’s piece “Handy if you’re Learning to Fly IV” which is a custom-built holocube and HD video with assorted miniatures, Plexiglas stands, corn syrup, lacquer, c-type print, accompanied by a book. This piece was produced in 2016. The cover photo for this post is a photograph of this piece.

Enabling both transcendence and intimacy, the work has the quality of a devotional image in the digital age. But there’s something vaguely uneasy about the looking.

page 96 The Glen Park Library: a Fairy Tale of Disruption

This piece well and truly lives in a similar suburb of uncanny valley as my current digital work. Low-poly digital renderings of any body part are bound to do that. However, the element of this piece that captured my attention was the balance between religious references and the uneasiness caused by these disembodied, low-poly arms. This subversion of this religious-y, devotional imagery by the violence, horror and gore associated with discarded amputations. This piece is simultaneously tranquil and uncomfortable.

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In addition to “Handy if you’re Learning to Fly IV”, “The Glen Park Library: a Fairy Tale of Disruption” also mentions Agnes. A bot that was produced by Cecile B Evans for a commission from the Serpentine Gallery. Agnes lives in a corner of the Serpentine Gallery website. You can find her by following the link below.

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/agnes

Her desire is to know your desires, and in an age where data collecting, targeted filtering and surveillance have become weapons, maybe it’s a good idea to have AGNES on your side… She’d never divulge your information: if she asks for your address, you can trust her – she just wants to send you things in the post

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/agnes

Similarly to the SUBMIT project, this piece explores malevolent, rogue technology. Agnes walks the line between trustworthy and suspect. Revealing how much we blindly trust technology to have our best intentions in mind and how virtual assistants have become a normal part of a lot of people’s lives.

Online you can meet agnes through a set of uncanny hands. hands that serve you in the digital sphere might well be feminized and given a feminising name, just as countless chatbots and virtual assistants might be called Siri, Alexa, cortana, all complete with girlish, if faintly metallic, voices.

page 95 The Glen Park Library: a Fairy Tale of Disruption

Too many digital creations are needlessly gendered like Siri. Since these chatbots and virtual assistants are gendered. Since these chatbots and virtual assistants are programmed to be bossed about. Since these chatbots and virtual assistants are programmed to be submissive. It shows how misogynistic technology is.

Disembodied, ghostly white, and feminine, Agnes- or rather, “her” hands – is the gendered, indeed, submissive, avatar of a now fully operationalized net economy.

page 96 The Glen Park Library: a Fairy Tale of Disruption

This is exactly the reason why I have chosen to make all of my characters in the digital world genderfluid and androgynous. Constructing figures that the audience can interpret as being whichever gender they want to project onto them. Using ambiguity to try to distant my work from that interpretation. (and as someone who presents as being androgynous and wishes they were more androgynous, I feel like it’s reflective of myself)

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Anyway, that’s enough about myself, let’s get back to Cecile B Evans.

http://cecilebevans.com/index.php/activities/notes/

I particularly wanted to point out certain part of Evan’s website where she has simply placed google doc which is open to the public to edit. This is the first time I have seen anything like this, Personally, I think that it’s a genius piece and I’m annoyed that I didn’t come up with it first.

This artwork consists of a google doc which anyone can add to, remove or alter the information in this document. It’s wonderful. Filled with graffiti like scrawling of “I was here” and similar such messages. Sometimes people add articles, artwork that they think is interesting or reviews. Cecile B Evans seems not to add to this document often, but when they do, it will be an odd statement here and there.

It cleverly highlights the open source nature of the online realm. As well as how we are all at the mercy of each other when we are online. That it’s up to others whether our voice is amplified or erased and lost. This piece has flourished into a beautiful and fertile digital landscape.

This is what I hope happens with the forums on the SUBMIT website, although, nothing is guaranteed. I hope that at least a few people make accounts on the website.

My body and performance in the digital realm

This is a continuation of my written piece “My feminine body and performance”. Upon my realisation that we are going to have to do a digital degree show due to COVID 19, this alters how I’m going to present my final piece and the medium it’s going to be in. Therefore making the aforementioned written piece kind of redundant. Hence, I’m writing this one. It will be in the same ranty-listy format. I hope you enjoy.

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I wish my body wasn’t so feminine.

I wish I could live in the digital realm.

The genderless digital realm.

The internet is gender liquid.

A fluid who’s water we all float in.

Free from associations and connotations.

The genderless digital realm is where I find myself.

Where characters can be computers, tables and beach balls.

Where gravity can be sideways.

Where you can morph through the walls and walk on the ceiling.

Gravity no longer affects you.

Space no longer limits you.

You can now build your world, live forever, or until the electricity cuts off.

This genderless space.

This unclaimed territory.

Plastique Fantastique

Plastique Fantastique is a collective. Constantly growing and shrinking, it has 2 core members, Simon O’Sullivan and David Burrows, and many satellite members. What interests me about Plastique Fantastique the wide range of mediums that they use while producing works.

is a mythopoetic fiction – an investigation of aesthetics, the sacred, popular culture and politics – produced through comics, performances, text, installations and shrines and assemblages.

http://www.plastiquefantastique.org/

This range is reflective of my practice and the way that I utilise various platforms and mediums to express myself. I find it very difficult to stick to one medium, and Plastique Fantastique seem to have the same fondness of maximalist pieces. Pieces that overwhelm, overfeed and overstimulate.

Plastique Fantastique’s electro-ritual, mixing stroboscopic lights and internet imagery, while worshipping blockchain technology and throwing glitter towards the symbolically sacrificed Simon O’Sullivan, in the name of the Bitcoin Faerie (2016).

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ez53qw/dark-water-screenings-performance-video-art

Bitcoin Faerie (2016) among other spaces was performed for CGP London at Dilston Grove.

This was a multimedia performance. These performances make me miss the pre-Covid times, as I would have loved to have seen some of these performances live and be able to produce artwork that is similar to this for my degree show. As this is visually and content-wise similar to what I wanted to produce for the degree show.

I understand why they would use Bitcoin as a religious entity as the blockchain doesn’t lie, it literally can’t. This was something that I referenced at the start of the SUBMIT project. Having now looked at what Plastique Fantastique do, I’m glad that that wasn’t something that I explored further as it would have come off as being very derivative. In general, I’m glad that I have researched Plastique Fantastique as visually and content-wise my work has been similar to this collective. Now that I’m aware of them and what they do, I can ensure that my work is original by avoiding things that they have done.

The colour palette of their work is very reminiscent of inside pussy riot and Monster Chetwynd. They frequently use pink, green and yellow in garish tones. These tones are visually demanding and when used to this excessive level adds to the maximalist, overwhelming and overstimulating. Some could argue that you could draw a comparison between this visual overstimulation and the overstimulation that the internet and provide.

While researching Plastique Fantastique I came across their website.

http://www.plastiquefantastique.org

Their website is extensive, echoing their art practice. Documenting all of their performances thoroughly. All of the magic of their artwork isn’t fully revealed here though. Not all of the information is divulged. They don’t simply provide 20 minute videos of their performances.

http://www.plastiquefantastique.org/performance39.html

For example with their performance, they provide stills and 30 second videos of this performance. The online audience get to have a taste of what it was like, but they don’t get to experience the entire thing. I think this is a great way to document performances. As I do believe liveness is really important, the audience and the performer sharing a moment together. The atmosphere of an event or performance often isn’t captured when documenting an event. Which is why I enjoy their diverse way of documenting their performances. As you begin to understand and appreciate the variety that their performances entail. Yet they also leave gaps, spaces where the online audience can interpret these works. The kind of space that many forget to leave.

This balance between excess and the goldilocks zone is where I would like my ARG to sit. Excessive, overwhelming but not too revealing; managing to maintain some mystery.

ARGs (Alternative reality Games) and turning submit into one

Many people aware of the “choose your own adventure” format for books and video games. Where the audience get to steer the direction of the narrative, with many having alternative endings depending on what ‘path’ you choose. But have you heard of ARGs?

ARGs (Alternative reality games)

An examples of ARGs that I have explored on this blog in the past was LOCAL 58 AND CICADA 3301. However, in the past I was exclusively looking at the content and stylistic choices instead of the process of producing an ARG of my own. Now since I am going to produce an ARG of my own, I thought it would be good to look at the history and how ARGs function.

HISTORY:

Many argue that it started with the Blair Witch Project.

With the the official website for the film being released before the film. This website was actually part of the narrative of the film, exploring the lore and developing the world building. Going so far as having diary entries from the ‘filmmakers’ and interviews with ‘locals’. The premise of the website was that it was trying to uncover what happened to the ‘filmmakers’ and where they were.

This caused a stir as it was the first time something like this had been produced. With many people thinking that this was a real investigation and the the Blair Witch Project was a legitimate documentary, legitimate non-fiction.

Of course, in reality all of this is the brain child of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez.

But the original website is still up and still works, and I really do suggest having a look at it.

https://www.blairwitch.com/

Since then this format of producing multi-platform, multimedia narratives has become particularly popular online. The beauty of ARGs (alternative reality games) is that they tend to blur the line between the real and fictional world. With tales that are immersive and plausible enough to feel real. Hence the name, alternative reality games.

They then to utilise all platforms in order to tell a story. Now that we have to do a digital degree show, I think this would be the best way to demonstrate my skills and the expansive nature of my art practice.

Many artists have used this technique to tell all sorts of stories. They tend to be dark and encourage “players” to interact with the material using problem solving and code breaking techniques to discover the whole of the narrative.

There is usually a simple question or a number of questions for the “players” to find the answer to.

For example, with The Sun Vanished:

The mystery to solve is why the sun has vanished. But it’s not as simple as it seems. There is usually an interesting narrative that the players will have to follow in order to uncover all of the clues that are required to be able to solve the mystery. This usually leads the player down the most ridiculously convoluted rabbit holes.

So the question is:

can I turn my current artistic practice into an ARG?

The answer is yes. This is what I’ll need to do to turn it into an ARG.

1. Make it airtight – I’m going to have to make the entire experience immersive. So I’m going to make a YouTube account just for this project. To create the illusion that all of the videos are legitimately being uploaded by SUBMIT.
2. I will make the SUBMIT website the core of this piece where the majority of the information will lie. A central hub. All addition things will be linked here. Such as the YouTube account, the blog, possibly an Instagram account.
3. I will write more scripture and more blog posts. This will mean that there will be more room for world building.
4. Come up with a main narrative.
5. Come up for a key problem for people to solve.