The Work:

My work is an image series viewable on Instagram at @socialdistancecow.

Ultimately, I plan to eventually create a zine with all of the images I have created.

The Work’s Title:

A-moo-sement (A work in progress, because I don’t know what to name it)

Artist’s Statement

My focus as an artist in quarantine is to spark happiness in peoples’ everyday lives, especially during this strange time. I emulate patterns, trends, daily activities, and behaviors that I observe myself and others exhibiting — and recreate them using my stuffed cow who is occasionally accompanied with the rest of my stuffed animal collection. I think about how seeing our behaviors recreated in a stuffed animal’s life affects how we view our own behaviors.

A Representative Image

Social Media Account Links: (Instagram)

@socialdistancecow, @chloegchan

For my BFA page, I want it to encompass a variety of works I’ve made over this past year. I plan on using all images within the 10 image limit but each image will be its own piece and not part of a series – unless otherwise specified – I’m still working out the kinks. Here are the images I have so far that I am set on submitting:

“Untitled”

“Little Motto”

“Untitled”

“Untitled”

I also want to submit this book I made:

I want to be able to have it displayed the way it is shown on issuu.com or liek this video documentation I have of it but am unsure how to go about it… maybe just upload the video?

Here’s the link: https://vimeo.com/401139041

I don’t know what my representative image will be just yet. But am thinking about it.

Also here’s my social media:

Instagram: @big.smiley.face

Issuu: @EmmaSielaff

Due posted on this blog by 5pm Monday, April 27th:

• the work (image(s), link(s) to a video and/or link(s) to code-based work, or. this can be unfinished but should be something you can finish within a week
• the work’s title
• artist statement (see below) [SENIORS ONLY]
• a representative image , 1080×1080 pixels (if you could only use one image this is the one)
• a personal URL you will include in submission (optional) [SENIORS ONLY]
• social media account links (optional) [SENIORS ONLY]

Before class on Wednesday, April 29th [SENIORS ONLY]:

• read the exhibition submission form for all details, bring questions to class
• draft an artist statement (see below)

Before May 4th end of day [SENIORS]:

• submit the form!
• submit all the images
• submit the copyright form

Before May 4th end of day [JUNIORS]:

• post your final project on the blog (e.g., video link, images, link to code, etc.)
• post your title for that project on the blog
• post a representative image

About the artist statement [SENIORS ONLY]–> I ended up removing the artist statement requirement from the syllabus post COVID, but now see it’s requested for the exhibition. Here is my quick guide to writing a statement:

• ask yourself: what is your subject? IOW, what do you make work about? For me, this would be something like “the cultural effects of software.”
• what is one or more question(s) you ask with your work? for example, mine would be something like: “how does an interface that foregrounds our friend count change conceptions of friendship?” Another could be: “Who benefits when a software system can understand how we feel?”
• what mediums do you use? I use code, video, sound.
• who might be interested? everyday users of software

Once you have some answers assembled, turn it into a quick statement such as this example for me:

“As an artist I focus on the cultural effects of software. How does an interface that foregrounds our friend count change conceptions of friendship? Who benefits when a software system can understand how we feel? To investigate these questions I use code, video, and sound to enable everyday users of software to reconsider their relationship to technology.”

Draft something for next week’s class (Apr 29) that we can look at.

I’m feeling less of a drive to go through with my original idea… Maybe I will pick it up after graduation, but for now I’ve been thinking about making a website that embeds my API project I recently did for Karin’s Interaction II class. Obviously I will be making some tweaks to the code, but I think that showing how this pandemic (as a topic) is almost entirely unavoidable via the news reflects our own psyche that is constantly getting bombarded with both information and misinformation regarding this virus.

I’ve had to rethink my idea a bit, since the immersive and interactive portion required people to go to places and be together with other people. I could still do an immersive experience, but have it be something that’s activated by something else that’s social distancing approved, like vehicles driving by or maybe some thing(s) on my house could be activated by the few people who come to my doorstep (pretty much just the mail carrier these days).

I might also be able to make a fun, uplifting, or educational interactive thing at a business. A lot of local businesses are teaming up with local artists to create gift sets and such (like a gift card and painting bundle). Grocery stores are still open, and Schnuck’s in Urbana, for example, has a tube-like entrance to the store. Maybe I could get approval to do something there. While it’s not exactly a (smaller) local business, it’s an idea.

I’d really like to work on something interactive, while utilizing the new addition to the project parameters. Live streaming a show might be difficult depending on what I do. I’ve been testing out streaming with OBS and Twitch, although I need to do some field tests with a live audience, as well as look into integrating multiple streams.

The other day I participated in a collaborative live stream, and it was pretty awesome. I used an audio reactive program to display the visuals, and I pulled the audio from a live stream that a friend was doing. He then took my live stream and streamed it through his channel (so showing my visuals with his audio). While the program I used was already written, I could replace the program window with a coding window. I’m not sure if there’s a more effective way to do this, but it does give way to live collaborative works.

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I’ve also thought about creating a program that only allows one user to be on at a time. I know this has been done before a bit, but instead of keeping track of how long the single user has been online, my program would obscure or black out the page if there is more than one person on it. This would be an online version of our real-world social distancing. Maybe the information on the page could be related to COVID-19 or maybe it’s even my personal website, but only one person can view it at a time, otherwise it’s all “infected”. Perhaps this will be a personal project rather than my BFA project.

Thesis:

How accurate does your digital data determine what you are doing in everyday life? 

How safe are you when you allow for your digital data to be viewed by the public?

My plan is to track one person and try to determine their common activities and interests. It will be a commentary on the Surveillance Capital Algorithm system.

• Surveillance
• User (?) through Status updates (adds more data)
• Look into snap maps and Bitmojis, for example
• A bunch of unclassified pathways, security cameras are public access
• Tracking someone
• Companies sell data to each other, and so any means can be taken to make it easier for others to track you

I’ll then make a video of the person I “stalked” based on my guesses on their digital data.

For my project I will still be doing an interactive visualization of what it takes to eat a burger. I will visually represent the things that go into processing a quarter pound of ground beef. Highlighting the hundreds of liters of water and pounds of feed and waste that go into just a handful of beef for one to enjoy. The exposure of the wastefulness of our meat production processes and ignorance of the common public will be the point of my project.

Paige and I have decided that instead of filming a full movie, we’ll make a sort of voice-over’ed animatic of a storyboard. By the end of this week we should be finished with basic character designs so that the actual drawings stay more or less consistent throughout, and we’ll get started on storyboarding/making the keyframes of the animatic by this weekend.

Title: “No, we can’t go home, there’s food at McDonalds“.

I want to shed light on the constant barrage of advertisements that beckon us to consume and put money towards capitalistic for-profit establishments, conditioning the notion that assimilating oneself into American mainstream culture will bring success and equitable social status. Advertised mostly to the persons whose identities are not represented or recognized as being part of the Western consumer “standard”(…)

This project is an observance of the push in assimilation of the mainstream cultural through a first-generational narrative look on food red lining and infrastructure, emmigrant family dynamics of gratitude and guilt, and the media’s role in the enactment of algorithms that aim to deliver the personas of desirable, consumable objects.

My original idea was to explore the influence of emoji on our communication. Now I found another interesting concept- dark pattern, which are the tricks used in websites and apps that make you buy or sign up for things that you didn’t mean to.
I don’t know how I am going to execute this idea yet, but I still hope my project could be something interactive. I am thinking maybe make an introductory webpage for it, or some kind of interactive visual presentation?