Intention & Influence

Intention: 

We often make decisions in our lives, and often, they are influenced by other people’s thoughts and decisions. Sometimes, without even realizing it. This artwork’s purpose was to intervene in a public space to make people more aware of their decisions and how it may be impacted by others. Societal pressure and influence can sometimes make people make bad decisions or not think rationally. Unfortunately, I was one of those, what you call, sheep for a large majority of my life thus far because I wanted to fit in. I remember specifically this one friend that I had. Whenever she got into a fight with someone, I would take her side because I didn’t want to lose her, even if she was in the wrong. I snuck around and stole things with her. I lost people who really cared about me because of her influence. Then, after she left, I attached myself to other people like a parasite and agreed to whatever they said. When I couldn’t do that anymore, I began to agree to whatever the majority did. You must go to college, otherwise you’re a failure. You can’t wear this because it makes you look fat. You can’t do this, you must do this, do that. Eventually, it takes over your life. Now, as I’ve grown, I learned to have my own individuality and through this artwork, I wanted people to think about their decisions and how they may be influenced by others, to be more conscious of it. Nevertheless, no one is truly individual as we live in a society that influences all our thoughts, morals, and individuality. 

Influence:

Like my other pieces, this artwork was influenced a lot by me and my own personal experience. I’ve already mentioned that above in my Intention category so I won’t mention that in this section. Another influence comes from the guest presenters we had in class and their lecture on “Tactical Media”. Tactical media is interventions in a public space that challenges social norms and disrupts ‘normalcy’. That was essentially what our piece had to be. So, I took inspiration from one of their numerous examples of interventions. The one that stood out to me the most was the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO). I thought BLO was funny, almost like it was a prank. The BLO altered Barbie  and G.I Joe toys’ voice boxes so that they would be swapped. The G.I Joe toys would have the Barbie voice and lines while Barbie would have G.I Joe’s. It was goofy, as we know that isn’t their voice, but it still tackled what was the social norm back then, which were gender roles. The person who created BLO was Igor Vamos, and he created it in response to the voice lines the new Barbie at that time would say, such as “Math is hard.” With this intervention, BLO successfully invaded children’s homes in a harmless way, helping to break those gender norms/stereotypes or make parents and children alike to think about the impact of these norms. Similarly, I tried to make it fun, a little ridiculous, and it was like a prank, however at the end of it all, they would think about it and be proud they didn’t change their mind, while those who did acknowledged it. I was also inspired by C.Carr’s On Edge, which we read a little bit about. When reading On Edge, what I took from it was that art should explore discomfort and address the harder questions. That’s what makes art so thought provoking and meaningful, is when it breaks into what is normal, this little box that people are in, and tear down that box to expose them to the difficult topics that you just usually don’t think about. It’s uncomfortable to hear that you just fell to peer pressure or the influence of others and puts you in a position where you have to confront your decision making process and biases.

The famous BLO intervention put on display.

A poster for the BLO intervention.

Process

This artwork was one of the more difficult ones. I thought about three to four different ideas and was never satisfied because I felt like it didn’t really hit me like the other three artworks did, hence why this was the last one I completed. I was uninspired. During the time of this artwork, it was the 2024 election between Kamala and Donald Trump. This election was also the first time I would’ve been able to vote, so I did a lot of research and found myself very passionate about politics and who would become our president. So, I wanted to create an artwork that was somewhat based on politics. However, that was a sensitive subject and despite all the research I did, I still felt unprepared and uneducated to be talking or making my artwork based on politics. Then, there was the iteration where I tried to make it about censorship (that was my first pitch), but I also didn’t feel too strongly about it because it wasn’t something personal to my life and thus far, all my work has been something significant in my personal life. It wasn’t until my friend had mentioned that similarity contest that it inspired me to make this artwork. It’s not my best one because of time constraints (I couldn’t walk around to random people as much as I wanted and couldn’t get clips) and other issues I was going through, but I think it wasn’t bad. The results were also something I definitely did not expect, in the best way.

Playtests/Results

So, here were a few of the runs I had and the results! I tested around 10 people, with 4 people being in person and 6 people were online. Before that, I will tell you how this experiment worked. Firstly, I would tell them that this was an assignment for my art class and that I wanted their opinion. If they said sure, I would present them with an original color and two other colors, A and B. I would then ask them which out of the two colors, A and B, more accurately match the shade of the original color. Upon letting them answer which one they think it is, I let them know that the opposite letter they chose was chosen by a majority of people and if they were sure of their answer. They are then given a choice to change their answer. What the testers don’t know is that the colors are all the same and there is no difference so there is no right answer.

EXAMPLE

Original Color:

A:

B:

Me: Which one more likely matches the shade of the original color?

Tester: B

Me: Oh really? A majority of people chose A, are you sure you want to stick with your answer?

Tester: Yes/No

IMPROVEMENTS

I think I should’ve had more in person experiments. I know that this piece isn’t technically for research but rather just for more people to think about their relationship with peer pressure and autonomy, however I would’ve liked to see a more diverse peoples to enact the intervention on to see how they react. Furthermore, I realized that my piece wasn’t the best for those who are colorblind. Instead, I should have used an intricate symbol or drawing. I also wish I had more documentation for this artwork.

IN PERSON RESULTS

Unfortunately, I do not have photos of the people in person, but I enacted this intervention in the orange line in the evening. I chose this specific time as it was a Friday night and I wanted to document all sorts of people, whether they were people getting out of work or students going to parties. Two of the in person tests were students going home from a party and the other two were working adults, with one participant being an older woman in her 50s. The two students stayed with their vote, regardless of when I mentioned that the majority of people I asked chose the other color while the older working adults shrugged and said the opposite color instead. I thought this was very interesting. When I told them the point of the experiment, they all laughed or realized and would say “that made sense.”

ONLINE RESULTS

In comparison, the majority of people who got asked online actually stayed with their answers without changing them which I thought was pretty cool. I asked one older man who was in his late 30s, one who is currently in middle school and is 12 years old, and four other people who are around my age. When I told them the point of the experiment, they also laughed it off, as though it was a prank.

Me introducing the test to a tester.

My little sister’s reaction once it was revealed. I thought it was funny, hahaha.

When one of the tester’s let me know what was lacking…

Just a reaction to the test since the colors were the same.

Another tester and their reaction even after I revealed that the majority of people chose the other color.

The twelve year old tester’s decision and chose not to change it.

A group of testers’ decisions. Pink is me. This was an interesting test as they were each trying to convince each other it was the other, but no one was convinced, even after I introduced the majority of people chose a certain color.

OVERALL

Overall, I think there are many factors that come into play when someone is affected by societal pressure or not, from their background, to the anonymity, to age, location, etc. However, I thought this was a fun experiment as I saw or listened to all their different reactions. It also made me… feel a little more positively towards this problem that I thought heavily influenced us as from the couple people I asked, a lot of them stayed true to their answer. Perhaps some of us are healing. 

“Pick up one feeling at a time.

Shout or say every feeling you pick up.”

Intention & Influence

Intention:

Are negative emotions bad to have? 

Nowadays, we’re told they’re not. That it is good when we express our feelings, talk about them, communicate to others how we feel, and be empathetic. Emotions, especially negative ones, and expressing them are important in order to process them and let them go. They’re not bad to have, but they’re bad to hold on to.

However, traditional Asian households think differently. I remember the multiple arguments I had with my friends. They wouldn’t tell me how they were feeling and kept it inside until I eventually found out, got angry at them for not telling me, and for not trying to work it out with me. It was frustrating to hear that they were feeling left out, or that they got upset at something I did from another person and the way they resolved those issues and those feelings were by keeping it in and distancing themselves. After talking to them, they told me this was how they were raised. This was what they were used to, that it’s hard to be confrontational, and that it’s hard to express what they were feeling, especially the negative feelings.

In a way, I was raised similarly. Mental health was a faraway fantasy in my mom’s and some of my Asian friends’ parents’ minds. You had to focus on your grades and get As. You weren’t allowed to stay home if you were sick or feeling mentally unwell. 

As we know now, this wasn’t healthy for us. Bad mental health DOES eventually affect one’s physical health. They affect your grades, your work, your relationships, and your life. If left alone, it takes over and breaks you into pieces. 

That was why I decided to make this my final piece. It took my mom and I multiple years of arguments, crying, misunderstandings, and hurt. However, she’s begun to understand its importance. I wanted to create this piece to simulate that feeling of being unable to express your negative emotions in a traditional Asian household, having you hold chopsticks and pick out noodles with feelings on them from a dinner table. If you talked about happy emotions, you weren’t reprimanded. However, if you picked the negative emotions, you would get hit. This was the conditioning that many Asian children experienced that eventually made it so that they were scared to express their own emotions, especially the negative ones.

Influence:

So, this artwork was a combination of a score and appropriation. When I first saw the prompt for this project, compared to my last two artworks, I wanted to create something more simple but meaningful. For a while, I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to create. A lot of the experiences I’ve had I already put into an artwork; my score was about the significance of gift giving, my appropriating artwork was about the cultural appropriation of my religion, and my intervention was about societal pressure and sheep mentality. So, I was stumped for a while thinking about what I would like to create an artwork out of. 

However, that was when I ran into trouble with my group of friends. We had a long talk, and one of my Chinese friends justified a friend’s failure to communicate the problems he was facing because he came from a traditional household and that was the culture in his family; to not express emotions or problems. She expressed that she was similar and would rather let it pass over than talk about it. So, with that in mind, it influenced the meaning behind this game. 

I also took inspiration from the case studies Sharp mentioned in his book “Work of Games” — “The Marriage” by Rod Humble and “Dys4ia” by Anna Anthropy.

Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy.

The Marriage by Rod Humble

Both utilized simple shapes, mechanics, and colors to convey the experience that they wanted to tell players, whether it was the balance of a marriage or the experience of societal pressure and gender dysmorphia. The focus was on the expression, feeling, and experience rather than how polished the game was, which I enjoyed. Similarly, in my game, the player only has some fake clay noodles with emotions on them, a bowl to hold them, and some chopsticks. Despite its simplicity, it creates a scene and mechanic which has meaning that the player understands when playing the game. Like in “The Marriage” and “Dys4ia”, they have basic shapes and mechanics, but it communicates an idea and creates a scene for the player. For example, in the beginning of “Dys4ia”, the player doesn’t exactly ‘fit’ into a slot when trying to get through a hole in the wall blockade. Although it doesn’t directly mention it until later into the level, the player automatically understands that the blocks they were moving were an abstract representation of this person’s body. The player has a sense that the person didn’t feel like they fit into the body that they had. When playing my game, players automatically see its relation to Asian culture without anything directly telling the player what the artwork was about.

In general, Sharp’s book explained how games are legitimate art that DO parr traditional artistic mediums like cinema and paintings which convey ideas, emotions, and aesthetics through its mechanics, interactivity, and symbolic/abstract design. He also exclaimed about how art games are similar to artistic movements like the Fluxus and Dada movement, which emphasized simplicity, conveying a message, and which  strayed from traditional art (in this case, straying from the tradition of games simply being fun and entertainment). So, I wanted to make a game that was a combination of those movements while following Sharp’s definition of art games. 

Process

For the process, I went through two iterations and tweaked the score a bit. This artwork contains a score, which tells the player what to do, and has elements of appropriation as I borrowed a bowl and chopsticks from a friend of mine that, to me, represented Asian culture the most. The noodles were made from baked clay that I then wrote emotions on after it was fully baked. At first, they really looked like worms. 

Before all of this process, I had originally wanted to make it so that the negative emotions would be impossible to pick up. However, if a player decides to pick up the negative emotions, then they would get punished for it. The problem with this iteration was that one, the punishment was too hard and was not inclusive of older, younger, disabled, or weaker individuals and two, because I laid the emotions on a piece of paper and they only had chopsticks to give them that hint, players couldn’t really tell the cultural background the artwork was stemming off of. So, instead of a harsh punishment, a slap on the wrist was enough to condition players to avoid the negative emotions, and instead of making it impossible to pick up the negative emotions, I made it so that players would have to repeat the game over and over again until they no longer picked up negative emotions. Not only was this more efficient mechanically, it carried the message that I wanted to convey more accurately. Traditional Asian households are always very passive aggressive, and most of the hurt comes from the words of our parents when they choose to ignore the emotions we are trying to convey to them. Then, in addition to the bowl and noodles as my medium, it created the game what it is now.

Before I baked the noodles. The dome on the right was filler noodles so that the ball would look more realistically full.

First iteration of the artwork.

Playtests

There were a total of 4 playtests, however I only had photos for two of those playtests. One of them is seen above with the lined paper used to write out the emotions and the pens to be the chopsticks the players use to pick up the emotions and the second was the third to final playtest where I just changed the wording to the score a bit from “Pick up your feelings; Shout or say every feeling you pick up” to “Pick up one feeling at a time; Shout or say every feeling you pick up”. The playtests, except for the first one, went as I would have expected with every player eventually avoiding the negative emotions and only picking up the positive emotions until there was none left. I think it was a fairly successful artwork, but if I had more time I would add more color to the noodles and maybe some other ingredients when eating udon or pho.

One of the playtesters choices of noodles and emotions. They chose three negative emotions and two positives before only choosing positive emotions.

Gift a cube of ice to someone you appreciate

Show your appreciation until the ice melts

Walk away

Intention & Influence

Intention

I remember one night while I was at work, we were making goodie bags for guests at an event that was going to be held. My coworkers complained about having to make them, despised the smell, or didn’t think anything about it except that it’s work. This long process of making 100 goodie bags made me think of the significance of gifts. Why do we give gifts? Does it matter who gives/receives it and what’s in it? Why? If you are told to, is it really a gift? Eventually, I decided that the score would be the essence of what a gift is supposed to mean and feel like, without the actual “gift”. A gift is about the surprise, the genuine feelings behind it, and the meaningfulness of it. With a gift, you are attempting to communicate your appreciation. So, the score ignores what the gift is and focuses on that surprise, that genuine feeling, and how meaningful that gift is that they are just standing there, giving you a melting cube of ice, confessing all their appreciations to you. It’s simple, kind of goofy, and feels like a game, but it’s a warming, no pun intended, way to show someone your genuine appreciation that is filled with surprises, from the ways people interpret “show your appreciation” and how they show affection to how the environment affects them.

Influence

My main inspiration, came from Allan Kaprow’s happening, Fluids. In his happening, he and other people created a structure of ice and then it melts. It was a beautiful piece that to me, demonstrated the passage of time or how even as things get “destroyed” or “messed up”, it can be beautiful. Other inspirations would be the day the class all went outside to play with some simple things Celia, our professor, had laying around as well as the concept of Happenings during the Fluxus movement itself. That day, I just remembered thinking to myself about how everything was too funny, and that I felt like I was back to being a young child. It was the simplicity of things, creating games out of whatever we had, and the bright sky and colors that reminded me of being a kid. Part of this day helped influence my process and end result of the score, with the idea of simplicity, bright, and fun. I also remember reading Happenings in the New York scene. All the movements and words were sudden and random, but were things that you typically see or hear in life. Along with Grapefruit by Yoko Ono, these art pieces made me feel silly, happy, and spontaneous. One score I remember from her book was “Keep laughing: Keep laughing for a week”. It was such a simple and silly score but it instantly made me feel happy and spurred on a want to laugh. It was art that I wasn’t familiar with that seemed so freeing. Usually, when it comes to art pieces, whether it was a drawing or an essay, most of my pieces are a bit solemn and tense. However, these scores and happenings made me want to try something new. Although tears have been spilled from my piece, they weren’t bad tears but tears full of love and emotion—and I love that I was able to achieve that with just a piece of ice and some words.

Process

During the process, I wasn’t sure of anything. When the project was first introduced, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought, “I’m not creative enough to come up with something like this”. Grapefruit by Yoko Ono was so intriguing and I didn’t know how I could make something as good. I struggled until the day I made those goodie bags. At first, I was intrigued by the idea that a simple bag and random single items could become one and create something entirely new. Orange cloves, ginger, and a honey bear wouldn’t really make sense on their own, but when you put it in a bag together, tie it up, add a ribbon, and then put it in a mug, it instantly becomes a cute gift to make tea for the holidays. However, I couldn’t fully dissect that idea, nor think of a good score for it. So, then it became about gifts and the idea and reaction behind it. Making scores are… a very difficult process. I went through another week trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I did research and asked the internet about their thoughts on gifts. I asked my coworkers, my family, my friends. Then, even though I was eventually able to get a grasp on the meaning behind gift curation and gift receiving, I didn’t know what exactly about it I wanted to simulate into a score. Did I want to simulate the idea of consumerism behind gifts? That they were trash or a waste of time? Or how gifting was supposed to feel? After an 8 hour shift and failed attempts at creating a score, I thought of Kaprow’s happening, Fluids. This piece was brought up by Celia and my classmate before when we were score pitching, and I don’t know why or how it stood out to me so much, but that was precisely what made me come up with the score that I have now. Ice, or any quick, perishable object would be a perfect example of the “gift”, as the gift is not about the ice cube or the object, but the words and actions that are exchanged from the gifting. That’s how my score came about!

Playtests (Photos/Videos)

For playtests, I had three different tests and it was just to see what it would be like with different sets of people. I wanted this to be able to see the different reactions and what I could’ve missed. The first group was my sister and my mom, the second group was my two roommates who are friends, and the third playtest were my classmates. I definitely got different results which I’m very happy about!

Playtest #1: Sister and Mom

Mom and sister (after crying haha) after the score!

My sister had interpreted “show your appreciation” by telling my mom all the reasons why she appreciated her and the way she shows her love. They got overwhelmed with emotions and my sister cried. It took about 8 minutes for the ice to melt but when I explained my score to them after, they said that it definitely accomplished its job as they both felt the appreciation and genuine love. My sister also pointed out that she had wanted to hug my mom a lot during and after the score.

Playtest #2: Roommates

The recipient and gifter revealing the heart-shaped ice cube.

The recipient and gifter melting the ice together.

Roommate Playtest Video (Click!)

This was such a silly playtest but also so, so cute. The way my roommate interpreted “show your appreciation” was by giving the ice cube to her friend then helping her melt the ice cube. They laughed together a lot and there was physical touch and jokes being said. There wasn’t the talking that my sister and mom exchanged, but my roommates shared a precious, goofy moment as they worked together to melt the ice.

Playtest #3 Classmates

The gifter laughing while performing the score to the recipient!

In this last playtest, she also verbally told her gift recipient her appreciation. I realized how appreciation is conveyed will also depend on the environment! She was most likely embarrassed and thought this was funny, which was not only influenced by the score but also that she was surrounded by a lot of people. So, the appreciation probably didn’t get conveyed as well since there may be some things she probably appreciates about her friend that she didn’t want to share to the whole room as well. He also seemed embarrassed or awkward, but I think that all comes into play when it comes to showing appreciation to someone and giving them a gift. Embarrassment, awkwardness, appreciation, joy.

In the end, I gathered that the score does do what I hoped it would, filling the people playing it out with positive emotions and being able to share a precious moment between two people. What surprised me was the different ways people had interpreted “show your appreciation” and their reactions. Some were laughing, some cried, some were embarrassed! These were all influenced by the way they show their affection and the environment that they are in.

This was such a lovely experiment I had on the affects my score would give and I would love to see other people do it.