Final presentation: Ken Goldberg's The TeleGarden

Ken Goldberg, The TeleGarden, 1995

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Background:

•      The TeleGarden went online in June 1995 until August 2004.

•      In its first year, over 10000 members helped cultivate.

•      Anyone can view the garden as a guest.

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Description:

•      Telepresence installation art

•      Web users are allowed to view, interact with a remote garden filled with living plants. It has a live camera on it.

•      Members can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings through the tender movements of an industrial robot arm.

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Interface of TeleGarden:

•      Users are prepared to wait, it takes awhile to plant a seed or water a flower. And it will certainly take time for the plant to grow.

•      Ken Goldberg: "You plant a seed and nothing happens. You have to come back, and over a period of weeks you get the reward of that activity.”

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The category of TeleGarden: Telepresence

•      Unique form of human-computer interaction

•      Allows the remote user to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance of being present other than their true location.

•      eg. Videoconferencing, The TeleGarden

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Quotes:

•      "Virtual Community in a Telepresence Environment,"

--Margaret L. McLaughlin, Kerry K. Osborne, and Nicole B. Ellison, in S. Jones (Ed.), Virtual Culture (pp. 146-168). London: Sage Publication, Inc. 1997.

 

•      ``For its engaging use of the Web, bringing together an international group of strangers to explore and nourish nature in sharing a common garden, the First Prize goes to the Telegarden as a powerful metaphor for virtual communities.''

-- Jury, Festival of Independent Visual Arts (FIVA), 1995.

 

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Own opinion:

•      TeleGarden hooked up with the Internet and individual.
-> Made impossible to possible. Users just simply click the buttons on Internet, then they grow a real plant in California.

•      The Telegarden was a fusion between old technology (agriculture) and new technology (the Internet).
-> An interaction between art, nature and technology .
Use technology to contribute in nature.

•      Chat room can gather thousands of users from all over the world.
-> Form online community, shorten the distance between users.

 

'Inter-Discommunication Machine' by Kazuhiko Hachiya

Youtube video: 下巴仔 (Chin JJ)

1. How many viewers are estimated to have watched the youtube video?
152,965 (counted on 30Nov2013)

2. How would you rate the video? 

This video is not very high quality in technical terms but it has lots of interesting elements in it, like the creativity of the uploader. He sticked two eyes on chin and formed another funny face, called Chin JJ. 

In the video, the girl asks Chin JJ about some situation questions for example how would Chin JJ respond the reasons of his late. Then Chin JJ responses he met a beggar and tittered continuity. Also, Chin JJ tried to make some funny face(start from 2:30sec) too! HAHAHA... What a funny Youtube video!

Although there are fixed camera angle for this video, I think it is a good decision because it can lead audience to focus on the acts of Chin JJ. For the linkage of socio-cultural issues, I think this funny video somehow aims to reduce audience's stress and provide positive energy for us, it also reflects the creativity of Hong Kong people :D

3.   Do you think it deserved the attention that it received from the internet community?  

I think this video is simply entertaining the audience and the uploader just want to show this funny events to viewers via youtube platform. However, this video was aroused many topics in Hong Kong at that time and inspired many related creations on the Internet communities.