Death of Blue Screen

This artwork is structured into two parts:

1. The Blue Screen, the gigantic Blue Screen, does not have significant visual change over time, over any kind of interaction.
2. The Mobile, which is usually the spectators' own mobile phone, where they interact with the interface asking them questions about the artwork.

Both sources of content exist in the form of a link. You can visit each of the contents from the following links:

Screen Link: https://operating-as-usual.vercel.app/dobs/screen

Mobile Link: https://operating-as-usual.vercel.app/dobs/intro

The Death of Blue Screen, its name itself, is tilted from the Blue Screen of Death, a commonly occurred Error Message on Windows OS based laptops and desktops, which is triggered to crush the system preventing the user from doing any further interaction with the service. This Blue Screen is a means that symbolises the frustration of the user when interacting with the system, which signifies not only the system failure within an engineering term but also a fatigue design failure. This design failure had evolved over time since Personal Computers were introduced and its system got advanced: In the early ages, Blue Screen's error messages were full of uninterpretable codes for humans which really induced a naive kind of frustration. Over time, the UI of Blue Screen began to evolve: In a way, it uses a language which is more interpretable to humans, as well as making the colour of the Blue softer so that the user won't feel deep frustration. Nowadays, thanks to the continuous evolvement both in terms of design and engineering, it is not common anymore to face this kind of frustration whilst dealing with Personal Computers. Moreover, as AI-based services and Operating Systems are being used more often within our daily lives, it will be also interesting to look at how AI, especially generative conversational models, deal with errors; They don't explicitly display errors, rather, they consider the human's perspective in which they are interacting, and humanise the error so that user will no longer feel frustration or disappointment towards the system design. This trend can be almost summarised as the Death of the Blue Screen, a Death of Error, and it is significantly important to understand this trend parallel to not only the evolution of Human-Computer Interaction but also how Computational Systems and their Systematic Engineering Approach evolved over time; Back in time, it was only the naive code which structured the Whole System (C, C++ Programming Languages). Nowadays, it is a more humanised, or human-mimicking system (AI, Meta-Programming Languages: AI writing Programs itself) that is conquering the world of Computer Science and Engineering.

Back into a more aesthetical perspective regarding the theme of error, an encounter with the colour blue while using the Windows OS is associated with a strong feeling of frustration; For those who already had encountered the Blue Screen of Death, a short time of transition when the normal screen transforms into that pure blue itself is causing mental stress towards the user; It does not take so long time for the whole cognitive system to reckon this transition. For those who are encountering the Blue Screen of Death for the first time, the cognitive system will immediately relate the colour of blue to the context of using laptops as the symbol of frustration. Within such context, blue is communicating an aesthetically and cognitively straightforward message which is transferred into our brain immediately. 

International Klein Blue (IKB)

HEX Code: #002FA7

HSV Value: (223, 100%, 65%)

Blue is also a significant concept within an artistic concept when we're talking about Yves-Klein's notoriously famous International Klein Blue (IKB). Few words are not enough to describe how much Yves Klein was into that colour. He went to the very extreme of how this colour can be understood, expressed, and transformed into a beautiful abstract art piece. He researched and tested the materiality of blue, even though blue should be originally an abstract notion of colour; He made the colour blue come alive. As much as blue is associated with frustration within computational context, for Yves Klein, blue was the colour symbolising the uniformity and entirety of the world. Undoubtedly, one of his masterpieces on International Klein Blue is exhibited within Tate Modern, one of the world's most famous and established Modern and Contemporary Art Institute. 

Hence, here comes the question; How will this International Klein Blue will be perceived by the public who is visiting the Tate, which some of them shall have a prominent knowledge of modern and contemporary art, but the other majority, I assume, should have relatively limited background knowledge and understand about it? How will some spectator view this artwork, who is coming entirely outside of the art world, and has little or no background knowledge about it, and of course, doesn't know what Yves Klein's dadaistic concept is about, or even who Yves Klein is in the first place?

Tate is an institute which leads the art industry not only in terms of the collection but also in terms of curation, especially considering spectators coming outside of the art world. They displayed some questions within the section of the museum which displayed Yves Klein's IKB, alongside other abstractive artworks which focused on the fundamental concept of colour, helping spectators to ask themselves the following questions while they are looking at these abstractive artworks;

Below Paragraph is exctracted from the Tate Modern's curatorial description, which is displayed both offline and online sites of Tate Modern. These questions, displayed with the same room in which Yves Klein's IKB (International Klein Blue) is located,

We live our lives in colour. Each one of us perceives colour differently, and how we react to colours might depend on our eyesight, our mood or where we are from. Artists often use colour to explore their thoughts or feelings or their place in the world. Artists have tried to expand the way colour is used, from paint to film to new materials. You can see examples in this display and throughout the rest of Tate Modern.

Where Do I Start?

Here are some ideas you can use in Start and the rest of the gallery. You might see artworks that make you question what art is. It could help if you look closely and think about:

• What is your first reaction to the work?
• Why does it make you feel or think like that?
• What is it made of?
• Why has the artist chosen those materials?
• Does the size of the work affect your experience of it?
• Where is the artist from and when did they live?
• How has this influenced them?
• What do you think the work is about?
• Why don’t you take a photograph of this list, so you can refer to it when you look at the art?

Source: https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/start-display/room-two

The realistic considerations that I questioned myself above can be related to the term Behaviour Aesthetics, one of my core research concepts, which assumes the imperfections of the spectator within the artistic concept. The term Behaviour Aesthetics is named after the concept of Behaviour Economics within the Economical context. Traditionally, Academical Economics assumed the perfectness of Economical Entitiy, claiming that any consumers within the market should acknowledge what kind of economical choices they will have, and will make the best optimal decision within every economical decision-making process, eventually enabling mathematical calculation and prediction based upon optimisation processes possible, as every economical entity will act within their optimal choices, as exactly as any mathematical model will do. However, in reality, these mathematical models fail to grasp the situation of what's happening in the real economical world, as in reality, most of the decisions that an economical entity makes should turn out to be irrational. Thus, behaviour economics takes these realistic constraints and irrationality of economical entities into account, claiming that traditional assumptions of economics are flawed, for example claiming that the absolute amount of money gained and lost should induce the different amounts of psychological effects within the human behaviour(Prospect Theory).

Behaviour Aesthetics is parallel to Behaviour Economics; As much as Behaviour Economics accuses unconsidered realistic factors within traditional Economics, Behaviour Aesthetics accuses unconsidered realistic factors within Artistic Contexts, Curating, and Aesthetical Theories; It assumes the imperfections of the spectator, that most of the spectator don't have enough time and energy to fully interpret the artwork, and additionally, lacks understanding of artistic context and background before they encounter with certain artwork. For instance, most people will not thoroughly go through the texts and descriptions attached to the artwork, or even if they do so, won't be able to interpret artistic concepts and keywords written in the description. Some might argue that this is not true for everyone, that some people are genuinely taking a lot of time and effort when appreciating certain artworks, but I will argue that within certain artistic exhibition contexts, namely Museums, Graduation Exhibitions, or Online Exhibitions, it is true that the majority of visitors skim through artwork or approach each artwork in a rather passive manner, rather than an active manner of actively trying to engage and interact, interpret the artwork. Thus, Behaviour Aesthetics argues that we should take these realistic limitations into account when designing, constructing, making, and curating artworks, or at least we should put a minimum amount of effort to do so. I don't expect that all of the artworks should be interpretable within 3 seconds, and I strongly disagree to mass-produce kitschy artworks which will satisfy the generic public's commercial needs by doing so. Rather, I argue that we should at least consider which points or elements of the artwork might enable spectators to start to interact with the artwork, to start to place the artwork within their world, and their mental model, acknowledge its existence, and start to build a constructive conversation upon it, as most of artists and curators expect their audiences to do so. 

This artwork, the Death of Blue Screen, attempts to combine different concepts illustrated within this statement into a single interactive digital artwork; It tries to connect the concept of the Blue Screen, the Colour of Blue within computational and artistic contexts, the term of Behaviour Aesthetics, all into one. The artwork is made two-fold: A gigantic blue screen which does not change visually, and a mobile phone where participants interact with their own devices. Participants first encounter the gigantic blue screen, which displays the exact IKB colour, and are then invited to interact with the artwork by scanning the QR with their mobile phones. Once they land on the mobile website, they are invited to answer themselves with the 9 questions that were displayed at the Tate on their own, forcing them to question the meaning of the artwork without just skipping through it. This artwork, thus, questions the validity of artistic curation within the abstraction form of modern art, connects the notion of the colour blue within the frustration that the user experiences when using a PC, the spectator experiences when viewing IKB, and the spectator experiences through when interacting with this artwork itself, as there will be no visible change within the screen even though they interact with the mobile, but reversely, mobile is asking to conceptually interact with the screen in the other way around. An interesting point is that even though the spectator's mobile interaction will not induce a visible alteration within the blue screen, there will be some information updated based on the spectator's response, where those answers were fed into the database and thus logged into the screen again, even though those answer texts won't be visible at its text colour will be same as the background colour, the notoriously frustrating symbol of blue, the notion of error, the notion of abstract art. 

This artwork is developed within the following frameworks: React.js, Next.js, HTML, CSS, Google TTS(Text-to-Speech), and React-Speech-Recognition. Jeanyoon Choi was managing the technical development of this artwork.

You can view the artwork and interact in real time through the following links:

Screen: https://operating-as-usual.vercel.app/dobs/screen 

Mobile: https://operating-as-usual.vercel.app/dobs/mobile