Chapter 6 The creative project

The purpose of this research is to study the aesthetic of net art, simultaneously with the execution of the creative project– a collaborative creation web site, in order to experiment and realise the research outcomes of the net art sphere and fortune-telling culture. The creative web site attempts to satisfy conditions of collaborative creation on the Internet, such as: playing participation, the growth of the art form, the verbality of art, and the transferring of authorship. According to the outcome of this research, a new way of appreciating the interactive form of net fortune telling has emerged.

The theme for the web site creation- fortune-telling culture assists in gaining attention and interest from its participants/viewers. The integration of collaborative creation with the assumption that the Net has mysterious power in predicting the future of people’s lives. It points toward the phenomenon of the combination of folk culture with digital culture, particularly in the phenomenon of how people’s behaviours have changed through hi-tech era. Thereby, the fortune-telling website serves as the final outcome of the whole research, which I have named CyberFortune. Here I registered a domain name as http: //http://www.cyberfortune.info/.

(The Logo of the CyberFortune website)
The optical illusion between the mouse and the Tai Chi represents that the contradiction between hi-tech and tradition culture.

6-1 The framework
Based on my research about the characteristics of each category of net art in chapter 4, I decided to adopt the form of collaborative creation in the creative project. Hence I have analysed three important factors in this creative project, which are:

1. An extensible online artwork that invites public collaboration and creation.
2.The figure of the art project changes itself when involving the user’s participation.
3.The outcome of the creative work is influenced by the aesthetics of formalism and digital visualization.

To integrate the theme of fortune-telling with the form of collaborative creation on the Internet, I have structured a framework for the Cyberfortune website as shown below.

The CyberFortune website consists of three different ideas of using fortune-telling through the Internet, which are NetOlogy, NetWish, and NetOmen. According to the research outcome in the chapter 2, the I Ching has a strong relevance to the internet and its digital medium. Therefore, the I Ching serves as a main method in the CyberFortune site.

The calculating method of the I Ching
The text of the I Ching is a set of predictions represented by a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams (卦 guà). Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), where each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.The hexagram diagram is conceptually subdivided into two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). The first three lines of the hexagram, called the lower trigram, are seen as the inner aspect of the change that is occurring. The upper trigram (the last three lines of the hexagram) is the outer aspect. The change described is thus the dynamic of the inner (personal) aspect relating to the outer (external) situation (Wikipedia).

Hexagram Lookup Table. (Images from http://en.wikipedia.org/wili/i_ching)

There are many different ways to do a fortune-telling reading: “time reading” is one kind of reading using the I Ching principle (Chen Yu Wen 2001, p. 5). It is a reading method using time as the element to get the prediction. Due to the nature of computers and the Internet, the element of time is the most important factor to connect with the oracle of the I Ching and Internet users. Hence, “the time reading” serves as the main method in this CyberFortune website. Based on the calculating method of the I Ching, each trigram has its corresponding number; the following table shows the relation between numbers and the eight trigrams. The formulation of “the time reading” from the I Ching is to get the sum of the time when a seeker produces a question from his/her mind to ask the I Ching. The sum of the year, month and date serve as the upper trigram; and the sum of the year, month, date and time serve as the lower trigram (Luo kai Liang & Luo Yue Ting 2005, p. 18)

(The relation between numbers and eight trigrams.)

6-2 Contents of the CyberFortune site

6-2-1 NetOlogy
Since ancient times, Chinese people have thought that paintings are published from the heart, and words can reflect the thoughts from one’s heart, which are connected to the inner world of one’s heart. Therefore, one’s thought and one’s luck, be it good or bad, can be detected and predicted by studying the painting one has drawn or the character one has written (Fei Jing 1996, p. 2). This method of fortune-telling is called Chinese graphology. Chinese graphology is an art of taking a character apart and telling a fortune by analysing the component parts of a Chinese character. Basically, it is through the model of a Chinese character itself and by reading the meaning of the component strokes, and investigating the changes that a prediction can be made through the disassembling, synthesis and decomposition of the Chinese character.

Chinese graphology entails analysing the characters according to the person’s name who wants to ask his or her fortune. At the same time, the predictor has to diagnose the changes of environment and the person’s character in order to read the seeker’s fortune. Generally, the use of Chinese graphology will ask the participant to give the first and foremost impression of a word during the process of reading (Fei Jing 1996, p. 2). The concept of this action can be interpreted as, while the thought of the question is still in the mind of the user, the mystic power is being switched on, somehow there is the muse to deliver a message from the mystic power which is referred as the prediction gleaned using Chinese graphology. That is where the idea of NetOlogy derives from.

The high technology of using computer science and the data gathering power of Internet are the medium of the prediction in NetOlogy. Traditionally, Chinese graphology was only suitable to use in Chinese characters because of its pronunciation and the pictograph characteristic of Chinese words. But in NetOlogy, the computer language or alphabet of zeros and ones associated with the computer world will break down the restriction to Chinese graphology in Chinese characters. Through the computer processing activity, any language will be transformed into two digital numbers: zero and one. The procedure is like searching for a photo by entering word search, and recomposing the photo by digital numbers of zero and one, and then by the end of the prediction, the picture that consisted of zero and one will be the result of NetOlogy prediction and displayed on screen.

There are two kinds of fortune-telling prediction in NetOlogy: one is the prediction for a single user - “01 NetOlogy”, and another one is the prediction for sum of the users who have participated in the 01 NetOlogy section, namely “WWW NetOlogy”. The NetOlogy section allows users to input one word to predict their fortune, and obtain a pattern consisting of zero and one from the Internet itself. All the predictive patterns and key words input by users from the NetOlogy section will be stored in the WWW NetOlogy section. When a user visits the WWW NetOlogy section, he or she will also receive a prediction, but this is not simply the prediction for him/herself. It is the resultant collaborative prediction for all the users who have previously participated in NetOlogy. Therefore, each participant plays a variable element in a Collaborative Prediction. Every participant who is visiting the WWW NetOlogy section influences the result of the prediction; this draws on the theory of collective unconscious and synchronicity of Carl Gustav Jung. When users participate in NetOlogy, their personal unconscious and collective unconscious are connected at the same time. They are experiencing event of synchronicity, and the answer that users are looking for is travelling between personal unconscious and collective unconscious in cyberspace.

How it works
◆ 01 NetOlogy section:
The explanation of traditional Chinese graphology prediction involves the changes of the natural environment that are attributed to one of the factors for the prediction. The ancient Chinese based their rules on nature, in order to express the component parts of a Chinese character. The Chinese graphology prediction is the only conversion program of the nature rule that the ancient Chinese followed. When the whole scene existing in the physical world is re-established in cyberspace, the database and the resource shown on the Internet replicate the natural environment in the actual world. Thus, a photo from the Internet will perform the same role as the natural environment has played in the actual world, inasmuch as the photo is the first and foremost element for composing the form of the website. The procedure at this stage will be as follows: the word the user has inputted will turn into a key word, and the system will look for relevant photos from the Internet using the Google photo search engine. Randomly, the system selects one photo from the search result. The selected photo will be processed using the high contrast mode – the darkest part of the photo will be filled in by the digital numbers of zero and one while the lightest part will be left blank.

There are two ways to interpret the meaning of this predictive pattern, which combine the I Ching and the Internet.
a). The I Ching: the sum of the computer code of the word which the user has inputted is set as the upper trigram; if the sum of the number is bigger then 8, then keep minus 8 till it suits. The number 8 comes from the concept of 8 trigrams of the I Ching. According to the methodology of prediction by time from the I Ching, the time of the user’s computer setting sets as the lower trigram, the formula is: Year + Month + Hour + Minute + Second, if the number is bigger than 8, then keep minus 8 until it suits.

b). Internet links:
The word which the user has inputted will turn into a keyword in the Google search engine, then the user will get 3 relevant sentences from the Google search outcomes. Each sentence provides hyperlink to its original web page, leading the user to visit these web sites in order to seek interpretation of their prediction.

◆ WWW NetOlogy section:
This section includes the last 64 patterns from the 01 NetOlogy section, so if the user has participated in NetOlogy recently, the user will be one of the variables in this WWW NetOlogy. The number of 64 patterns comes from the original concept of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, and serves as the predictive pattern for the user’s prediction in this section. There are two ways to interpret the predictive pattern:
a). 64 corresponding words inputted by users make up the 01 NetOlogy section. Each word provides a hyperlink to a random selected webpage. It enables users to find their interpretation of the prediction by looking at these web pages’ contexts or figures.

b). The I Ching: the sum of the computer codes of those 64 words serves as the upper trigram. If the number is bigger than 8, then keep minus 8 until it suits. The lower trigram comes from the sum of time of the user’s computer setting; the formula is: Year + Month + Hour + Minute + Second. If the number is bigger than 8, then keep minus 8 until it suits.

6-2-2 NetWish
The main idea of NetWish comes from the concept of asking for blessings and burning incense taken from Chinese religious folk lore. In Taiwan, people go to temples or set up an altar at home in order to pray for safety and well being, or making a wish to their God. After making a wish, people insert incense into an incense burner until it has finished burning. In modern society, in which science and technology change so fast, almost everything regards speed as its main goal, for example the speed of downloading from the Internet, the speed of production from factories, and the speed of transportation, etc. Hence, it seems that “speed and efficiency” are the main factors that drive contemporary society in Taiwan. Nowadays, advanced technology provides the Internet as an abundant environment for a massive number of fortune-telling websites, or even to have an establishment of online temples. Obviously, the needs of this fortune-telling market demonstrate a strong impact in the cultural sphere through employing this high technology for such occult practices.

The NetWish project has changed its logo from the traditional curl of cigarette smoke to a representation of clusters of computer IP addresses. Users do not need to find a temple to pray, or set up an altar at home in order to keep the house warmer. As members of NetWish site, users can simply make wishes and pray for good outcomes by clicking the mouse through an Internet temple. It is a form of cyber “efficiency” in an atomized world.

NetWish requests that users come back at least every 15 days in order to keep their wishes active and efficient after they have engaged the cyber fortune teller, otherwise the power of their wish in the NetWish site will not be maintained as strongly as they initially hoped for. This is an idea referring to the traditional method of Chinese prayer using incense, with an earnest and sincere attitude which replicates the most important factors when people pray. Therefore, NetWish requests its followers to come back very often in order to maintain the power of their wishes.

How it works:
Two entries lead to two different sections: one of the sections is for users to start a new wish - “Tell me your wish”, and another one is for users to register to maintain their concern for their previous wish - “Keep your wish alive”.
◆ Tell me your wish
There are nine different matters in this section: Love, Health, Family, Interpersonal relationship, Marriage, Job, Education, Wealth and Investment, each matter corresponds to one different colour. When users place their cursor on the top of the matter that they would like to wish for, NetWish requests them to put aside all worries and be quiet in their heart, concentrate on thinking of the matter that they want to wish for; once users have concentrated their mind, then they select one photo from their local disc and upload it to NetWish. After uploading a picture, the page will lead the user into the Keep your wish alive section.

◆ Keep your wish alive
The photo which the user has uploaded in the Tell me your wish section appears in a round shape with its corresponding colour. The IP Address from the computer that has uploaded the photo appears between the photo and the base of the incense burner, is also coloured correspondingly. The length of the IP address is divided into 15 portions. On the first day of the user’s wish, the length of the IP address stays is at the longest position. If the owner of the computer IP does not come back to visit NetWish, the length of its IP address will get shorter and shorter, day by day. The photo and the user’s IP will disappear in NetWish after the 16th day.

On the contrary, if the user keeps coming back to NetWish after starting her or his wish, the length of the IP address together with its photo will show on NetWish forever, and the power of their wish will be active forever. In the Chinese calendar, one year consists of the 24 solar terms, such as: Cold dew, Frost, Winter commences, Light snow, Heavy snow, Winter solstice, moderate cold, Severe cold, Spring commences, Spring showers, Insects waken, The vernal equinox, Bright and clear, The corn rain, Summer commences, The corn forms, Corn on ear, Summer solstice, Moderate heat, Great heat, Autumn commences, End of heat, White dew, and Autumnal equinox. Each term occupies 15 days, therefore 360 days per a year. According to the rule of the I Ching, each prediction only works for 15 days, which is the length of one solar term, that is the explanation of the request for users to come back to NetWish within 15 days after starting a new wish.

6-2-3 NetOmen
In the ancient times of China, from the emperors, ministers to the rank and file citizens, all revered and respected “the sky”. It was not merely because “the sky” has given the natural environment for people to live under but mainly because “the sky” is where omens/signs live and are revealed to people by connecting various kinds of astronomical phenomena, which indicate and standardize people's thought and behaviour (Tong Siao 2002).

In Taiwan especially, the majority of Taiwanese believe in Panpsychism, that is, they have a deep respect for signs of the natural world or natural phenomena. They think that anything that is connected with animals, plant and life must have magical strength, such as Sky, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, Mountain, Water, Fire, Rock, Wind, Rain, Thunder and Lightning etc. Nature is extremely plentiful; it symbolises every relevant aspect of a person’s life. As such, these symbols can generate mystical power if relevant ceremonies are performed. People as a result, can obtain a special kind of ecstasy during the performance of a ceremony (Lin An Wu 2006).

In Taiwanese society, there is an extremely interesting phenomenon revealed under the influence of panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy 2001). A lot of people believe that if something has happened unusually from their ordinary daily life, it is likely that there will be some supernatural message or sign transmitted through a certain natural ecology, which may include dreams, astronomy, animals, plants and objects. This is a so-called omen or sign from the mystic power force that cannot be explained in the scientific terms. To illustrate further the significance of an omen or sign, an example is given. There is a temple in Nantou, which is located in central Taiwan. The staff from the temple were busy with the preparation for the 175th birthday ceremony of the temple. Suddenly, on the sculpture of a God landed a big Emperor moth. Immediately, this unusual sight was read to be a sign of an immanent miracle which was interpreted as a good omen for the city (Ceng li 2006).
Based on our assumptions about fortune-telling in China, it is supposed that everything in the world is circular and consists of Yin and Yang (Wilhelm 1968, p. xlix). The Yin and Yang have an effect and take control of the destiny of human beings through "the five elements". In the sense of the circulation from the universe, the five elements are Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth. "The five elements" also mean spring, summer, autumn and winter. Symbolically, it means the east, the south, the centre, the west and the north too. As the Internet is also a cybernetic environment, in a virtual state, what if it has its own dynamic system with corresponding five elements?

The interface design of the NetOmen comes from the concept of the Chinese compass. For Chinese, the function of a Chinese compass is not merely to locate geographical position, but for Feng Shui, it means the direction of life, the direction in which the universe is operating. In this project, the redesigned digital compass indicates a direction within the Internet environment, and its omen that is made up by the collective unconscious of cyber humanity, but interestingly an omen by which we can understand in the so called real (actual + virtual) world. The net compass located in the middle of the page randomly selects 8 pictures from Google’s latest news, and re-constitutes them into a new picture continuously, as if remixing happening news around the world.

When the user presses the button of the net eye, which is located at the top of the net compass, the action of re-constituting new pictures will then stop, and a final remixed picture serves as the predictive pattern of the NetOmen for the user. Hence, the user can observe an omen from the net by looking at the final remixed picture. According to Sigmund Freud's description, the uncanny "derives its terror not from something externally alien or unknown but – on the contrary – from something strangely familiar which defeats our efforts to separate ourselves from it"(Sigmund Freud 1919). Therefore, users may find something special in the remixed picture; so, is the message is derived from the net Omen or from the user’s own heart?

How it works:
This is where users can observe the net environment, and see the omen from the net by themselves; this will bring users to develop an insight into the power of the net. To predict the pattern for the omen on the net, click on the middle of the NetEye, at the top of the net compass. When the photos stop remixing, the resulting pattern will be the omen from the net. There are two ways to interpret the prediction, one is News from the net, and another is the I Ching.

a) News photos: photos appearing in the net compass come from the latest 15 minutes of the Google News website. When users press the NetEye Yin Yang button, all the News photos will stop remixing, and randomly select one of the News titles and provide a hyperlink to its original website.

b). The I Ching: The upper trigram is the sum of user’s computer time setting, if the number is bigger than 8, subtract 8 until it equals or is smaller than 8. The number of total visitors to NetOmen serves as the lower trigram, when the number is bigger than 8, dividing by 8 until the sum equals or smaller than 8.

6-3 Interfaces
The trend of the post-modern design industry since 1960 has been to take functional needs into account. The designed object needs to obtain identification from its user; it demands designers to draw attention to the cultural milieu and the special characteristics of users’ distinctive national features while they are designing. In other words, there is no design object that can apply equally to every nation, or utilize the same design for the whole world. For a designer, there is a necessity to analyse the design object within its cultural context, in order to advance its functional needs for its users.

Based on my understanding of Taiwanese culture and the research outcome of this study, reading someone’s physical sign is an important tool or aid for the fortune-teller. On line we are engaging mainly eyes and hands via the interface. The advent of the web camera is a valuable tool too in any conference-like situation. In Chinese culture, eyes represent the window to the soul, the possibility of seeing into the psychological and emotional inner being of someone. As regards hands, which include lots of palm lines, those lines hide the secret features of each human being’s pas, present and future. Therefore, hands and eyes represent the contact transmitter between the power of the Internet, and users of this CyberFortune site.

Applying the theory of semiotics here, there are two significant components to be considered in my creative project, namely the role of the signified and it’s relation to the referent via the denotative play or technique of imaging or representing the object or cybersubject.

The role of the signified: Regarding the culture as a kind of system, observing patterns or forms from peoples’ life style, understanding the importance of the signifier in peoples’ culture. Decoding the meaning of patterns and forms represented in their cultural milieu, and bringing them into components of the interface design.

The role of technique: The aesthetics of interface design and the fluent interaction of coding. The aesthetics of interface design encompasses the senses of composition, colour and typography, based on my professional discipline background of visual art and design, the interface design field is my specialty. The challenge at this level is the programming and coding is an inevitable problem. However, I have opened myself to learn as much as I can, and for the rest I can collaborate with a programming expert.

6-4 The great Outcome

The study of classification in net art helps people to understand and research more about the net art sphere. Despite the fact that net art is a kind of art form which is constantly growing and branching out, cataloguing and analyzing are still the main processes in the history of net art’s development. Furthermore, the collaborative creation in net art medium is still in its beginning stage, and its environment is kind of chaotic at the moment. An attempt to clear up the emerging trend to the collaboration in net art creation serves as an important role of this research, aiming to build a new range and definition of collaborative creation based on internet. The recording of the development and movement of collaborative creation in the Internet is the contribution to the sphere of net art creation, as well as to a new area for media art. The outcome of this artistic contribution could guide future researchers to explore the study of esthetics in collaborative creation, and enhance the knowledge of net art environment for people in the contemporary society.

While pursuing my degree, I have obtained some opportunities to publish certain outcomes of my work from the content of the exegesis. Below is the list of my publications through this research project.

The CyberFortune website has been announced through Rhizome, the biggest organization for net art news and projects in the world. Gradually, I have obtained feedbacks and various opinions from the public, which help me to understand better how people think about the CyberFortune, and enhance the completion of this research.

The notion of net has powers in prediction fortune may seem an impenetrable mystery in the technology era. However, as a value of artistic creation, there is always a worth try to make a breakthrough among multidisciplinary. The combination of both fortune-telling couture and the Internet technology is an experimentation in net art creation. It is not only demonstrated the form of collaborative creation on the Internet platform, but also examined the folk culture of fortune-telling in the digital age.

When people come to visit the CyberFortune website, they are already processing a collaborative creation with other users among the Internet without knowing each other, and the outcome of their creation will remain in the CyberFortune for a certain period of time to continue the action of collaborative creation. The CyberFortune website is a place where people can visit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it is open to everyone who is interested in doing art, or seeking for fortune-telling service, and it is free of charge. Precisely, the CyberFortune website provides a space for people to experience the form of collaborative creation while doing fortune-telling through the Internet.


6-5 Conclusion
The CyberFortune is an extensible net art work; through the concept of fortune-telling, it invites public collaboration and creation. When a user starts to interact with CyberFortune, he or she has started to collaborate with people from across the Internet world. Some of his or her collaborators may be engaged with photos, some with text, but the fascinating point is that people do not know often that they are engaged indirectly in creating or authoring somebody’s art work.

It seems a natural reaction that most users are motivated to participate in CyberFortune when they notice that it is a free service for telling people’s future, especially as it draws on the power or (Chi) energy of the Internet. Furthermore, in NetOlogy, NetWish and the NetOmen, the art forms change themselves when users’ participation is active. Therefore, we can say that the outcome of the CyberFortune is dependant on the aesthetics and enthusiasm of online collaborative creation media, which responds to game playing, the increased “knowledge” of the CyberFortune
Teller, and the sharing of creative roles amongst users as active readers. Perhaps, this experimental CyberFortune site plays with Roland Barthes’s theory of “The Death of the Author” and indeed being the artist who setup the CyberFortune site, I am the one who may in the end make the least contribution to this work in terms of collaborative creation.

Beyond the discussion on the aesthetics of net art, the behaviour and the motivation of participation are still interesting. The research does not try to answer how accurate the fortune-telling operation is, or attempt to interpret the meaning of its prediction as any notion of Truth. The execution of CyberFortune not only has instead examined the folk culture of fortune-telling as a practice. Also the phenomenon of the combination of folk culture with digital culture, particularly the phenomenon of how people’s behaviours have changed through hi-tech era was a prime aim of this research. Through this experimental research, with its assumption that the Net may have mysterious power, I can not justify it scientifically, but I have verified that the Internet does offer us something, which is unexpected and unpredicted in terms of “people power”.

The concept of setting up the NetOlogy page in the CyberFortune site was ideally to allow participants to input any language to predict a pattern and get its interpretation from the Internet. Due to a technical limitation of the Flash application, the final platform only recognizes English language code. It is a pity that the programmer and I could not overcome this barrier, but we will keep working towards for a solution to make the CyberFortune site function even more smoothly.

This research has been devoted to the study of peoples’ behaviours across both environments – namely, the traditional (Fortune-telling) street shop and the digital age (Internet) portal. An extension of this research might feed into the discussion of cyber culture, particularly on Cyber Anthropology. According the anthropologist David Thomas, “we are witnessing a transition to a post-corporeal stage that has great promise for creative social logics and sensorial regimes”. It is inevitable that anthropologists should study how these “new virtual world technologies” are socially produced (Budka Philipp & Manfred Kremser 2004, p. 214). It would be an interesting context to bring together the net art form of collaborative creation and the theme of Cyber Anthropology.

One property of the Net Art that never fails to fascinate me is its seemingly self-contradictory quality. Simultaneously permanent and ephemeral, personal and social, public and commercial, mundane and spectacular – the tension makes this new genre an exciting challenge to the web artist and the audience alike (FangYu Lin 2007, p. 10). In the course of this research, I enjoyed the feeling of been immersed in studying net art, and creating my net art project. The more I read, the more I know that the journey of being a researcher and a practitioner is endless in spite of this submission. I have caught the cyber-research bug!