About
Sam is a designer and a professional live streamer.
Her graduation project, Performing Realness, looks at the hidden labour behind live streaming and turns it into a pair of care tools for the streamer: the Companion, used during the broadcast, and Little Butterfly, for what comes after.
Performing Realness: The labour of calibrated authenticity in Chinese live streaming
Live streaming audiences demand realness and only accept a managed version of it.
Performing Realness highlights the work of maintaining that acceptable version calibration, and designs for the streamer who carries it.
The projects has an accountability map, thermal receipts, a manual and a satirical contract make the system visible to outsiders.
Targeting streamers, a pair of care tools was also created. The 'Companion' runs beside streamers during the broadcast and 'Little Butterfly', a digital tool receives what the session leaves behind. The tool follows one principle: to be a digital social worker—record without judging, and help with the work that the streamer has to do.
Research methodology and theoretical framework
This project uses practice-based research grounded in autoethnography.
It uses data from seven years of streaming practice, 784 documented hours across six bodies of material. All user testing ran on real streams while collecting real audience data.
Masturah Maidin
Pann Lim
Ly Du Khanh Han
Rhea Pasricha
