Television Delivers People

Richard Serra's video art piece "Television Delivers People" really does deliver its message in a clear and direct way. It is presented in the form of a harmless television announcement and its peppy music also helps reinforce the way that it parodies infomercials and public service announcements. The points that the piece brings up is one that should seem obvious but is commonly forgotten; that television exists solely for the advertising and the money made from them and for them. It really did provide a revelation though in its simple statement that "In commercial broadcasting the viewer pays for the privilege of having himself sold." The use of the word "himself" in this statement speaks volumes due to the fact that it is often cited that the most valued demographic that advertisements are targeting are 18-35 year old males. Television programming exists as bait for people to be exposed to advertisements. The statement that "You are the product of TV" is very powerful; the way it describes how advertisers are the customers for our loyalty and currency to their brands by buying space for commercials and sponsoring television programming is very true. This piece has the ability to show something that is commonplace in a completely new light by stating simple messages is something that I applaud. Also the "Propaganda for Profit" line is a truth about television that still has not lost its relevancy with the existence and popularity of corporation-owned news outlets such as Fox News. The way in which broadcasting can dictate what people think and in essence, decides what they should and shouldn't know, is a scary thought.

Nam June Paik/The Residents

Nam June Paik was a true purveyor of originality. His avant-garde leanings and privileged upbringing that allowed him to play pianos by banging nails with a hammer and play violins by dragging them on the ground made for a lot of interesting imagery and concepts to how music is played. In his obituary in the New York Times, it was said that he grew up studying classical piano and more traditional music composition. It is truly fascinating to see how someone goes from interest in classical musical composition to the avant-garde. Also, his video installation of a giant magnet attached to the top of a television set was great in how it turned the television screen itself into a canvas for his art. In the video we saw in class, it was shown that he incorporated his discoveries in experimenting with the television into his video art; I remember seeing a video in which a woman is playing an instrument with the background consisting of jagged yellow lines.
I really enjoyed the works of the Residents that we saw in class. I thought "Harry the Head" was a very catchy little number and the accompanying video, which was said was part of a video game that the Residents were involved in, was fun to watch. The "One-Minute Videos" that we also saw was a clever spin on the pop song. It is true that the "ideal pop song" length is about 2 minutes and 50 seconds in length. Since most pop songs just repeat the proven formula of verse and chorus repeated ad nauseum, why not cut the fat and leave the core of it intact? It reminds me of the album "Pink Flag" by Wire, which also kept the songs at a short length with the intention of only keeping what is necessary for the song. It was also cool to see how the Residents embraced digital art in their work. The man with the crazy facial expressions having glowing tubes sticking out from him was an example of this and jump started the ubiquity of digital art in music videos for decades to come.

Performance Art Video

"Some at MoMA Show Forget ‘Look but Don’t Touch’ "

The instances of spectators inappropriately touching the performers participating in a Marina Abramovic retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art can be traced to the idea that in performance art, the performer's own body acts as the object of the art piece. Due to the context of a museum gallery and the disconnect that people feel toward objects, some spectators seem to feel that their participation in the form of cat-calling and uncomfortable touching is fair play. The performers have also recalled fun, but unusual moments with spectators in the form of dancing, "thank you's," and innocent touching of bare skin. The pros and cons of interaction in these specific performance art pieces are all a result of how people view other people when they are redefined as an object in their performance art pieces.

The Post-Modern Crisis

The ways in which modern musicians try to crack new ground was very inventive as seen in Monday's class. Iannis Xenakis' "Mycenae Alpha" was a great example of this; a machine that interprets his drawings into sound is such a forward thinking idea. Another invention along the same lines was the scoreLight which used laser beams, as dictated by a drawing's shape, to make interesting sounds. To see and hear these inventions work prove that a dead end in the post-modern crisis is not soon approaching.
Stockhausen's "Helicopter String Quartet" was fascinating in that it played with the usual conventions in how music is played and how musicians interact with each other to produce music. Since each violinist was wearing headphones, they were able to capably interact with each other in their playing. I liked how the music echoed the drama of flying in a helicopter itself.

Gilbert & George/Orlan

Gilbert and George's idea that our own bodies can be used as objects of our art is pretty clever and its introduction into art galleries as "living sculptures" really provided a fascinating spin on what was commonly thought of as art. The transition from everyday objects being gazed on in a whole new light with the introduction of readymades to the works of Gilbert and George which used their own bodies in the context of art is an example of what makes art so fascinating because it constantly redefines itself and only exists through the common influx of groundbreaking new ideas and interpretations. Fr them to exist as the sculptures themselves makes the art carry a whole new meaning; they spoke of how human beings have living souls while traditional art materials do not. Their works were cited to have influence on musicians like David Bowie (I like the idea of art bleeding through from an underground phenomenon to a mainstream one; one can see the evolution of how an idea becomes palatable for a wide audience). In the case of "The Singing Sculpture," the idea of a person just singing to a pre-recorded tape and calling it art must have been radical to a lot of people at the time (as in not accepted as a legitimate art form). In the case of people like David Bowie, who presented his music as well as his own body image as art (Ziggy Stardust), found widespread success by redefining what people think of when they think of musicians (music as well as their own bodies as "objects"). Any idea that can seem radical to unsuspecting eyes can become instantly palatable through an easy pill called Pop music. In fact, the whole phenomenon of performance art intertwined with music can by traced to such events as the Who destroying their instruments after every performance in the mid 1960's and even further than that I'm sure. Gilbert and George's influence on the art world as well as the music world still reverberates today. An example of this is British Sea Power's music video for "Remember Me," which I thought of immediately when seeing the video of the "living sculptures" in Thursday's class.



Orlan is an artist whose early work was radical at the time (her own body being treated as the art itself, which is perfectly exemplified by her being photographed within a frame in the "corps sculptures" series), but the video of her going under the knife while reading text that related to body image was a bit shocking. Her latest work in which she has her own image dictated by a certain culture is an interesting idea. It provides a nice contrast to what different society's believe is that standard for beauty and body image and it uses her own image as a starting point for each one.

Xerox Project