Mores McWreath's Blog

YouTube Killing Performance Art?

2011-08-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

NYTimes article

Earlier this week I read a new NYTimes Room for Debate called "Did YouTube Kill Performance Art". What struck me is that the conversation seems to be focused on the wrong things. There are really two very distinct questions here:

1) Does video documentation stand in as a substitute for live performance art?

and

2) Does the mass distribution of performance art documentation alter the perception of the work?

Answers: 1) no, 2) yes

Tell Me Video Stories

2010-05-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

As much as I'd like to believe that experimental film and video art are free of the restrictions of genre I find it difficult to find work that does not fit into some type of category or categories. One of these categories that I find interesting as a potential gateway out of popular cinema and into the "fine art" realm of moving image is narrative film/video art. This type of work is identified by its use of the mechanisms of popular film production (large crews, the appearance of a substantial shooting and post-production budget), actors performing scripted dialogue and action, and some kind of adherence to a three act narrative arc.

There's much to be discussed about this genre within experimental film and video art. First is the fact that I keep calling it both "experimental film" and "video art". I am doing this because these are two separate realms of creative activity that have different histories, are literally different mediums, and tend to be distributed in different ways, yet both make use of the moving image and accompanying sound. I will call the genre I am discussing narrative film/video art because it is often shot on the physical medium of film and exhibited in art venues on video projectors, it bridges the two realms through its material production and distribution, the content on the other hand features the familiar elements of popular narrative cinema.

One way that narrative film/video artists distinguish their pieces from what we see in our local movie theater is that they make them more than one channel (screen). The work of Eija-Liisa Ahtila is a perfect example since there are both multi-channel and single channel versions of her work, one can observe how each version functions differently, there is a definite complexity added with more channels. (There is only a two channel version of Consolation Service up on YouTube in fragmentary form):

Stan Douglas does something formally similar with Win Place or Show by making it a two channel piece but also makes it much more about the structure of film production and editing since there are thousands of hours of digitally controlled variations. The 360 degree movement of the camera also slowly unravels the illusion of the scene and its constructed set constantly the breaking the 180 degree rule that maintains continuity editing:

Jesper Just is another example of an artist that uses narrative in his work but without the formal, perhaps even sculptural, devices of multi-channel installation. His works tend to be single channel but maintain their integrity in an art gallery installation through their open, often surreal narratives that leave the audience with more questions that answers:

I find this genre compelling because it can help introduce some of the qualities of both experimental film and video art to an audience that may not have been previously exposed. They hold up the comforting and potentially engrossing narrative arc as a carrot to keep one watching and simultaneously inject the work with the unpredictable and idiosyncratic elements of art that engage and challenge the active mind.

Channel Surfing on the Light Box

2010-04-15T11:34:00.001-07:00

Much of the history of video art is focused on the way in which artists have addressed the medium itself. Video is a technology inextricably linked to its mode of distribution, in the beginning that mode was the televisual broadcast. The medium continues to evolve and change as the technology does. Take channel surfing for example, before the invention of the remote control there was a dial on the television console that had to be turned manually, then there was the period of continuous linear surfing with the remote, after that came on screen menus and recording, and now the video content of television has escaped the broadcast all together and can be found online through keywords and algorithmic recommendations.

The relationship that an individual viewer has to a piece of video art is informed by their own personal history with the technology. Nam June Paik's manipulation of the television image with a magnet will have an entirely different relevance to someone who has never interacted with a cathode ray tube, which in 20 years will be a significant portion of the population.

This leads me to one of my favorite video artists, Bjørn Melhus. His work is informed by his evolving relationship to television and the cultural content conveyed through the device. In certain pieces he reduces the television monitor to little more than a kind of light producing box:

Still Men Out There:

And in others he becomes the singular conveyor of televisions particular genres including talk shows:

The Oral Thing:

And news entertainment:

Deadly Storms:

And still in others he (along with his father and nephew) become the conveyors of a nostalgic science fiction fantasy:

Captain:

In future entries I will examine a larger spectrum of ways in which video artists have approached the technology they work with and how they have addressed its use in society. For now I encourage you to go to Bjørn Melhus' website and/or his youtube page and check out more of his work.

Video Art Goes Viral

2010-04-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Tom Rubnitz was a pioneering video artist and filmmaker who was ahead of his time. It could be argued that he is the quintessential YouTube video artist and he died 13 years before YT was invented. His classic work of viral video art is Pickle Surprise. It is a piece perfectly made for a medium that prizes brevity and humor. It is also a work that puts transgender identity front and center whether its fans realize it or not and that is one of the things that makes Pickle Surprise so intriguing. There are a wealth of remakes, remixes, parodies (although I'm not sure how you successfully parody a parody), and party games that can be found online that all use Pickle Surprise as their starting point. This is clearly evidence of Pickle Surprises cultural significance and you see a very broad array of understanding of the thesis of the video in these responses. If you watch carefully (you don't have to watch all that carefully!) you can see that the video is about someone discovering that an individual they thought was a woman is anatomically male, hence the "pickle surprise".

Here is the original video:

Below you find a sampling of examples of remakes and people simply hanging out and saying "pickle surprise" on camera. I can think of no other video art piece (the only way to buy his work is through a video art distributor Video Data Bank) that has been seen and responded to by so many people. Sure, William Wegman's work has been seen on Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street but how many videos can one find that remake or respond directly to his work? There's potential for a viral online spread with Wegman but none of his early video pieces that directly work with the formatting of commercials are nearly as catchy as Pickle Surprise. Tom Rubnitz had an uncanny ability to make extremely funny, disorientingly surreal videos that people want to share with others and the internet is the perfect medium for sharing his videos.

Remakes:

Machinima Remake:

Part Remake and Part Homage:

Partial Remake:

Some sort of Machinima Thing:

People saying Pickle Surprise:

Dragon Head (Doragon Heddo)

2009-11-18T06:28:00.000-08:00

While I was preparing my latest video Remain I was watching every single Post-Apocalyptic movie I could get my hands on. I have a piece I'm working on now that will use footage pulled from these films but I'm realizing now that I was also influenced by one of the films in particular while making Remain. The film is called Dragon Head or Doragon Heddo (2003).

Here is the trailer for the movie:

What I love about this film is the nearly constant use of incredible digital matte paintings. The whole film has this beautiful look of highly polished and intensely well crafted destruction. It was really inspiring to me while I was making the set for my video.

I love matte paintings in all forms including the traditional hand painted glass and the more contemporary digitally rendered varieties. It is a highly visible part of filmmaking that is meant to be as realistic as possible but always retains some aspect of the hand. What I love is the falseness of the space. The hand can never really create something so precise and this added human quality is what makes these landscapes so beautiful. The matte painting is typically made to look more natural by incorporating some kind of movement into the scene whether it be an actor or some kind of atmospheric element such as rain or fog. The point where these images fail to pass as "real" is where I find the most pleasure. Particularly now with the near total adoption of the digital process in matte painting we see a complete embrace of the point where the pixel meets flesh. There is something so cold and dead, warm and alive, breathing and pulsating in that space that I can't take my eyes off of it. I just want to inhabit that space indefinitely. I want to rotoscope my skin pixels into the vast emptiness of digital gray.

Microsoft advertising

2009-09-30T14:24:00.001-07:00

These are some of the weirdest videos I've ever seen. This article,
Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?, says it better than I can. I also love how there are 100 different videos in a bunch of different languages, some dubbed and some subtitled, which actually makes it much harder to find what you're looking for. Microsoft wouldn't know easy accessible design if it kicked them in the face. (Full disclosure: my brother is a Microsofty and has a title like "information architect" or something like that)

Anyway, here are some of the many videos starting with the best:

"You don't have to leave right now but... here's how to use the help menu" ?!?!?!!?!? I know it's paraphrasing a little bit but I'm going to have to remember that line.

Does anyone else find this world of blank actors, generic lighting, "party decorations", and overly active camera operating utterly inspiring?

1984 and Chuck Norris

2009-06-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

Takeshi Murata

2009-04-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to figure out Takeshi Murata's technique for pixel artifacting for quite a while now and I finally unearthed it. I'm referring to the technique used in Monster Movie, Silver, and Pink Dot. Let me first say that I am a huge fan of his work, not just the compression altering work but the mirrored abstractions and the dynamic fluid loops as well. Coneater is an amazing video.

I will occasionally google something like "Murata jitter" or "Takeshi Murata compression" and finally I came up with a series of links that lead me to the holy grail of understanding Murata's technique.

Anonymous on Datamoshing

There it is, but before I embed all the videos I thought I'd give a brief description of the effect and why I think it's interesting. This will all be mac specific because I use a mac. The moment I saw Monster Movie I instantly connected it to something I had experienced on my own computer. The effect was something I had seen while playing .avi's in VLC. It was exciting to see it happen while watching an .avi file because it seemed like an accident, a glitch, the app was fucking up and it looked really interesting, kinda ugly pretty. The image basically fragments into chunky blocks underneath a still image skin of sorts. If the accident happened at the right time it would look like a figure emerging from a jagged ground with a painterly residue of the previous scene tattooed to their surface. It usually only lasted for a few seconds. Then I saw the Murata video and behold! he was controlling this accident and multiplying it. The first thing that crossed my mind was - how the hell does he do that? I want to do that.

First I thought it was something done in After Effects somehow, then I figured it must be Max/MSP/Jitter. Wrong. Then I found cosmosabravo on YouTube.

All I got from this person is that they used Quartz Composer, bad wmv compression, text edit, and VLC. I tried to get into Quartz Composer but I'm a layers person and not so into node based apps yet. Plus I couldn't find anything in QC that did anything close to what I was looking for.

Why don't I just link to one of his videos. You can see Takeshi Murata's Silver on UBU or right here:

Then I found the Datamoshing page with the embedded YT videos on how to "Datamosh". This is the single blog entry that reveals the entire process or at least a particular formula for achieving the same results as Murata.

And it seems that David O'Reilly and I had the same thought once the formula was exposed - it will soon become an easy plugin built into video editing and post production apps. It will be an iMovie filter. Is that so bad? Well, the short answer is yes. If you watch the Kanye West video Welcome to Heartbreak:

...you can already see the effect dying. It's first big primetime MTV usage and it looks like shit. It's used for nothing more than stylistic purposes. It's deteriorated into pure decoration. Murata has never used the effect without a conceptual ground. Why put the effect on a B-movie creature, a 1960's Mario Bava horror film, or Rambo? Because he is invested in deconstructing nostalgia, the accessibility of cinema history through the .avi, and the layering of visual horror/violence. There is also the perpetual (albeit very recent) artistic drive to bring the mediums of video and painting together. Go to any MFA open studios and you'll see a painter making videos or a video artist edging closer to the world of painting. Murata is one of the very few who actually make this work. The videos are simultaneously beautiful and horrifyingly violent to the body of the individual subject. These video images are so easily obtained and essentially ripped to shreds using their own internal structure. You can feel the digital guts being ripped out of the figures in Murata's videos. This so clearly reflects the genre horror in each film. There is an incredible sense of unease where we realize we are all so easy to access now and so easily manipulated if one gains access to the structure of our online lives. We can empathize with the trauma of Murata's figures through our own digital vulnerability. That pink dot that Rambo simply can not overcome is his own penetrability. Even if the only thing that penetrates Rambo is a bullet we all know he has to cauterize his wound with his own knife (Rambo: First blood Part III). And don't even get me started on the nostalgia for psychedelia.

Obviously Murata's work is layered both visually and conceptually. The Kanye West video? Not-so-much. I'm torn though. I want this effect to be democratized to an extent that anyone can use it but I don't want to see it wasted on junk ideas. So, as much as it is a thing to celebrate the final discovery of the process it is also a thing to mourn. I felt like as long as Takeshi Murata had the keys to the car he was driving us in the right direction but now the keys are available to all and they will, at best, surely drive us into a ditch and at worst, a brick wall.

Here's a video shot in the gallery of Pink Dot:

Monster Movie:

What is an artist's website?

2009-04-07T05:36:00.000-07:00

I was just noticing something about artist's websites. It seems to me that so many artists will have a website full of their work and perhaps other interesting material until they have gallery representation. After the artist has a gallery for a while the website suddenly turns into nothing but an index page with links to the galleries website. Maybe this is incredibly obviously but I'm not sure why a website has to be nothing more than a PR tool for an artist. Take for instance my graduate school peer Justin Beal his website (at this moment) has nothing on it except for its own web address. Takeshi Murata has the same deal on his website only at least he has links to his galleries on there.

So, let's just be clear. Artist's websites are little more than sites of promotional material distribution. They are interactive business cards that unfold and contain media.

Now I know there are plenty of artist's that work with galleries that have interesting websites and they actually maintain their sites after starting their careers in the gallery world. So, I suppose what I'm interest in here is proposing that it is an announcement of "art world" "success" when an artist passes the reigns of marketing themselves to a commercial gallery that takes over that role. If you google an artist and their own personal site comes up and you click on it and it just gives you a blank page or links to galleries then you should know that that artist is commercially accomplished. They no longer have to do their own public relations work or at least they have joined a team of public relations administrators known as gallery interns.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm getting at here other than questioning the role of an artist's website especially now when the commercial art world has started to contract. I mean, I obviously have a website and I use it as a marketing tool. I guess I'm just thinking the marketing aspect should be the background element and the site should be an interesting place to view an artist's work even after they have a gallery. Or at least maintain it as a time capsule of pre-commercial career artwork. Whatever, I'm just eager to demonstrate my hypocrisy.

http://www.alloyd1.blogspot.com/

2009-03-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

I just received a link to this amazing web collage art site. Check it out:

http://www.alloyd1.blogspot.com/

Look around for links on the page to find other collages. I have no idea who made it but it should be emailed to friends.

The Real #1

2008-05-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

This is a historic moment in internet video history. Today the DONOTASYOUDO army completed their journey to the top of the YouTube pile. Mission Accomplished. If you look at the top 100 most viewed videos on YouTube you will see that the race for #1 video seems to be between Evolution of Dance and Avril Lavigne Girlfriend. That's the way it seems but that simply isn't the uncensored reality. The clear #1 video is ~YouTube Worst Video of All Time~ vote 1 star, leave comment:

This is a well calculated anti-video meant as a critique of YouTube content. By watching the video, commenting on it, and rating it 1 star, a viewer can essentially contribute to a petition that exists within the medium it is protesting. Brilliant.

The most disturbing thing is that YouTube removed ~YouTube Worst Video of All Time~ vote 1 star, leave comment from it's most viewed page. Youtube is becoming Themtube. What I don't understand about this is why they would sort of half censor the video. Why not just remove it entirely? When a totalitarian government discovers an enemy in their ranks they don't just stop them from getting state-controlled-media attention, they eliminate them entirely. The neutrality of YouTube moderators is essential to maintaining a free environment on the site. When they begin censoring videos that are critical of their site then things start to slip down the slope of controlled content.

I believe we are starting to see the decline of YouTube. It began as a medium capable of catapulting an unknown in their bedroom from anonymity to meme status but is becoming a dumping ground for major label music videos and soft core pornography. 13 of the top 20 most viewed videos are music promos. 63 of the top 100 are music vids or music related (high school musical) vids. 8 of the top 100 have images of sex or strip tease, or have the word sex or xxx in the title. YouTube is becoming little more than Skinemax meets MTV. Sad. Whatever happened to all the cute but ridiculous videos of teens lip-syncing to their favorite songs. Oh right, copyright infringement. The compromise that YT has made to major label record companies has made it nearly impossible to find interesting videos in the top 100 most-viewed. The only videos holding strong are Evolution of Dance, laughing baby, Potter Puppet Pals, guitar, Charlie bit my finger, and Battle at Kruger. Yes, I just wrote that a video of a baby laughing is interesting. It's all relative. Oh, and I really like Charlie the Unicorn, Chocolate Rain, and Daft Hands. I'd watch something homemade over a big budget music video any day.

Anyway, this brings me back to the point of this post. We should all be celebrating the rise of ~YouTube Worst Video of All Time~ vote 1 star, leave comment to #1 because it stands as a reminder to the powers that be at YouTube that the viewers want better.

Steve Barron - Master of Music Videos

2008-05-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I think it's time to collectively declare Steve Barron a master of the music video. I was watching the video for a-ha's Take on Me and thinking about how perfect it was, not only for the song, but in general as a kind of complete short film. I was then inspired to find out who made the video. Wikipedia led me to the Steve Barron page.

Nearly all of his videos are classics, not just because many of the songs are classics but because my memory of many of these songs is inextricably linked to their visual counterpart. He manages to deliver three act mini-narratives with intertwining band performance footage without privileging one over the other. The videos are truly balanced works of film making and commercial functionality. Here are links to some of his videos on YouTube.

A-Ha - Take On Me:

Dire Straits - Money for Nothing:

According to the Music Video Database he made this two months after the a-ha video. Can you imagine any contemporary music video director making two genre defining videos in a year let alone a span of a few months? The only thing I've never understood about this song is how the singer insists on saying "faggot" THREE separate times. We get the point the first time and all it does is make you think they're really focused on promoting their homophobia.

Def Leppard - Let's Get Rocked:

This is one of my favorite videos from my early teens. Much like the ground-breaking Money for Nothing video he incorporates 3D animation into band performance. Here is my comment on YouTube: "It's amazing how much this video shares with the film version of Sin City on a visual level. The green screen generated high contrast black and white with red highlights is a total match. If you took out the 1992 Lawnmower Man style 3D animation segments this vid would be considered way ahead of its time." Of course someone took offense to my comments on the effects. hateoprah49 wrote, "that animation was damn good for 1992. this video probably won a shitload of video awards" Fair enough. What I was saying is that the 3D effects were firmly 1992 but the other effects actually look fresh in 2008.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
Everyone knows this video, it's 100% pure classic, and for whatever reason YouTube won't let you embed it. We wouldn't want bloggers putting that video all over the internet and forcing millions of people to watch the video yet again. Here's a link to the video on YouTube.

Bryan Adams - Summer of 69:

He takes narrative elements from the songs and actually adds to them rather than just illustrating them. He provides a larger visual context.

Toto - Africa:

This video is incredibly visually inventive. It uses an image of the band playing on a giant stack of books sparingly but to great effect.

Don Henley - All She Wants to do is Dance:

He even made an addition to the post-apocalyptic genre. This came out the same year (1985) as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The post-apoc disco set is amazing.

Culture Club - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me:

Culture Club - Karma Chameleon:

Human League - Don't You Want Me:

I wonder if this was the first video to break down the fourth wall with a "music video inside the music video" concept. Damn, and the final shot makes it a video inside a video inside a video.

ZZ Top - Rough Boy:

Shit, I don't remember this video. This is the first time I've seen it and it's insane. Watch this now. It features ZZ Top all sci-fi style playing their instruments, singing, and being super bearded in hovering boards. They look like mounted deer heads. The song is a total waste but the imagery is incredible. It features a torso-less pair of walking stockinged high-heeled legs. Not to be missed.

He was one of the early practitioners of the medium and is perhaps the quintessential mini-narrative music vid director. There are plenty more videos I didn't include here. Maybe I'll do a second round. I wish this story had a happy ending. I would tell you that his brand of short storytelling lent itself particularly well to the big screen but unfortunately that is not the case. I won't go into too much detail but here is a list of his feature film credits: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Coneheads, the Adventures of Pinnochio... Not bad films per say but absolutely mediocre compared to his stunning videos. Not all directors are able to transition into film nor should that be the final goal of all directors.

Takashi Murakami and Poop

2008-05-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

Inochi is one of the best pieces of video art I have ever seen. It effortlessly combines directorial authorship with industry craft to create a conceptual commercial campaign capable of containing and critiquing the Freudian psychological complexes of an entire nation (Japan). I totally just got my alliteration on.

As much as I love this video, I was hugely disappointed by the new Kaikai Kiki animation in his retrospective. Korean and Japanese cartoons have dealt with fecal matter as subject for quite some time. The only thing new he is bringing to this is that he is showing normal subject matter from that part of the the world to Western audiences. He could have just popped in a DVD of Doggy Poo. The book that film was based on was written in 1968. Don't even get me started on Dongchimee. I'm only using Korean examples because I know them better; there are plenty of Japanese examples out there.

The "trailer" for his new live action movie looked way off as well. For one thing, it was at least 6 or 7 minutes long (trailers are exactly 2:30 or less) and it was nothing but amateurish atmospheric shots. I'm going to reserve full judgment until I see the whole video, but if a trailer is supposed to make you want to see the movie, this one failed.

His video for Kanye West (bootleg shot in MOCA):

I'm not sure how this is anything more than entertainment. Murakami seems to have stopped trying to insert any kind of Freudian psychological discomfort or tripped out post-nuclear narrative into his video work (its still deeply embedded in his painting and sculpture). In my book, after Inochi, he pretty much earned the freedom to do anything with video and get my attention and respect. He instantly squandered that. It's as if he sees video as only capable of being the commercial. He has dropped the conceptual aspect of it all together. Video as a medium is not a logoless Louis Vuitton bag waiting to have a design put on it.

How to Enter Vaudeville

2008-02-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

How to Enter Vaudeville

This book contains one of the best dictionaries of vaudeville acts I've ever seen. I'd love to go through and make a dictionary of YouTube acts. Not that Encyclopedia Dramatica isn't already doing that but I'd prefer something with less editorial and more objective description. It's like a mash up between an encyclopedia and a flame war and YouTube already has some of the least interesting comment forums on the internet. It's like every comment section on each new video provides more and more evidence that people are rapidly losing their ability to write as their view count increases. Either that or, as one user commented on my video Ow My Balls! vs. Cremaster 4 vs. Rolling Rock vs. Humor, everything on YouTube is written by "a couple closet homo 12-year-olds playing with (computers)."

Incredible Map of Vaudeville Tour

2008-02-13T00:39:00.001-08:00

I've been looking for a map of a vaudeville tour online and I finally found one. Here it is: Bob Hope A Year on the Road 1929 - 1930.

I got this image from this great Library of Congress page: Bob Hope and American Variety

I counted them and there are 30 cities on that map that Bob Hope performed in in a year. I am applying for a travel grant now and hope to travel to 14 cities in a month.

Is "Ronald McDonald Insanity" really insane?

2008-02-12T00:11:00.000-08:00

My friend Nick Jones just sent me this video as a myspace comment:

No, it's not insane. It fits nicely within the continuum of video art. Jack Goldstein established the foundations for this kind of looping editing based work in 1975. The video below is a strange montage of various Goldstein films (FILMS!):

You can see the films in their original separated states at UBUWEB: The Films of Jack Goldstein but these still need to be seen as film loops in person to really appreciate them. But what the hell do I know, I've only seen the bootleg VHSrip version.

Of course in 1978 Dara Birnbaum took Wonder Woman down the same path that the MGM Logo had gone only this loop didn't reverse back on itself:

As much as I appreciate The Video Databank putting their previews on YouTube, I wish they would make them a length that is A. watchable and B. long enough to actually get an idea of the piece. For some reason they have also removed their own list of videos from their channel page to be extra annoying. Why they want to both hide and show their video previews is beyond me. I think they should just make up their minds. Making something accessible but hard to get to is just pointless.

Ryan Trecartin

2007-12-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

Another artist whose work slides between acting, performance, and performance art is Ryan Trecartin. His small but growing body of videos displays an ability to use overly dramatic acting that does not become hammy or overly ironic. In a Family Finds Entertainment Trecartin bounces between vloggeresque direct camera address (Skippy locked in the bathroom) and large ensemble dialogs. His ability to weave the vlog into soap-operatic grand narrative is both intuitive and masterful. The way he uses his body on camera bridges the gap between acting and performance. He strikes a balance between clowning it up for the camera and discussing the serious issues of a young gay man in a web 2.0 world, but of course everyone is clowning it up in front of the camera these days. I can't praise Trecartin enough for his willingness to put his videos on YouTube. I just wish he had more hits.

A Family Finds Entertainment:

Here's a link to his YouTube channelWianTreetin.

I've realized my more specific problem with Tamy Ben-Tor is that I see better acting from YouTubers like LisaNova, Smosh, and HappySlip everyday. If they are professional amateurs then Ben-Tor seems stuck in the amateur amateur mode.

LisaNova has a long list of characters that she does, this one is Teenie Weenie (notice how she doesn't ram the character down the viewers throats):

I can't believe that I'm writing this but the following video displays how much better or maybe about equivalent the acting skills of Smosh and Ben-Tor are:

In fact, now that I'm looking at HappySlip again I think I've found a performer that could teach Tamy Ben-Tor a thing or two. HappySlip aka Christine Gambito makes videos that use humor to illuminate different aspects of life as a first generation American immigrant. Her acting isn't that different from Ben-Tor's except for the fact that she has the ham-factor seriously toned down in comparison.

I think we're seeing a moment in video art where YouTubers might be doing the job of certain artist better than the artists.

The Difficulty of Artist's Acting

2007-12-09T23:50:00.000-08:00

Having established some loose categories of actions, I'd like to critically address the practice of several contemporary video artists.

Artist/Filmmaker William E Jones once suggested to me that artists often use the fact that they are artists to hide that they are engaging in certain activities without the skill required. An example he gave was of an art student shooting a narrative movie and saying that the poor acting was intentional because it was an "art video." Just because something is an artwork doesn't mean it is immune to the critical perspective of the forms it is referencing. If an artist takes on the role of a performer or an art director and does that job poorly then they should be held accountable.

As much as I like the work of Tamy Ben-Tor I see her on camera personality as deeply flawed. Her performances in video (Women Talk About Hitler, Alejandra, The Contractor) and her live performance (Exotica, The Rat and The Liberal) don't involve acting so much as caricature. Ben-Tor is a graduate of The School of Visual Theatre in Israel which is described on its website as "a school meant to develop the art of puppet theater into an interdisciplinary form." I've seen puppets emote with more depth than her. She gets into each of her characters as deeply as a Saturday Night Live cast member might. They are so thinly constructed and acted with such ham-fisted schlockiness that they aren't humorous or serious nor do they really create a compelling gray area between. I would think this is just one intentional aspect of this particular body work if it weren't for the fact that all of her other work is in the exact same tone. If she were to call herself an actress or a comedian instead of an artist she would be considered an amateur at best, but because she is in the fine art world she is given the space to essentially put on a sub-par show. What is it about wigs, fake teeth, and ridiculous voices that I am supposed to find interesting in relationship to Jewish and Israeli culture or is it just that she isn't a particularly skilled actress?

Here is a performance called Exotica:

Here is a particularly obnoxious song displaying her goofy voice skills called Thank You Jesus:

Another artist that I think covers similar ground but has at times (or maybe just one time) performed it correctly is Alex Bag. Her video Untitled '95 uses bad acting so perfectly as part of the larger conceptual function of the work that the intentionality is beyond question. Her subject is the artist and more specifically the art student. Untitled '95 traces Bag's undergrad career in dead-pan parody. Her comedic timing and skilled under-performance show a kind of mastery of both comedy and acting.

Even though both artists use wigs, makeup, costumes, and odd voicing they manage to hit very different notes as performers. Ben-Tor comes across as a hammy goof ball over acting her way through every "sketch" while Bag's performance portraits subtlety and comedic strength. Bag never allows the character to over shadow the subject matter even though she is working with much lighter material than Ben-Tor. Both seem to be hiding behind ridiculous performances, the only difference is that one artist is showing how much is being hidden while the other is simply distracting us for much greater issues.

Acting and Performance Art

2007-12-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

Where is the line drawn between acting and performance art? While this question may seem to be attempting to create a binary where one does not exist, I believe the distinction is an important one to make. There is plenty of overlap between the two and some artists and directors use both interchangeably, but that does not mean that it can not be used as a way to analyze a practice. There are several key examples that I will introduce to represent each proposed category of action allowing the examples to define each category (videos are included when available).

The actor: Meryl Streep

The actor: Charlton Heston

Between the actor and the performer: Klaus Kinski

Between the actor and the performer: Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder)

The performer: Yvonne Rainer Trio A

The performance artist: Chris Burden Through the Night Softly

Between the performance artist and the actor: Vito Acconci Theme Song

The performance director/choreographer: Merce Cunningham

The acting director: Werner Herzog

The art director: Nagi Noda

YouTube as Vaudeville

2007-12-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

Here is a wonderful introduction to internet celebrities on YouTube called Internet People by Dan Meth:

It is becoming abundantly clear that there is a very strong relationship between YouTube and the variety theater. Henry Jenkins explores the similarities in this blog entry: YouTube and the Vaudeville Aesthetic

Here are some quotes from his blog:

"As the name suggests, the variety stage was based on the principle of constant variation and diversity. It represented a grab bag of the full range of cultural interests and obsessions of an age marked by dramatic social, cultural, and technological transformations. In the course of an evening, one might watch a Shakespearean actor do a soliloquy, a trained dog act, an opera recital, a juggler or acrobatic turn, a baggy pants comedian, an escape artist or magician, a tap dance performance, and some form of stupid human tricks (such as a guy with hammers on his shoes hopping around on a giant xylophone or an act where baboons play musical instruments). Similarly, YouTube brings together an equally ecclectic mix of content drawn from all corners of our culture and lays it out as if it were of equal interest and importance, trusting the individual user to determine the relative value of each entry."

"Second, vaudeville performances were short modular units -- usually less than 20 minutes in length -- and much was written about how the demands of economy -- get in, score big, and get off -- impacted the aesthetic choices made. There was no time for elaborate characterization or plot development. Every element had to pull its own weight. Nothing that wasn't necessary for the overall emotional impact could survive. Again, one of the characteristics of YouTube has been this similar push to conciseness. In theory, content can be of any length. In reality, the stuff that gets passed around the most is short and streamlined. YouTube viewers get restless if anything lingers too long. And there is thus a similar emphasis on the immediate emotional impact."

Below are some exemplary vaudevillian and neo-vaudevillian videos:

Of course by this point OK Go! is old news on YouTube but this video still represents a band using the aesthetic of YouTube to get their promo video through the clutter. One of the strongest elements of vaudeville was the musical performance.

Here is Eddie Cantor performing a comedic song from 1923.

The Evolution of Dance is the most viewed video on YouTube with a current count of over 67,000,000. This performance would have fit right in on the vaudeville stage but would have had little place on broadcast television.

W.C. Fields performing a juggling sketch from 1934.

Smosh with their video Transformers Rap. Smosh are the most subscribed to channel on YT. Their brand of comedy appeals perfectly to suburban upper middle class white males, a demographic they fit very comfortably into.

Supermarket Wrestling

2007-09-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Amazing video, supermarket wrestlemania, smash flour, bake cake, nothin says lovin, shopping cart, punch, beat, throttle,

Cathy Park Hong

2007-07-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

Here are some important links to my favorite young poet Cathy Park Hong:

Cathy Park Hong Barnard Women's Poetry Prize

Cathy Park Hong Norton Poets

Cathy Park Hong review of her first book Translating Mo'um

Cathy Park Hong Poetry Foundation

Cathy Park Hong online audio

Cathy Park Hong Language Guide

Cathy Park Hong Jubilat

Cathy Park Hong Translating Mo'um

Cathy Park Hong Dance Dance Revolution

Youtube Mashup #4

2007-06-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

takashi murakami amazing japanese artist, superflat mushrooms, takashi murakami, inochi sculpture, takashi murakami, inochi commercial series, inochi hybrid performance art piece, inochi robot boy, inochi sexual awakening, takashi murakami, inochi coming of age, inochi japan commercial, inochi milk alergy, fall in love boy robot, crush on the girl at school, takashi murakami, share milk, spy on girls dressing room, punishment, marriage fantasy, takashi murakami, wish fulfillment, tall pint of your favorite ale, hilarious laughing baby, works in any language, can't stop laughing so funny, fun and funny both, it's crazy how funny, little baby boy joke, cute cute so cute it hurts cute, ice storm, ice covered trees, ice heavy branches, some band named ice tree, movie called ice storm but not the same ice storm, this tree has ice, ice all over the grass, frozen water, snow, but not snow at all, frozen ice icee, igloo, apack, apack military rations, apack company military food, food in a package, meal ready to eat, mre, a-pack meal ready to eat, meals ready to eat, meals-ready-to-eat, mre company, apack food stuffs, food technology a-pack, package for soldiers, soldier food, survivalist food kit, for the sake of survivalism, survive the bomb food kit, lasts for 5 years, five years a-pack mre's, bomb shelter food, save your life, live forever, live free or die hard, die hard with an a-pack apack, try it.

Youtube Mashup #3

2007-06-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

matthew barney cremaster 4 video artist, ow my balls! idiocracy mike judge, rolling rock commercial baseball testicles scrotum hit ball 33 men cup, humor montage stunts people falling down, sex jokes, stupid, jackass, comedy, isle of man, balls, kick, punch, baseball, hit, crack, stunt, fail, hurt, injury, drawing restraint 9, hoist, piercing.

Do No Harm by Patrick Jackson

2007-06-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

Patrick Jackson artist blog

tom cruise, patrick jackson artist, patrick jackson video artist, patrick jackson la artist, art, primum non nocere, patrick jackson do no harm, patrick jackson sculpture, artist, patrick jackson art, galen, oath, hippocratic aphorism, tchotchke, tchotchkes, blind, jason voorhees, civil war, mud, building, construction, intervention, action figure, peace, todd haynes, superstar: the karen carpenter story, friday the 13th, patrick jackson murderer, jason takes manhattan, patrick jackson death row inmate, just a bunch of keywords, keywords, poetry almost, machete, general lee, dukes of hazard, confederate flag, nude, figures, primitive drawing, matthew barney, six feet under, gin and juice.

Youtube Mashup #2

2007-06-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

Douglas Gordon, Daxflame, Pee Wee Herman, Skip Arnold, heroes, jackass, unconscious, vdb, punch, tape face, tape to the face, tape on your head, tape around the face, tape lips, tape mouth, scotch tape, fetish, not duct tape, special, monkey, helmet, freak, Pee Wee's Playhouse, adultswim, eai, cameron jamie loves this, werner herzog even, mashup, video art, pudding, structural, zidane, 24 hour psycho, blog, blogger, famous genius, dax flame, superstar, bernice jauch III, booger, beef boxing,

Youtube Mashup #1

2007-05-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

david hasselhoff, celebrity, poor, pathetic, drunk, hamburger, defamation, the hoff, mentos, diet coke, guys, driveway, garage door, suburban, columbus, ohio, renetto, blog, stunt, extreme graphic content, millions of views, hits, splosh me, strawberry syrup, gunge, messy, sex, custard, bossy burger, paul mccarthy, video artist, performance artist, mike kelley, ketchup, chair, mad magazine, alfred e neuman, video mashup, world of video images is open to infinite combination

Back Flip Failure

2007-05-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

favorite video, youtube, backflip failure, back flip, injury, adolescent, teenage, boy, male suburban, concrete, corridor, peanut m & m's vending machine, dasani bottled water, idiotic, idiot, stupid, face plant, mall, spring, sunny, beautiful, painting, so beautiful, moment of impact