Audience and Artist

The idea, or topic, that left the biggest impression on me in Michael Rush's introduction would be the discussion of video art as a more experimental and involving form of art than the others that had preceded it. With the first forms of visual art, mainly painting, the medium felt closed off to a select few. If you had the talent, and more importantly the ability to be trained via an apprenticeship or costly schooling you could work your way up to being a successful painter/artist. Even then, the artists who began to branch out of the normal expectations of painting were limited by their medium: canvases cannot be shipped to various galleries around the world at once, they're available for a limited time in a select place, and therefore to an inadvertently "select" audience. I feel like this kind of led to a disconnect between the audience or viewers and what they perceived as The Artists. They're two separate groups, and one can't do what the other does.

But then - people began experimenting with video. I think video stemming off of photography helped to make it more accessible for the "everyman" from the beginning. Rush writes that "with photography, humans began to participate in the manipulation of time itself: capturing it, reconfiguring it, and creating variations..." (12). Cameras were much easier to use and own than painting supplies; the equipment does half of the work for you whereas a blank canvas cannot turn into a painting without a lot of skill on the painter's side. Once film cameras began to be "more portable, and eventually more affordable... a new chapter in media art began" (33).

Artists like the Fluxus performance artists Rush mentions, and Andy Warhol and Factory members began to make their own pieces, without the strictures and expectations of art before. This way the people who had previously been just the audience, could pick up a camera and become the artist - and still be an audience member, for themselves and others. With the Fluxus pieces "the viewer not only completes, but actually becomes the work of art in his or her direct participation in the event" (25).

This kind of participatory art, I think, has been seen a lot more in recent times when social networking sites and the worldwide accessibility of the Internet has been able to bring together people and art like never before. I immediately thought of an example from a few years ago, of an amazing blend of audience "participation" in creating the art and the artist still having some control and focus over the piece.

One of the music videos created for the Arcade Fire's 2010 song "We Used to Wait" was created with software that allowed the viewer to type in their childhood home address. Using that images taken from Google Earth would splice in pictures and views of your house and neighborhood along with some standard images that go with every incarnation of the video.

This is extremely effective, and really amps up the emotional content of the song. I had done this once when it first came out, but I had forgotten how it made me feel. There's something about seeing your home - and the Google Earth photos of my neighborhood were coincidentally old and from my childhood - in the mix of these other lyrics and images. There is then  a point where you can write a postcard to your old self, and it is surprisingly emotional (for me anyway). This music video succeeds in getting its own message (that of the band and the designer of the film, Chris Milk) and becomes something unique and personal to the viewer, infused with their unique memories and emotions.

Here is a link to someone filming the totality of the video, as it goes for everyone: We Used to Wait
But if it works on your computer I highly recommend participating, here: thewildernessdowntown.com