http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6yantixZ5c&ob=av3e
Apparently I cannot embed this video, but watch it anyway. I could say that any video in itself is an augmented reality, but Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have, I feel, taken this idea to a different level. The organization of the visual aspect of their music calls up an interesting question; how do you work a musical group based on cartoon characters, but then make that group rely heavily on the contributions of guest (real) musicians? This is not the first time that the Gorrilaz have tackled this problem, but what is interesting about this particular video as an augmented reality is the interaction between creation and creator. In this case Shaun Ryder, who collaborated on the song with Albarn and Hewlett, has been given the role of "soundsystem" to the Gorillaz. The metaphor is not incredibly complicated; the relationship of artist and art is not one of a god lording over his subjects, but more of a dynamic of push and pull. True, without Albarn and Hewlett the Gorrilaz would not exist, but without the Gorillaz, who would Albarn and Hewlett be? Speculation is pointless, what I am trying to get at is that this relationship has evolved to become something that neither party can easily be separated from, if at all. But there is also a third part of this dynamic, the audience. What is transferred to us from this interaction? A message maybe, or perhaps stimulation on some level, certainly not code-able to words, but necessary none the less. We get a unique opportunity to shape, on some level, where the creative flow will take the artist and her art, but we ourselves cannot render what she can. Still; it is not the artist that gives us what we need, she only gives her creation what it initially needs, then the transfer takes place.
This relationship is all very parasitic of course. It took me a long time to get a handle on what Serres refers to as "noise", "static" or "interruption". Now I think I will simply call these things the audience.
Must the audience always be an interruptive force, though? What about in letters, or anything aimed very directly at a very limited audience? Where the primary goal (or..or at least the most common goal) is economic communication, I feel art is the third, the static, obscuring what could be a quick and simple message for whatever end the artist intends. If the audience is interruptive to the strange, still relationship of artist creating art, then it would seem that art, uninterrupted, promotes the crystallization of life.
ReplyDeleteSo is interruption necessarily always a destructive force? Here I am, interrupting the flow of your blog with kitsch kitsch kitsch what a bitch I yam but are there certain systems of art that desire disruption? Is this a desire of art, or the artist?
...kitschkitschkitschkitsch
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cWxXUhajACM/TCmJMDOcXYI/AAAAAAAAA1U/ufjYcBB3e3s/s400/bentototorosuperpunchblog.jpg
That bento is fucking amazing.
..But I still think it desires to be eaten; or else, the person who made it desires it to be eaten.
Can art rot?
A letter must be interrupted, even if for nothing other than the sake of the reader (don't send a novel, postage is a skunk and I don't want yer life story) the details must cut and presented in an appetizing way.
ReplyDeleteEditing as art then?
ReplyDeleteHurhurhur
Alright, I can swallow that. Not my favorite concept to run into, but it's got meat to it, and it certainly fits with this class.
But are we going to call a letter art? Some things aren't relevant to the conversation at hand, but we don't have to stop ourselves from talking about them (not usually, at least).
If I'm talking to you about apples, I may make a conscious decision to not mention that there's a wild apple tree behind Fairhaven dorms that has really good apples that I can't reach no more; this perhaps is editing; this sort of action, in excess, will perhaps lead to a strange sort of communication.
But I'm not thinking of how I will not tell you that I saw someone walking their corgi and listening to two suited up mormons--not because I am avoiding it, but because it doesn't surface in my mind, in our conversation about apples. It isn't there to be edited out.
Communication is not art; not usually, at least, not while communication aims for understanding and art does not (this pulled from Wednesday's class).
So what happens when one tries to communicate in a way that aspires to some aesthetic?
Or what happens when one tries to create an object of art around the idea of a message that could be plainly spoken?