T.V. Delivers People

This short video art piece was really quite interesting, and it make tons of sense. Every new paragraph as it rolled up screen got me thinking more about television in general. More looking at the structure of TV rather than the programs. When you look at TV from a different vantage point you can really see it true purpose in today's consumer society.
The music in the background, being very reminiscent of elevator music has a very settling affect. It is un-obstructive of the message being conveyed, but adds a very interesting affect to the piece as a whole. The message being pushed by the artist is that TV is a commercial and propaganda device. Everything on TV is specifically made to affect you, the viewer in such a way as to get you to buy a product. The TV show is just a cover for the real purpose. We like to think that commercials are the only advertisement we see but everything we watch is there for a purpose.

Performance art

Gilbert and George

These two really lightened the mood of the class after seeing all the radical performance art from the last classes. I found them extremely entertaining and comical. I personally thing that their performances are much more enjoyable than the rather violent and extreme ones we had viewed in prior classes. But then again, these two really weren't making any bold political statements with their performances. I thought that their singing sculpture was brilliant. I definitely enjoyed these artists

The Robotic Man

In my opinion Stelarc was the easiest performance artist to understand. His ideas aren't as out there as some of the other artists we looked at. Stelarc seemed to focus his work on the modification of the human body. One of his inventions was the robotic arm that when attached to a human could be manipulated much like a real human arm. Really amazing stuff. His newest project consists of him having a human ear grown under the skin of his arm. The thought of it is a bit strange but once you see the pictures you will see how strange it really is. At some point he is going to put a microphone in that third ear and stream the sounds live on the web. I think that really brings his newest act up to the level of his prior acts.

Orlan

Santiago started this particular class by telling us that we would see some crazy shit today. He wasn't joking. We looked at Orlan, a performance artist from France. Her performances were radical and extremely odd. Orlan's legacy was made on a surgery table and with plastic surgery. She had a few plastic surgeries done. That alone isnt that strange but she made it art. She had cameras in the surgery that let viewers watch live. She also read from a book and was dressed in unusually outfits. The first thing that came to mind after seeing her performances was that she is crazy, and committed to her ideas.

Fluxus and Joseph Beuys

We briefly looked at a performance art group called Fluxus. It was immediately noticed that they were on the radical end of the movement. After viewing a handful of clips from several artists from the Fluxus movement it was quite obvious that these people felt very strongly about the ideas that they were addressing in their acts.

One of the artists we looked at was Joseph Beuys. He was Germans performance artist. The performance that, for me, was the most notable was his dead hare performance. This act consisted of him walking around in a gallery with a dead hare in his arms, telling it what art is. This was seen by many people as they passed by the gallery but few actually heard what he was saying, so it just looked like he was talking to a dead rabbit. Some odd things came out of Fluxus.

The Photocopy Nightmare