Ben Masbaum

With this being my first blog for the IMA, I implore you to scroll away if you consider yourself one of those people who doesn’t particularly hold noobies in high regard. If you’ve stuck around, allow me to share a few thoughts on music videos as an art form.

I remember sitting in my living room when I was thirteen years old: voice cracking, flannel shirt around my waist with my combat boots on the coffee table and my mother urging me to wash my hair.  I couldn’t, of course, because I was busy watching MTV, pre-Real World and before the internet we know of today.  I would stare the wild camera effects of the music videos and think to myself, “Wow!  I love this!” It seemed easy to do and I wanted to be a part of it.

Fifteen years later, I’m about half-way there… with a bit of a different idea on the whole thing.
Music videos are a thirty year old venture that have gone from phenomenon to nuisance in the span of their lifetime.  I’ve seen so many mundane videos in the last ten years which only seem to be created to fulfill some pop star’s need to be seen on T.V. I actually believe that the music should support the video (Which I’ll get to in a bit).  That is it!

Enough about pop stars. Let’s talk about art. The music video as an art form can and should showcase the artist behind the camera and the artist at the editing table, as well as the musician (and in some cases more than the musician!) At the same time, the video should not lose track of the overall message.

It’s about experimentation.  Boundaries that cannot be crossed in conventional cinema are welcome in the music video world. An artist who is not crossing those boundaries is missing the point.  A great example is Michel Gondry.  Known for films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature, and Be Kind, Rewind, Gondry also swims through the music video world. He has given mainstream videos a wake-up call and a smack in the face.  Here are some examples:

Occasionally, one will find collaboration between video artist and musician.  I’ve always favored this concept.  In fact, this an idea that I have put on my personal hit list.

However, one problem that can arise with this kind of collaboration is that the video art probably already comes with a soundtrack of some sort. If the artist decides to replace the music, the results can be drastically different. In the next example, the musical artist Kenna and video artist Mark Osborne team up on a video.  Kenna’s song “Hell bent”  is dubbed over an already existing clay animation short by Mark Osborne, called “More.”

The Kenna/Osborne collaboration is better, in my opinion.

Videomaker.com says that the primary goal of a music video is to serve the music artist.  I don’t completely agree.  I believe that this philosophy has turned the video into a showboat opp for musicians, not always in the best interest of the song and the story.  I think that the audience is fed up with artists in music bragging about themselves on this platform.  Aren’t they?  I certainly hope so. Sure, I believe that the video should exist to serve the song.  But perhaps the music can serve the video just as well.

You’ve probably heard enough of my ranting and raving on this matter.  I suppose it is up to me and others like me to step up and do something.  Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve already taken a stab at it.  This one is mine:

A full house (Photo by IMA Photography Dept.)

Osso (Photo by IMA Photography Dept.)

DM Stith and Osso (Photo by IMA Photography Dept.)

But I hope we have that same problem Saturday night November 7 at The Toby for Caddy! Caddy! Caddy! What’s that, you say? Caddy is an elusive character in the novels of William Faulkner. We describe the performance as southern-gothic-meets-Japanese-avant-garde. Ill-fitting wigs, chalky white faces, and 4-point barbed wire are the visuals. Slow, grotesque movements are the path to the unconscious. Oguri (below) is the single name of the Los Angeles-based dancer who created Caddy!

Oguri (Photo by Steven A. Gunther)

Oguri is a master of butoh, a radical yet subtle style of Japanese dance. The first person to perform butoh was Tatsumi Hijikata, in 1950s Japan. Here’s how Oguri himself tells it: “In Japan, there was folkdance, ballet, and modern dance. Performers presented seven-minute pieces for a classy, sophisticated audience. Hijikata comes along half naked and shines the light in the audience’s eyes. He killed a chicken on stage, and the little girls fainted and he was kicked out. After he was expelled, people sought him out because he seemed so cool, and at the time, many people had the same antiestablishment sense.”

Hear ye, hear ye. If you are antiestablishment in Indy, I am summoning you to The Toby this Saturday for Caddy!, which invites you to consider your nightmares. To look into “the mirror which thaws fear.” To observe disconnection. To confront pain.

The Nutcracker it is not. And, anybody with a ticket stub from a recent Toby event gets in half-price; students of any age are free with ID. I dare you to be there…

Visit the IMA Blog tomorrow for a full interview with choreographer and dancer Oguri.

The iTunes visualizer

I’m pretty sure that how one visualizes a song varies from person to person and song to song. My best evidence for this comes from my experience as part of Sounds and Visions, a computer music and graphics concert put on by the UIUC chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Unfortunately, the web was young back then and we didn’t put much material online. But you can think of it as a zanily creative iTunes visualizer. My contribution was a dancing solar system with a sun that pulsed to the beat and planets excited by notes of various frequencies. Others showcased flocks of birds, a carpet of tiles bouncing little cubes into the air, only to be eaten by alligator-like creatures, and quivering leaf-like fractals.

I just realized that I have no idea where I’m going with this post… maybe I’ll just end it with a question… what other visual expressions of music have you seen?

Are video games art?

Some of our readers may still have some Superbowl adrenaline left in their system, but today I want to talk about another kind of game… video games. Like contact sports, these games sometimes get a bad rap, but having grown up in the 80’s with my trusty Atari, Nintendo, and Sega Genesis, the games I played served as creative inspiration. In fact, without those games, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I do now. Inspired by Noelle’s post last week, I thought I would explore the various ways that creativity can be expressed in a video game. I’ll take the framework that has been used by game reviewers in the past and break it down into the facets of graphics, audio, gameplay, and story. I’m also going to focus mostly on console games.

Starting off with perhaps the most obvious, graphics in video games have evolved considerably since the 80’s. Pong, one of the earliest arcade games (from the 70’s actually), graphically consisted solely of linear elements; two rectangular paddles, a square ball, a dashed line for the “net”, and numerals for keeping score. Progressing from there, Asteroids (another 70’s game) made use of 2D polygonal shapes. The games that I played on the Atari, Nintendo, and Genesis made heavy use of sprites, which Matt covered earlier in his great post on Pixel Art. That pixel art is what inspired me to sketch my own sprites and those of my favorite games on graph paper, in order to use in my own attempts at making games on the family’s 286 generation PC. I then had my first taste of computer science. The next big shift that I experienced was with Star Fox, which made use of 3D polygonal objects for the first time. The beefier graphics processing power of the Playstation made these games more commonplace. Because the storage medium for the Playstation was a CD, it also had the capacity to play pre-rendered full motion video. From there on out, graphics hardware improvements in consoles and PCs have been providing more and more options for performing advanced texturing and shading techniques, to the point where it can now be difficult to determine which video clips from a game preview are pre-rendered and which are in-game, and almost any special effect imaginable can be achieved.

The ability to express creativity via audio has progressed in much the same way. The earliest games only made use of sound effects, while most games from the Nintendo generation had background music. Although these systems were not capable of playing truly natural-sounding tones, background tracks from games such as Megaman and Castlevania had their own distinctive timber. When the Playstation came along, CD-quality music could be played as a background track, and since then the biggest improvement has been the addition of Dolby Digital quality output on the PS2 generation of systems. Now, the Video Games Live concert celebrates the rich diversity of video game music.

While video and audio quality have steadily progressed, gameplay is a tricky beast. Some might argue that the early generations of games thrived in the golden era of gameplay. If the controls were not well thought out or the tactics uninteresting, a game didn’t have much else to rely on. Pac Man, Frogger, Dig Dug, Tetris, and Breakout are a few great examples. These days, it seems that gameplay can get lost in the dazzle of sound effects and eye candy. On the flip side, I also gained great respect for game designers and developers when I realized how difficult it is to combine an idea for a game with graphic design, sound effects, and background music. Gameplay has seen advances recently as new peripherals have come out. Key examples are the Dance Dance Revolution pad (allowing players to “dance” to music), microphones, Taiko drums, guitar controllers, and the Wii Remote and Balance Board. In the most modern games, online multiplayer interaction is becoming a must-have feature. As a result of these new modes of interaction, Rock Band has actually improved my appreciation of rock music, and the Wii has opened up a new realm of creative flexibility. I have to admit that the thought of all of those plastic peripherals is a little unsettling, from an ecological perspective. When they become obsolete, will they be recycled? Can manufacturers take a cradle-to-cradle approach to design in the future?

The last aspect I’ll mention here is story. It doesn’t apply to all game genres, but I couldn’t leave it out because just about every game from my favorite series, Final Fantasy, excels in all of the categories I mentioned previously in addition to weaving some of the most interesting and moving tales in game history. While my impression is that most fans go nuts for Final Fantasy VII, I can’t get over the way in which Final Fantasy VI wove together the paths of fourteen distinctive characters. Another series known for fine storytelling is The Legend of Zelda, although the character development is not quite as deep. I’m wary of losing myself in another Final Fantasy story (they tend to suck you in for hours at a time), but I’m very tempted to pick up the next installment.

I hope this has been enlightening to some of our readers. As I mentioned earlier, video games inspired my interest in computer science, as well as my interest in Japan, which led to my interest in Japanese art, language, and culture. So who knows what I’d be doing if not for their influence? If there are any other video game fans out there amongst our readers… what are your favorites?

Dear Co-Blogger Dude,

And so it begins, writing for IMA blog. Never blogged before, and I’m not quite sure what to write about. I think it comes down to two possibilities: our Team Building project at the Art & Nature Park or music. I’m gonna choose a combination of the two.

Although our tastes in music differ quite a bit, there’s quite a lot of crossover. Shared music includes Clutch, Secret Machines, Radiohead, Dragonforce, Vast, Sugar, Sigur Rus, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and host of others. My most recent purchase is by “Battles.” It might end up on heavy rotation at the studio. (*)

I grew up with classical music as much as you did with rock. While I was being taken to Symphony Hall in Boston you were being taken to hear Zeppelin or the Eagles or the Stones. I think you got the much better deal. In any case, I ended up with a love of classical music that surfaces from time to time, and last week was one of those times. On Friday I took Gaby to hear Emmanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. It’s a piece that’s moody and masculine, moving through thunderous and aggressive passages into delicate intricacy, and back again. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music and it was the first time I had a chance to hear it live. I was blown away. What I took away wasn’t measurable, wasn’t tangible. In fact the music itself doesn’t really exist except in the performance. The score isn’t the piece, a recording of the piece isn’t the piece either. The piece exists only when a group of people agree to do what it takes to perform it. This got me thinking about a word that came up recently regarding our work: “residue.”

The project we’re doing for the Art & Nature Park involves working with a team of 26 people from a wide variety of departments within the museum. Working within the basic methods of Experiential Education, or Team Building, we’ll play games and solve problems and talk about work and art and taking chances and respect over the course of several meetings in the months to come. In the end we are hoping that the group will be better positioned to successfully open the inaugural show of the park, and we will have collectively shifted the culture of the museum for the better. We were describing this project during a recent studio visit with John Hanhardt and he was trying to understand what tangible artifacts will remain after this project, what the “residue” will be. The fact that there will be not measurable residue seemed to fascinate him and defined the project for him as completely contemporary. Being at that concert last week gave this assessment a completely new meaning.

Lack of residue in art is nothing new. While the traditional parameters of art and criticism emphasize the presence of the object and consequentially the artist’s hand, music is one medium in which these two are not necessarily connected. We would no sooner represent the Team Building project with our notes and documentary photographs than a composer would present a score as the complete work and leave it at that.

What did the audience leave with last week? How did they represent the effect they experienced from the concerto? How did that experience influence them socially, if at all? If culture is defined by ideas and experiences, rather than objects, what is the role of monuments? How does that define the role of the sculpture we are building for the park? The tangible, the intangible, and the role of the artist’s hand — and consequentially the audience’s touch or lack thereof — is where the project rests right now. It’s a lot to think about.

Yeah, so I wrote about our work. Dammit. I thought I’d write about anything but, but… I couldn’t help myself.
Later,

Bordo

(*) REVISION: Since hearing Battles for the first time two days ago, it seems there’s no way in hell this will happen.

Dear Clogger (thought I’d create a hybrid term for us),

Music is the perfect place to start. Experience and preference regarding the medium are not only intensely personal but also largely intangible. You can tell so much about someone by how they regard their music collection. And if they don’t have one…God help them.

When you write of the concert you attended, it is completely understandable. And not in the “I understand what you mean” way but in the “I understand it” way. We’ve always talked about art’s ability to affect an audience as being located in the intensity and focus put into the art and not in the content. That’s why if someone makes art about a grand, sweeping idea like Love, for example, it’s easy to get lost and remain unattached to the potential of that subject matter. Too vague. If someone makes art about a particular idea like love of angora sweaters (as Ed Wood did), then we, the audience, have a much better shot of relating to it. It’s the obsession, the intensity that binds us (whether you like angora or not). So, you saw a performance of a classical piece. To someone who doesn’t like such music or just isn’t familiar with it, that may sound like a snooze. But the emotional response, that’s where that person comes in. When you mention the aggression and the intricacy that was conveyed, I immediately think of the Testament show I caught a few months back. For those not in the know, Testament is an 80s Bay area thrash band. Aggressive and intricate it certainly was. Classical…less. So the content is not as essential as is the passion to convey and connect. And it’s at this point of connection that the idea of residue begins.

Yes, there can be much documentation or proof that something occurred. But residue? That is trickier. With Team Building, we are seeing through a gesture that began with our desire to connect with and affect people. We want people to experience something and have that experience lead somewhere. Where? We don’t know. That’s up to the person doing the experiencing. There doesn’t need to be a physical or tangible manifestation of the experience. In fact, there can’t be. So the residue from the project will be unquantifiable. We know there is the potential for it but cannot, or will not, try to control it. The people involved will hold on to it in whatever way they want. Some may not hold on to anything. If any residue exists, it will seep into people’s minds and, perhaps, into their lives.

We, as artists and performers, will give to the audience. We will get back whatever energy they give and whatever experience they afford. It’s a bit of a dance. The effects of it are sent out to influence in any way that it might. Can culture be affected? Yes. Will it? That’s not the point. Or at least our point. Our goals are to create an experience not determine an outcome unless that outcome is to create a desire to experience more.

Therein lies the connection with music and live performances. We put on a show. The audience comes to see us. We give and get. They give and get. When it’s over, it’s over. Until the next concert.

You can, however, buy a t-shirt on the way out.

AA

On Procession FAQs

Is there a Web site where I can find more information about the parade and the exhibition? Sure is! Visit www.OnProcession.org to learn more.

Can I still be in the parade? How can I sign up on the day of the parade?
Yes! You can still be part of the parade. You can register your project on the morning of the parade between 10:00 and 11:30 am at either end of the parade route. Registration tents will be located near the intersection of Virginia Avenue & S. East Street (WEST end) and near the intersection of Virginia Avenue, Shelby Avenue & Prospect Street (EAST end). If you’re not sure whether you are EAST or WEST, click here for more information.

I want to be a spectator on parade day. What are the vantage points?
The parade route will run the one-mile stretch of Virginia Avenue between the Anthem Building (located at the intersection of Shelby St., East St., and Virginia Ave.) and the Fountain (located at the intersection of Virginia Ave. and Prospect St.). Anywhere along the parade route will be traffic-proofed and ready for spectators! Click here to see the map.

Where should I park?

While there is no designated parking for this event, the following is a list of free public parking that will be available on parade day:
*SEND public parking lot at intersection of Woodlawn Avenue & Shelby Street
*Fountain Square Center Parking Lot, 901 S Shelby Street
*White Castle Parking Lot, 921 Virginia Avenue (corner of Virginia Ave. & Leonard St.). Please enter off of Leonard St.
* Teamsters Union lot, 1233 Shelby Street

Can I bring my children? What about my pets?
Yes! All are welcome to come and watch the parade. However, no animals are allowed in the parade itself. For those who plan to march in the parade, please note that the parade route is approximately 1 mile long, so be sure everyone can cover the distance and wear comfy shoes!

What if it rains or the weather is poor?

The parade is rain or shine! Click here for the weather forecast.

What do I do after the parade is finished?
The party continues! Shuttles will be taking paraders and spectators to the IMA for the On Procession party and exhibition preview. The celebration will take place on the Sutphin Mall from 3:00-7:00 pm. (Tickets are Free for members, $5 for students & parade participants, and $10 for the public and can be purchased online by clicking here.) Surrounded by featured works from the parade, you are invited to enjoy refreshments, karaoke and a special sneak peek of On Procession in the Forefront Galleries. Shuttles will pick up at SEND public parking lot at intersection of Woodlawn Avenue & Shelby Street in Fountain Square and take you to the IMA (or vice versa) approximately every 25 minutes.