Visualizing Ideas: New York City in Pastiche

PSFK introduced me to something rather interesting. The project itself can be found at Christian Marc Schmidt’s website. It is described as a collective composition of New York City which visually combines the geographic neighborhoods of New York with the digitally communicated ideas floating around in the blogosphere. This piece culminates with the virtual/verbal representation of New York organized by its many neighborhoods.

Pastiche—A Collective Composition of New York City, by Ivan Safrin & Christian Marc Schmidt from Christian Marc Schmidt on Vimeo.

My first thought when stumbling on this piece was a flash back to good old Jay Gould and his Oral History of the World. But the difference here is this piece is fundamentally written by the world and does actually exist. It most certainly is art of the communal and experiential kind, harking back to the days of the Dadas who, through those questionable Cadavre Exquise, formed works of art not centered on the talents of any one person but existing through the collaboration of the group. That is the heart of this project and though it has its creators: Ivan Safrin and Christian Marc Schmidt, it can only exist through the contributions of the blogosphere.
thoughts and reactions…

-huysmans

The Art of Talent: Evgeny Kissin

In the world of artistic discussions performance has been considered an experiential artistic work because with every performance of a piece the piece changes and takes on new character. I have always loved that about staged art, no matter how many times you see it, each time is unique. So the questions of artistic value for a performance become divided based on whether you are trying to analyze the creation of the original idea or that of the current interpretation. The problem with revisiting the classical works is that the original idea is not necessarily preserved to the creator’s specifications, then again Barthes that might not be a problem.Thinking a little bit about the intensely complicated issues that were only briefly described above I have had the enjoyment of listening to Evgeny Kissin at Carnegie Hall. He is no composer and therefore is not a creator of musical compositions and yet has been credited as one of the most talented artist playing piano today. This is an interesting form of art if you really look at it, yes it is easy to define him as an artist but the way he is “creating” art is not necessarily in the tangible world. The pieces he performed are credited to others, to the composers who first wrote them. It can be compared to how a copy artist might practice his trade by painting the work of a great master. However that comparison fails to recognize the performance aspects of staged art. Though the copy artist will add his own take to the painting, the ultimate goal is to make it look like the original. A better example would be that of Picasso who recreated Velázquez’s Las Meninas in his own style. Kissin isn’t appreciated because he sounds like everyone thinks the piece should but rather because of his phenomenal talent to do what ever he wants with the piano. His hands can be anywhere, his timing is flawless and his style is unique.

He is an athlete of the art world and just as the art of athletic performance can be valued in its own way; his ability has the artistic potential in his movement, in his sound, and in his style.

So is this a different way to look at the arts? Can we judge an artist for his talent in the field? Can this form of art be considered a revival of the talent driven art of the salons? And what about the Dadaist who will consider this nothing more than a copy? Beyond any question or answer that can be conceived the reality in my opinion is that the creativity needed here is more hidden and harder to define than with an artist in the traditional sense, and yes in this sense I am including the Dadas in the category of traditional since they were creating. It’s a creativity that is in the way a piece is interpreted, in essence perhaps the best comparison is to a translator. In literature a translator is creating her own interpretation of the work of art and is therefore cultivating a new art work in the simple fact that the words change. Since it is not a one to one relationship between two languages, it is far from that as Saussure defined for us in the beginning of the 20^th century. And in finding the best way to make that interpretation, a new work of art is born, and the translator becomes an artist. The same is happening here. In Kissin’s interpretation of how the notes on paper and the markings associated with them should be converted into sounds we hear. That conversion is creation and Kissin, the artist.

Thoughts…

-huysmans

The right video game influence or giving in to sin.

Globeandmail.com published this moralistic Call of Duty story.

Is this the answer to the violence question? Or does this further connect real violence with video game violence? In that case  could scenarios like this lead to more “real” violence as a result of video games? But on the other hand couldn’t this be seen as parenting taken to the next level–> not a fight or struggle but a compromise and a teaching moment.

And to bring this to the whole artistic element of a video game–> is this in essence limiting the full artistic experience the true artists of this game designed? Can’t this be seen as a new type of censorship, similar to the idea of watching R rated films altered for a PG audience? Then couldn’t this moralistic addendum be seen as an alteration or rather a limitation to the true artistic experience possible with this game work of art?

What’s this public think?

-huysmans