Performance Art with Marcus

Performance Art is a very interesting concept. From what we've learned in class it's kind of like a public experiment to see how people react. My 3 favorite videos that we watched in class was the flash mob, the orchestra, and the frozen people at the train station. The flash mob video that we watched in class with Oprah and the black-eyed peas was very funny and cool. At first, it just looked like there was one crazy fan dancing by herself, but as the song went on each section joined her dancing. I liked how there were so many people involved with it and the reactions they got towards their performance. The next performance art piece that I really enjoyed in class was the orchestra. In the beginning, there was only one person playing an instrument and one by one more people would come out and join him and they made a whole ensemble by the end. I also liked watching people's reaction towards this piece because of how surprised they would get as another person would join them and start playing with them. I also liked it because it wasn't just the adults that enjoyed it, also the kids had fun with it and it was good entertainment for everyone. Lastly, my favorite one out of the three that were showed in class was when the people at the train station froze. I think I liked this one so much because of the reactions they got which were very funny. I also thought that this idea was very creative and it took a lot for all those people to freeze at one point and to unfreeze and act like nothing happened. If I had a big enough group that's what I would want to do for my performance art just to see what reactions we would get out of people.

Updated: Something that these all had in common was that it got people's attention. It was out of the ordinary and something that people don't just see everyday. Technology was involved in the flash mob performance because they needed all the speakers, microphones, electric instruments, and the huge tv for us to all see what was happening. Technology wasn't that much involved as much in the orchrestra one. The technology in that was the instruments that they used. Lastly, from what I saw I didn't think there was really any technology in the third one. If I had to think of technology used in that one I would say that the clock, or watch was technology because they all stopped at the same time, but they needed to use something to tell them when to freeze. What is to be done in performance art: I think in the future people will have more creative ideas using more technology. Maybe they will get even more intense reactions out of people if they use new and advanced technology.

So for my performance art piece, I worked with Marcus. He had the great idea with a drum performance. So during one of the drumming classes, we brought in some extra drums that they weren't using and we joined their class for about 4 minutes and played with them. (sorry in the video I got cut off and I didn't realize until later but I also have a picture of us). The class was very involved and they didn't change anything from the usual performance they just kept playing.