Monkdogz Artblog

Walking around Chelsea these days, video art is noticeably on the increase. It’s developing as a medium and so the quality is very variable. The 3rd dimension of soundtrack in conjunction with the concept or idea and the visual presentation can be an opportunity for real added value to the bottom line of the finished artwork.

Amongst video artists, there are a group who have not really crossed the line into fine art, but maybe they should. They are the Mashup artists who create a collage of music videos by first dissecting vocal, instrumental and visual tracks, and then reassembling them to create something spectacularly new with hints of the familiar.

Jordan Roseman, aka DJ Earworm known is well known for his annual music mashups of the top 25 most popular hit songs of the year according to Billboard Magazine. This year it is titled “United State of Pop 2009”. In a very small emerging art field, he is one of the master practitioners. Done poorly “it’s like you’re trying to watch TV, and someone is sitting there switching the channel every 30 seconds” says music host Tim Baker of Clash Radio. According to Technology Review published by MIT, “Roseman is a double major in music and computer science from the University of Illinois.” This allows him to “analyze the harmonies in his raw materials, (and so) he can see key clashes looming a mile away. He doesn’t have to rely as heavily as his peers do on trial and error to find samples that fit together musically.”

Unlike some other practitioners who just cut up and re order tracks, “Roseman gradually layers (the isolated tracks) over each other, adding texture and building momentum as a song progresses. His technical skill is apparent in isolating the vocal, instrumental and visual tracks. He has even written a book “Audio Mashup Contruction Kit” in which he explains the technique.

His “United State of Pop 2008” was so well received it received enough radio play to make its way onto Billboard’s Pop 100 Airplay chart, peaking at #58 and even broke into the Pop 100 chart. On Youtube it has achieved over 2.5 million views and his 2009 version has hit over 8.1million views. His work is so good that several record labels and artists have requested mashups created solely from one artist’s music. 

I also like his disclaimer on his website in this age of copyright and fair use concerns:

“Disclaimer: The media files posted here were created for my own experimentation and entertainment, not profit. I am not the author or owner of the copyrights of the component tracks. If you like the mashups, support the artists and go and buy the originals…they are easy to find. Representatives of either the artist or publishing company can contact me, and I will take these tracks offline.If representatives of either the artist or publishing company have concerns, please contact me.”

If a broken glass or a scrunched up piece of paper on the floor can be called art, and it was in a respectable commercial gallery in Chelsea, New York, let me assure you, DJ Earworm’s mashups are an excellent example of fine art videography.

(Thanks to the Didgenator for the thread.)

Tonight, Wynton Marsalis, one of the most acclaimed current-day jazz musicians was conferred with the insignia of chevalier of the French National Order of Legion of Honor at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy by the French Ambassador Pierre Vimont.  The evening was co-hosted by Betty and Phillippe Camus who also organized the art exhibition of works by Vivian O’Shaughnessy, Gonzalo Belmonte, Olivier Di Pizio, Edward Giordano and Betty Camus.

After the ceremony, the Wnyton Marsalis Quintet played which at one point included Wynton’s father, Ellis Marsalis at the piano. It was an intimate performance with the audience crowded around them, every emotion, nuance and expression plain for all to see. The connection with the audience was immediate and palpably strong, helped with a strong contingent of friends and family in attendance. I was affected to the core; the integrity and spirit of the music, imbued with the memories and souls of those who created, developed and experienced jazz through the years.

It reminded me that despite the great advances in technology in reproducing the arts, such as film, TV, DVDs, CDs and downloads to mp3s and iPods, there is no substitute to seeing, hearing and experiencing art, music, theatre, dance live, up close and personal.

Joyce di Bona sent us a link to a very intriguing article in the Washington Post of an experiment that they did back in the Spring of 2007.  The experiment was about context, perception and priorities…..as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste:  in a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

They asked one of the world most prominent violin players to busk in the L’enfant Plaza station in Washington D.C. for around 45 minutes in the height of the morning rush hour and see what would happen.  Many of those using the station were going to work in a government job.  The station is at the hub of federal Washington.  Wearing jeans, a long sleeved T-shirt and a baseball cap, the musician placed his violin case open with a little seed money in it already and started to play.

Using a 300 year old Stradivarius violin worth $3.5million, Joshua Bell, played six classical pieces, including Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Chaconne” one of the most difficult and powerful violin pieces ever written and Franz Shubert’s very familiar and beautiful composition “Ave Maria”.  Bell usually plays to sold out audiences, commanding on average $100 per seat, and always receives rave reviews.

The article is very long, but worth the read.  However I will give you the synopsis.  In the 43 minutes that he played, 1,097 people passed by.  Seven people stopped and listened to the performance for at least a minute.  27 people gave money, a total of $52.17 which included $20 from the only person to recognize Bell, having just been to his concern two weeks prior and $5 from a man who had at one point toyed with the idea of becoming a professional violist himself.

Watch the video that accompanies the article and you’ll see most people rushing by, not even seeing the violinist, many on cell phones or listening to music through their ear phones.  Bell said “it was a strange feeling, that people were actually ah……ignoring me!”  

So the question that Gene Weingarten of the Post asked is:

If a great musician plays great music but no one hears……was he really any good?

He starts to answer this with a historically reference:

It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?

Weingarten goes with Kant and he is backed up by Mark Leithauser, senior curator at the National Gallery, who suggests that if he took a Ellsworth Kelly painting worth $5million and popped it out of the frame and hung it on a restaurant wall with a $150 price tag on it, no one would notice it.  He thinks an art curator might look up and say “Hey that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly.  Please pass the salt.”

So he thinks that context matters.  

It probably answer’s in some part why art continues to be seen in optimal settings like galleries and museums.  Why there really is a role for the art critics and art theorists. 

Weingarten culls from others as well, quoting British author John Lane who writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world, not because people don’t have the capacity to understand beauty anymore, but because it has become irrelevant to them.  

Interestingly, Kant argued that your ability to appreciate beauty is related to your ability to make moral judgments.  Having just seen the lack of moral judgments that has resulted in the current economic situation…..this may also provide additional reasons to the dramatic fall in art sales!  

I had a call from London a couple of days ago, telling me I just to HAD to see an interview on Youtube by Lady Gaga, the electro-pop sensation that is sweeping both sides of the Atlantic with her current single ‘Poker Face’. 

On the interview with Radio 1 Live, she sings and plays her song in an acoustic/jazz style with just a keyboard for accompaniment.  I loved it; this version showcased a depth to her voice and range.  She has been classically trained since she was 4 and later moved to ragtime and jazz as she grew older.  Her career started as a song writer for some well known groups such as Pussy Cat Dolls, Fergie New Kids on the Block and Akon.  She really understands the fundamentals of composition, style, and the fact that it’s the total package that captivates the audience. 

In 2008, Lady Gaga started working with a collective she called “Haus of Gaga” which collaborates to create her clothing, sets and sound.  In an interview with the Sunday Times in London she said “In this industry, you get a lot of stylists and producers thrown at you, but this is my own creative team, modeled on Warhol’s Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.”

The point of her pop music, she adds, isn’t merely to entertain, but to provoke response and discussion. “How do I make pop, commercial art be taken as seriously as fine art? That’s what Warhol did.” “How do I make music and performances that are thought-provoking, fresh and future? We decide what’s good and, if the ideas are powerful enough, we can convince the world that it’s great.”  Andy Warhol continues to influence and motivate new generations of artists 20 years after he death. 

After a short bout with drugs she “decided it was more important to become a centered, critical thinker.  That was more powerful than the drug itself.”  Her commitment to her art is total; “some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show,” she says of her impressive stage set. “I don’t give a f*** about money. What am I going to do with a condo and a car? I can’t drive.”

Her integrity to her art is absolute, “I eat, sleep, breathe and bleed every inch of my work. I’d absolutely die if I couldn’t be an artist.”

www.ladygaga.com