Enjoy While You Can: Performance Art in the Age of Music Videos, With A Little History

This is a little something for the weekend, a break from the relentless news cycle. Let’s talk about art, performance art in particular. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, performance art is art that is active — it involves people doing something — playing music, singing, dancing, acting, and combinations of all of those and possibly other kinds of art as well. As the wiki entry at the link notes, it’s often interdisciplinary, and it’s intended for an audience, which may be live or via some kind of media.

...It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any type of venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.

Obviously, this has changed over time as technology has given artists new tools. Performance art for centuries was something you had to experience as it happened; you went to a concert hall, a ballroom, a theater, a church, a parade ground to see/hear/feel it. Operas feature acting and singing; ballet — music and dance; variety shows, anything goes. And of course visual considerations also factor into the mix. The old saw about a picture being worth a thousand words can have a synergistic effect when combined with words AND music...

The ability to record performances changed performance art. There are a lot of consequences I won’t get into (the struggle to make a living as a live musician for example) while I look at a few in particular.

You no longer have to live in a major city to see world class performance art, or wait for a scheduled performance. The internet makes things available now in overwhelming amounts. Artists can draw inspiration from a broader range of art than ever before possible, from around the world, from many cultures. They can find audiences where there might not have been a niche for them before — IF they can get noticed. Some careers have taken off because a performance went viral. And it’s not only about performances….

The Double-Edged Sword

Technology keeps changing things. Edison’s gramophone not only made it possible for people to hear (and record sounds), it made it possible for artists to spread their work beyond traditional venues. It also triggered a rush by historians and other researchers to document sounds that future generations might be able to hear them. The effort continues today. Even before the gramophone, technology was able to capture music — player piano rolls brought music on demand into the home, and even captured performances by artists who would sit at special pianos to cut new piano rolls.

Technology can also become a trap. I have some reel to reel tapes of live performances — but no tape player that works. What would you do if you found some 8 track tapes by your favorite artist today? Remember when everyone had cassettes — because the Walkman put music in your pocket? LP records are making a comeback— but how many great recordings have been lost because the record company that owned them went under, and they were never transferred to any other media? How many master tapes ended up in land fills?

Technology keeps changing, for reasons of newer technology having certain advantages — but also because of a desire on the part of sellers of the technology to come up with the Next Big Thing and profit from it. 8mm movie film, Super 8, Betamax, VHS, VHC-C, mini-discs, Laser Discs, DVDs, Blu-Ray DVDs…. the list goes on and on of formats created to be standards, then abandoned as technology moved on. The one advantage digital technology gives us is that reducing everything to numbers theoretically makes transferring to new digital media formats easier — but only if somebody makes the hardware and software tools available. 

There was once a golden age of interactive CD-ROMs; works created specifically to be enjoyed on a computer. Many of them are now dead plastic because the software needed to use them has become obsolete or is no longer supported; even the hardware to play them back is disappearing as companies try to get us to move everything into “The Cloud”— so we can end up paying them rent for digital storage space forever. Those CD-ROMs represent vast amounts of creative effort now without a Rosetta stone to translate them. Some are trying to do something about that.

How many movies have  crumbled away in vaults because they were never transferred to newer media? How many were mutilated from their original forms by clumsy editing or bad cuts? Television has been no better — much of early television has been lost because no one at the time considered it worth saving. There’s celebration now when missing episodes are found overseas or in attics or museum basements. (Some have been luckier than others.)

And some technologies are abandoned because the economics of supporting them are no longer viable, despite unique qualities. Remember Kodachrome? There’s still a huge number of traditional film cameras out there. (eBay is full of bargains if you remember what prices were like when the items were new.) There’s still a number of people who use film because it’s a medium with its own recognized validity that can’t be fully replaced with an alternative technology, just as some musicians play with original baroque instruments, or others perform with acoustic instruments simply because of the way they sound. Like LPs, film cameras may yet survive.

Technology Changes Performance Art Even As It Enables It

I found a picture of the June Taylor Dancers (at top) because I can still remember watching the Jackie Gleason show on the TV. As best as I can recall, they usually had at least one big number, and there was always a moment where they’d have a shot looking straight down on the stage to capture some special bit of coreography best seen from overhead. It was meant to be a visual spectacle along with the music. (Plus the dancers were not hard to look at.)

It’s a common technique from movie musicals — check out “Shipoopi” from the Music Man. There are a couple of overhead shots at 4 minutes in, and moving camera shots throughout the number let the viewer see it as they never could in a stage production. The Music Man began on stage — translating it into a movie meant reformatting it to fit the medium. 

A watershed occurred when MTV started airing music by popular artists. Once songs had to be tailored for the radio; MTV added the visual dimension, and suddenly musicians had to figure out how to create mini-musicals to compete for eyeballs as well as ears. While the music still mattered, the visuals could be a critical factor. 

Fast forward a bit; MTV is no longer a music video cavalcade — but it hardly matters because of some other technology developments. The Internet mentioned above is bigger than ever — and Youtube and other video sharing services are now the equivalent of multiple MTV channels on-demand. At the same time, the video production challenges have gotten a lot easier to overcome; digital video devices and software make it possible to produce professional videos for a lot less money and time. Good is still not cheap — but it’s a lot less expensive than it used to be.

Where it used to take an entire Hollywood studio to put together a musical, the tools now available can turn anything into a soundstage. Drones can provide aerial footage that would have been impossibly expensive previously — and in some cases not possible at all. Computers now make all kinds of CGI magic available, along with powerful video editing tools. 

The cumulative effect is that artists can now produce performance art with digital technology in ways that were not available previously, or were far too expensive for casual use. The end results can be found wherever there’s a decent internet connection. It’s become a virtual venue/channel that is enabling creations that would not have appeared previously. (Of course, lots of imagination, talent, and big budgets don’t hurt either.) These are primarily musical, and you can enjoy the music without ever seeing the video — but the sum can be greater than the whole of the parts.

I have a few favorites I’d like to share to demonstrate this. It’s just a sampling of what’s available out there and I’m sure there’s much I’ve missed. (Feel free to put up your own favorites in comments.)

OK Go

OK Go has made a thing out of producing incredible videos. The planning and execution behind them has to be intense — and they’re supposedly done in one take. Here’s three: 

“Here It Goes Again” got them many, many eyeballs.

 “I Won’t Let You Down” starts small, but it turns into a giant production number, which could not have been done without a drone, and a lot of umbrellas…

“The One Moment” takes 4.2 seconds of … stuff and slows it down to make an amazing video to accompany the song. It also ties in with a campaign by Morton Salt.

Clean Bandit

Clean Bandit combines a number of styles; they don’t have one particular person for a vocalist, but instead have released a number of videos with different singers over the band’s mix of electronic and classical sounds. Their videos can be filled with surreal imagery, distinctive landscapes, dance numbers….

“A+E” features urban landscapes, CGI special effects, dance…

“Dust Clears” is a meditation on existence, with a visual reference to a heritage artwork among the scenery.

“Rather Be” is one of their bigger hits in the United States. Taken by itself, the lyrics are a straightforward song about a relationship, “When I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be.” The visuals transform it into a hallucinatory obsession story... (And it has a cat.)

“Stronger” is a song about wishes and relationships — and partnered with Microsoft which provided technology for some of the video effects seen in the dance elements of the video.

Their newest release, “Symphony” is a celebration of love — and a heartbreaking tragedy, which only becomes apparent if you see the video.

I confess to being a fan of Clean Bandit, but I’ll leave it at these videos for now. If you like more, I suggest Extraordinary, with scenes from Cuba, Tears, with amazing non-CGI special effects, and Rockabye, quite a story in a song.

World Order

What do you do if you are a master of mixed martial arts, and the time comes when you retire? If you are Genki Sudo, you found a band called World Order. (Sudo is apparently close to being a polymath — he definitely has some impressive skills in his tool box.)

World Order takes a J-Pop sound and adds Sudo leading a small troupe of men in suits who move in a deliberate robotic fashion. It’s amazing to watch the synchrony of their movements and the optical illusions they pull off. World Order is a bit surreal. It has also gotten quite a following, with videos that can be casual, commentaries on particular topics, or aimed at a special purpose.

As I don’t speak Japanese, the lyrics aren’t meaningful to me, though the translations I’ve found suggest they are not necessarily trivial. The music is pleasant enough — if you like J-Pop. I confess to liking techno and trance, so it’s not a stretch for me. The words almost don’t matter as you watch what happens. (I’m including what are supposed to be translations where I can find them, but I can’t swear to their accuracy.)

The choreography employed by World Order is not simply dance moves — it involves stylized movements timed precisely across the group. CGI is not, as far as I can tell, used — instead they use camera angles and careful positioning to create optical illusions. One trick they do use is to strike a pose — and jump cut to a different scene, apparently still in that pose from the moment of transition.

“Machine Civilization” followed the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. In Sudo’s words,  

..These disasters can be interpreted as a turning point for civilization. I think that we have arrived at a time of revolution, shared with all the people of the world, in today’s society, economy, and political systems.

Incidents themselves are neutral.

I believe that every single one of us, wandering through this deep darkness, can overcome anything, if only we let go of our fear, and face the it all in a positive light.

“World Order in New York” moves around the city; watch crowd reactions (and non-reactions).

Lyrics

世界のベール押し開き
sekai no BEERU oshihiraki
Pushing aside the veil of the world
僕らは二つの声を聞く
bokura wa futatsu no koe wo kiku
We can hear two voices
耳当たりの善いきれいな嘘と
mimiatari no yoi kirei na uso to
One of beautiful lies that whispers cleanly into our ears
隙間埋める歪んだ真実
sukima umeru yuganda shinjitsu
And one of distorted reality that fills the holes*
何が善くて何が悪いのか
nani ga yokute nani ga warui no ka
What is correct, and what is wrong
真実はいつもパラドックス
shinjitsu wa itsumo PARADOKKUSU
The truth is always a paradox
ひとつの時代が終わりを告げて
hitotsu no jidai ga owari wo tsugete
With one generation coming to an end

“Have A Nice Day” appears to be (as nearly as I can tell) a commentary on leisure pursuits and relaxation in Japan. World Order puts a manic regimented spin on how hard people work to 
”have a nice day”.

“The Next Phase” is a poignant call for unity in the world, a determination to get on with building a better one. Scenes shot in Paris and Berlin make a point about what can happen when old adversaries move beyond simple zero-sum nationalism.

I hope you were able to find enough time to enjoy all of these videos. The state of the internet makes these possible at the moment — and who knows where it will allow creative artists to go next? There are many forces which could disrupt this, and not just new technology. Threats to net neutrality, efforts to monetize content, use of the internet for disinformation warfare and propaganda, efforts and hardware to make the internet accessible in more ways, with more devices, efforts to ‘control’ it…. 

And if you enjoyed this, please don’t forget to click the recommend button, so others will get a chance to see it before it disappears down the front page — which brings up another point. With so much information available, finding what you need, and more importantly, knowing that it’s something you need in some way, is a real challenge.