Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Final Paper Topic Idea

The broad topic for my final paper is video art. I was interested in the video we watched in class about the two guys who do video art. They did the video where one guy stood on a short table and the other guy kicked one of the table legs out and then caught the guy on the table when it tipped over. I want to find out more about those guys and then about other duos who make video art. I might expand it to collaborators. It doesn't have to be just about groups of two.
I think it would be interesting to learn about the process that goes into video art when there is more than one person involved in the creation of the piece. I want to look into how the artists divide the work amongst themselves and why they choose to work in groups.
I'm wondering if most people collaborate with other people because of the mix of technical know-how and specialty areas in the world of video art. One artist might be really good at performance art where another is skilled at filming and post-production techniques. Maybe some artists are uncomfortable doing video art by themselves, but are completely comfortable with others. Is it a sense of camaraderie?
I also have a feeling that many video artists choose to collaborate because of similar beliefs, whether they be political or, religious, ethical, social, etc. A lot of artists try to make statements with their artwork and its only natural that they find others with the same beliefs.

2 comments:

  1. The duo idea is an interesting point to consider. There is much literature on collaboration in art and technology. Patrick Lichty (IAM faculty) has written about this. You might want to look into the work of William Wegman whose collaborator was his dog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You can email Patrick at plichty@colum.edu; there are William Wegman video available in the library and also at ubuweb http://www.ubu.com/film/wegman.html.

    ReplyDelete