IndieGoGo!

David showed us this site, www.indiegogo.com , where a bunch of people put up their ideas and projects that they want to advertise and get help with funding.

Some of the things look reeeally cool. One idea, "Plain Face" is a hopeful cut out animated short which I am really interested in. I don't think it's so much the storyline as it is the style that it's being created in. (I mean the storyline's great, but it's the visuals that really got me.) Her artwork and graphics seem really simple to look at, but beautiful. The creating of them looks intricate, and I'd love to attempt something similar one day. The idea is explained more at http://www.filmandscissors.com/blog/?page_id=6 .
http://www.indiegogo.com/plainface .



ANNNYYYYWAYYY, I was thinking... I wonder if one day IndieGoGo could possibly be revealing the world of Perf-Art to the rest of the world?!

Some visuals!

I have put together some really basic images to give us an idea of the physical component of Perf-Art. It's great to actually see it, however basic these visuals are, instead of having it in our heads the whole time.


A representation of an artist inside the cubicle, performing and painting.



Showing the cubicle with the cameras placed above and around.



Annnnd the cubicle with the speakers that will play music and hopefully take people on a journey where they've never been before!

Questions; will the idea work?!

Is there a need for it?

This is a difficult question to answer. Is there a need for Perf-Art?
Well obviously that's subjective. Some people live for art and dedicate their lives to it, whereas I know others who do not have an artistic bone in their body and live for logic, structure and routine. Which by no means is wrong, absolutely not, but if I were to ask these people if they thought there was a need for Perf-Art they would tell me there is no need for ANY art. And I mean come on... there's a need for art.

I think there is a need for art to keep evolving and changing, and that Perf-Art is just a part of that process. So, long story short; YES. There is a need for it.

Is the need a long term one?

Perf-Art as an art that gets exhibited is probably not something that is needed in the long term. Art evolves and changes over the years, and what is now contemporary art will change in time. However, if you looked at Perf-Art as not so much something that people can come and view, but as something that personally benefits the people who TAKE PART in it (ie. the "Perf-Artists") then I think there's a possibility it could stick around for a while. In my mind Perf-Art is something terribly therapeutic, and given the chance I would LOVE to be placed in a small private space with loud music and paint and the chance to let go and let my mind and body freak out and do whatever the hell they want. It would be amazing to just let go of everything in an incredibly safe environment.

Does your product perform?

Perf-Art is not an appliance, or a tool that can be broken. There is no right or wrong to Perf-Art. It is art, it is expression, it is what it is.

Do you know your competitors?

It's hard to talk of competitors with art. Hundreds of people paint portraits and hundreds of people make money from painting portraits. If you have talent, and people like your style, they'll come to you whether there's competitors or not.

HOWEVER, yes! We have found someone who has done something SIMILAR! It is in no way, shape or form the same, but I suppose you could say it is a basic form of what we are trying to achieve. It's called Paint Dancing.

Perf-Art is taking Paint Dancing to the next level however, adding more to it, and exhibiting the outcome.

Is your pricing realistic?

For people to be able to see Perf-Art it will not cost much at all, if anything. We are not aiming for Perf-Art to be a profit making project. The only money we acquire will go towards getting Perf-Art up and running.

Is it within your own capacity to do it?

The biggest problem for Perf-Art would be the funding aspect of it. However there are ways and means to get around that, which include donations (whether that be from sponsors or from people who'd like to get involved in the project), private funding, getting an art gallery onto the idea and allowing them to allow us to use their facilities!, or even turning Perf-Art into one great big collaboration that a university tute group puts on or a high school class, and getting funds from said institution. Once we're passed that burden, it is definitely within out capacity.

We know enough people with enough skills (and that includes us (Dom and me)) to get this idea up and running!

Does it have growth potential?

If people like the idea, and the facilities, Perf-Art could be done anywhere by anyone. Even if they don't want to exhibit the work and they just want to do it in private for a personal benefit.

What if it doesn’t work?

It definitely is a big risk, and it may not work. However, even if this idea isn't taken on too kindly by the public, for me it would be well worth it just for the experience. And of course they loss of money and time would hurt, but because this was never a profit making project, the disappointment would not be incredibly drastic.

PAINT DANCING!

After a bit of searching I have finally come across something with similar components to the "Perf-Art" project that Dom and I are working on.

It's a bunch of people getting groovy to some tunes and painting to show how freaking good they're feeling!

www.paintdancing.com -> GOOO!

The painting's are not of anything, they're just paint on paper, but... it's still a beautiful form of artwork if you ask me.

The people are just allowing themselves to feel.

And apparently this Paint Dancing has taken off in the US! It started off in the creator's (Matt Jones') studio, and now people can host Paint Dancing events, and from the videos I've seen, they're damn well attended too.




Obviously there are quite a few differences between Paint Dancing and Perf-Art, but the concept is similar.

The obvious differences are;
-The artists who take part in Paint Dancing are simply standing and dancing (however I suppose there are a few exceptions, a few awesome crazy ones letting loose!) and painting on paper, whereas with Perf-Art the artist is within a closed space, and paints on the cubicle surrounding them, and MOVES! Perf-Art is a performance as well as an artwork in the making.

-If you were to Paint Dance, you would be surrounded by other people all taking part in the artwork with you. In Perf-Art, the artist is alone to deal only with their own emotions and expressions.

-The final artworks of Paint Dancing are not designed to be a final artwork put on display and exhibited to the public. It could be done, but the main point of Paint Dancing is the dancing, however Perf-Art is focused on the creating of the art, but with a definite plan of exhibiting the finished physical expression to whoever is interested.

I WANT TO PAINT DANCE!!

The three main components, Performance, Visual Art, and Music.

We have been looking at examples of each of the components of Perf-Art. So some examples of what we think the finished painting on the inside of the Perf-Art cubicle will look like, what we are hoping the performance will look like, and types of music that would work well.


Dom said to me that straight away the artist he though of who's work he thinks would most likely resemble Perf-Art work is Jackson Pollack. These two paintings are his work, and I freaking agree with Dominic. I had a very similar idea of what the painting would look like, I just wasn't knowledgeable to be able to put an artist to the work. But there we go, Jackson Pollack.
This type of work is Abstract Expressionism.

. . . . . . . . . .

This video is an example of interpretive dance. We saw it as a great video because the dancer seems to completely block out the world around her, focusing on her internal self. It's also a good example video because the performer is within an enclosed space, and obviously an artist taking part in Perf-Art will be within a small area too.

. . . . . . . . . .

This song, from American Beauty could either stir up some deep emotions for people, because it's calm and delicate and ridiculously beautiful and stirring. OR, it could make people laugh and think of a flying plastic bag because of where the song appears in the film. It is an amazing piece of music and so Dominic and I felt it would be a fantastic example anyway, to show the type of music that could be used in Perf-Art to stir emotion in the artist/performer.

. . . . . . . . . .

A different style of interpretive dance, filled with more movement and with more space used. I think the dancer is amazing. She moves with grace, man!

Our Audience, and a Persona.

Perf-Art's audience would consist of anyone open minded, and appreciative of art. Probably from a young adult age, and above.

An example of someone interested in Perf-Art is Georgia, twenty-four years old and studying drama at university. She works part time on weekends at a restaurant near her house, in the northern suburbs, and creates art installations and sculptures as a hobby.

1) What is she thinking?
Her thoughts are very 'now' orientated. She obviously has an idea of where she wants to be in ten years, perhaps set-designing and creating things to be part of sets, but she likes the idea of living in the present and not let life slip you by whilst working towards something in the future.

2) What is she saying?
She talks about what she did on the weekend; how work went, which friends she saw, how little sleep she got. She always talks about great movies, but how she hates it when famous actors and actresses are cast in it when it is clear that they are not suited to the role at all.

3) What is she doing?
She's often learning lines, or writing lines for something she's going to be performing in the future. Or she's socialising and catching up with people she doesn't see that often anymore. Or working. She works a fair amount, considering she's a full time university student.

4) What is she hearing?
Georgia hears about many up and coming performances, exhibitions, art projects. And she hears a lot of comments about the food at her place of work. Many of them complaints because the food order has been incorrect, or the food has taken too long. Often things without her control, but she hears it all.

5) What is the reward for this person?
Being someone who appreciates both art and performance, Georgia gets to experience the best of both. Not only that, she gets to see the outcome from several different artists, and compare the difference. Curious as to the mindframe of many artists while they create all the art she sees in exhibions, she actually gets to see video footage of these artworks being created.

From the real world, to web.

Writing down three or four sentences, and then reading those sentences to everyone else in our tute, we had to share our idea. The same idea from last week, so for Dom and I we had to write down and share our "Perf-Art idea". We got the response that we were hoping for when everyone heard what we had called it.

This also meant that we got to hear other people's ideas which was great because we have a better idea of what page everyone's on.

In addition to simply writing down what we had come up with last week, we had to 'classify' what our idea is. Mobile, web, film, or real world. Because ours is a live, physical thing it falls into the "real world" class.

What then had to be done though was we had to swap our idea with someone else, and David would give us a new class that we had to change this new idea into. Or incorporate it in to that class somehow.

Dom and I swapped ideas with Karl, and I think I understood what his idea was. I probably will not do it any justice at all describing it because I won't know the write words to describe it, or its correct functions. BUT, from what I understood it's one device where you can plug in multiple musical instruments in order to tune them, and essentially play... (I think...) instead of using multiple amp's, etc...
So this idea is a real world idea, from what I understand a pretty cool real world idea, and David asked Dom and I to turn it into something that is web based.

What does the internet do best? It connects people. So we thought we'd take that very aspect of the internet to incorporate into this nifty little device. In fact we decided not to change the idea of the device at all, simply allow it to connect to the internet, and so other people on completey different parts of the globe who have the same device can connect it up to the internet. This essentially will allow people to play as a complete in-tune band, at the same time, while being thousands of k's away.

I LOOOOOVE how Karl turned our Perf-Art idea into something that is web based. Here are his exact words.

"The art is consumed via the web (application). The audience reaction is monitored (eg. filmed by webcam, sound recording, a musical input decide, or measure brainwave activity) which is then uploaded to the site and collaborated with other audience reactions to create a new piece of art (eg. iTunes visualiser from sound). THAT is then consumed and it continues to evolve!"

So it's like a great big cycle of art, that keeps on going.
I LOVE IT!

"Perf-Art - Evidence of an Event."

Dominic and I are working on our creative idea that we need to pitch to the class. Well, it's Dom's idea. He's been thinking of it for a while now and for this task him and I are working in a pair, and so I am now thankfully in on it. I say thankfully because I think it's a fantastic idea.

To put it very basically, it's combining performance and art, and just being silly we combined the two words and came up with "Perf-Art". We really got a good little laugh out of that because of how it sounds when it's said out aloud. Perfart. A few puns have been made since!

The idea (I hope I can capture this well enough in words!) is...
A few cubicles, perhaps 3m by 3m each, and one artist/performer goes into each one completely alone, with absolutely no-one watching. Music, or a stimulus of choice, (or perhaps an assigned piece, so each performer or artist in their respective cubicle is listening to the same thing) is played and the artist with paintbrush in hand and paint accessable, moves/dances/performs allowing the paint to be splashed and painted and thrown and placed on the walls, roof, body and anywhere. The artist performs to evoke the emotion being experienced, and paints it to evoke a permanent emotion for all to see. The comparison between the different outcomes from each artist would be incredibly interesting.

We discussed the idea of filming the performance, so that whilst no-one is watching the performer (allowing them to express their emotion privately and in whatever way they see fit) there is a visual presentation of what took place in that room, so that when the viewers see the final outcome of that experience, there is evidence of that event.

Three negative aspects of the idea that we came up with during the Reverse Brainstorming is that;
- There could be too much going on, with the music, the performing, the painting, the filming. It could be too much for viewers/the audience to take in.
- Viewing accessibility could get complicated. Ideal viewing would mean one person in the room at a time, in order to completely take in what the performer was feeling and trying to express. If multiple people go in there could be noise and it's possible the music could be overcome.
- There would almost definitely be transportation issues. Several big, possibly glass, rooms.

But the positive things we thought of during good old traditional positive Brainstorming!
- It would be an experience for both the performer and the viewer, not one or the other.
- It is "Evidence of an event." As said by David.
- It gives an explanation for the final outcome. Unlike many artworks that cause us as viewers to ask many questions, it will explain what was done where, what the artist was listening to at the time something was done, how the artist looked while doing a part of the artwork. This will all be shown in the footage of the performance.

I'm very excited to continue working on this idea. I love it, and I know that this doesn't have to become a reality, but I really hope that one day it does.

Self Portrait.

I created a self portrait for one of my classes. It was an assesment task, my first ever one at university. And so with a limited amount of PhotoShop practice I think I did sufficiently well.
Dom suggested I should put it up on my blog and I agreed.
It's a bit weird and I had no idea how it'd turn out, but I love it. It's something new and cool to look at. I hope anyway.

Dancing Mobile Phone, hmm?

Today a few of us were given the task to create some sort of new innovative idea. But not just any idea. OOooooh no, there was a bit of criteria that needed to be covered. Ie. We had to somehow combine the ideas of mobile phones and dance.
Woooww.

At first our group was silent. We heard chatter from all over the room of other ideas blossoming and forming, but we were a bit stumped.
And then we started rolling.

None of the ideas we came up with were very 'helpful' or useful as such, but just a bunch of fun. Which I think is fine.

Our final idea though was to have a program, perhaps similar to the iPhone app's, which when switched on can allow the phone to 'listen' to music or sound being played in the background, and sense the movements that you're making (presumably while dancing!) This then connects with Facebook or Twitter or some sort of interactive site like that, and changes your status accordingly to let other users on the site know whether you're dancing awesomely and in time, or utterly drunk and not with the beat at all.

As I said, it's just a bit of fun.

"Audrey-Lee Rizzato CANNOT DANCE."

What I am, and what I'm in to.

I've mentioned before that theatre is probably what I'd like to be involved in most, out of everything. So when asked "What type of practitioner are you?" I suppose that I'd say... actor? Actress...

I don't know. I'm a 'want to be' practitioner I guess. I haven't done enough of anything to be able to say I'm anything. But a student. I'm currently just learning as much as I can about anything I can.

So I guess that means I aspire to be an actress. Or a lighting designer. Or a set designer. Or a director. Or a theatre wizz kid. Haha, yeahh. I wish.

And the themes that I'm into; dramatic. Anything over the top and exaggerated. In theatre anyway. And art. If it's colourful I like it to be FULL OF COLOUR, if it's angry I want it to be FURIOUS. If there's any sort of set or costume or makeup, it must either be very big and over the top and out there, or absolutely non existant.
That's the type of thing I'm into anyway.



SELF BRANDING

I was playing around with a few fonts and simple images, trying to come up with a sort of brand for myself as a practitioner. A self branding exercise you'd call it.

Trialling different fonts.



Playing around with possible final brands.

The Mood Board

As a very very verrrry basic photoshop user, I had a lot of fun making this; a mood board! Filled with colour and exaggeration for a performance in a magnificent theatre!

My terrible memory.

The other day in our tute we needed to find a link to something we found awesome. Something we loved and really felt worthy of blogging. I knew exactly what I wanted to post. Ages ago I saw this video clip, and although it is not so much the 'performing' aspect of it that I love, I think it's brilliant. But there is absolutely no way I can remember what it's called. It's split screen the whole way through, and the same girl in is both the left screen and the right. It's not too obvious at the beginning, but there's definitely that "OHHH!" moment once you keep watching, because the left half is the scene played from beginning to end, whereas the right half is the exact same scene played backwards. But it just matches up so perfectly.

Anyway, I have tried Googling key words but to no avail. However, whilst on my quest to find this amazing piece of work, I came upon David Bowie's video clip "Life on Mars". Which of course, being a Bowie fan I have seen several (hundred) times, and realised that to me that is just as worthy of posting on this blog entry as any other.

His one eye is permanently dilated, yes? Yes. And so the fact the room he is in is so God damned light causes his two very different sized pupils to be absolutely freaky. Geeeeeniusly beautiful, hahaha! Just that opening scene. Watch it! Go go go!

)

MELBOURNE 3000!

www.threethousand.com.au

This is a pretty cool website/blog that shows so many different things going on at the moment. It's like an "awesome things" guide to Melbourne. You can browse this "guide" through different sections using a menu like the image below.


The greatest thing about it, I think, is going to the maps section where marked out on a map of Melbourne is everything contained in the blog.

A few words with Mona, my neighbour in "C & I!"

After chatting with Mona I have learnt of her specialisations; Performance and Visual Art, and how if I enjoy acting then I must definitely try directing. Apparently it's a great thing to experience!

She says to mantain an income whilst on her quest to becoming a theatre practitioner she's going to try taking workshops, and teaching visual art to the younger generation.


I came across the following quote, which I found not only relevent to the course I'm taking, but to the specialisation that both Mona and I are doing as well;

"The future of our nation depends on our ability to create-and to be creative. During the coming decades our most important national resources will be human resources. If our nation is to continue to meet the challenges of the future, today's schools need to develop creative leaders."
-http://www.childdrama.com/why.html

Me and my studies.

I'm doing the Bachelor of Creative Arts Industries, and specialising in Performance and Digital Media. Acting and just being involved with theatre is probably one of the things I enjoy most, however I have not had much experience with Digital Media, and so studying the subject now might spark an intense interest in that field!

Here goes...

Never blogged before. Quite the new experience.

So we've got to publish a link to something 'creative' or 'innovative'. And I've been sitting here for a good five or ten minutes thinking, 'Oh God. What sites do I know that could possibly relate to that?'

I don't spend too much time on many different websites, excluding a bit of Facebook and perhaps Hotmail once a day or so. But then I decided good old eBay would be as good a site as any.

http://www.ebay.com.au

I know eBay doesn't isn't exactly an example of creativity, but there was definitely creativity responsible for it's coming about and 'creation'. Where would we be without eBay? Thousands of thing must get viewed/bought off/sold via eBay. And little things that without eBay or the help of online auctions would remain hidden in a box in the spare room for ever.

So eBay helps people make a bit of a profit. It helps people buy things that would be long out of stock anywhere else. And of course I'm sure it definitely makes a bit of a profit itself with certain different advertisers.
Quite the fantastic idea when you think about it!

I dunno. I may be way off, but I think this is as good a link to put down then anything else I could come up with.
Perhaps even better than Facebook.


Creativity, Innovation, and Risk.

In my mind, they mean:
Creativity; The act of creating and forming ideas. Wanting to make. Wanting to form things.
Innovation; A change, or something handy, needed, worthwhile.
Risk; When there is consequence. When there is the chance something might go completely differently to how you imagine.