Art(ist) Education

Software Update As An Exercise of Artistic License

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Earlier this week I was reading an article about the practical consequences of receiving content and updates from “the Cloud.”

Previously, I had read a little bit about how we are really renting rather than buying content. This article reinforces that noting how “upgrades” actually removed features or content that people had specifically opted to purchase.

I started to think, “ah, soon the arts will be the only provider of authentic content..,” except that hasn’t been the case for decades, if ever.

I am not sure about the other disciplines, but in theatre there has long been a battle between the content creators and the interpreters over the faithful depiction of the creator’s work.

Performing groups will omit content for considerations like running time and language or cast people of the opposite gender in a role. The standard royalties contract requires you to perform the show as written, at least dialogue wise. Some playwrights/lyricists/composers will actually specify that you can not under any circumstances cut or change specific elements of their show.

Others will actually provide permission to make changes with suggestions on how it can be accomplished.

With situations like Amazon removing and changing content from people’s Kindles and Tesla using a software update to remove a feature people paid $2250 for, both done without telling people it was happening, it seems like a good time to revisit the idea of whether it is suitable to make changes to a performance and represent it as the original.

There has been a lot of discussion about sampling other people’s work and representing it as your own. While censorship is an eternal topic of conversation, there generally isn’t as much conversation about changing someone else’s work and still representing it as their’s.

Content creators often make specific choices in the expressions of their vision that they feel are crucial to what they are trying to communicate. Replacing all the cursing in David Mamet’s plays with “darn it” changes everything about the dynamics between the characters. He would probably be horrified to have his name associated with a production of American Buffalo that inserted fiddlesticks for every utterance of f–k.

Adaptation and artistic license has been a common feature of the arts. When a musician announces that they are going to play a song by someone else, you can be reasonably certain that there are going to be alterations from the original.

However, when dealing with content with which the average viewer is not familiar, is it honest to claim to be performing a work if you have made crucial changes?

For example, Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s longer plays, so maybe you decide to cut the scene where Hamlet speaks to the players of “the play within the play” about his intent to entrap his uncle with a thinly veiled depiction of Hamlet’s father’s murder. Rather, you choose to reference the scheme briefly when the uncle reacts strongly to seeing the scene.

This decision removes the famous “Speak the speech I pray you…” speech and arguably weakens the show by removing a demonstration of Hamlet’s character development. Though since you cut it, you would argue that it wasn’t so important.

However, the real question is, if you don’t tell people about all the cuts and changes you made, are you defrauding your audience by letting them think they are buying tickets to the authentic product? They wanted the experience of seeing Hamlet. You diluted it by removing some important parts.

This is a debate that can get tossed back and forth for a long time. It seems an interesting situation to consider in the context of a consumer’s ever decreasing status as an owner of content.

Is there any difference between softening perceived Anti-semitism in a performance of Merchant of Venice in the name of artistic vision and Amazon agreeing to remove the N-word from electronic copies of Huckleberry Finn sold to certain school districts because their vision is that Huck be less racist?

It has started to occur to me that as people begin to consume content via media that can be altered without notice or detection, artists may actually have less scope for claiming artistic licenses lest they end up providing justification for widespread revisionism.

Ironically, it may prove to have been easier to claim artistic freedom and expression when there was a definitive source both you and your detractors could agree you were diverging from. How can you claim your interpretation is a rejection of the rampant injustice embodied by the original if you can’t be sure if what you are reacting to is the original sentiment or some latter action?

And why are you so upset anyway when you can work to get the offensive content revised to your liking?

Arts In Schools Is Only Half The Battle

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Over the last couple months, I have been enjoying Jon Silpayamanant’s series on the WPA Music Project. After reading his entries, I have begun to think that the push to put more arts in schools is may only be half the effort required to really spark an interest and sense of value in the arts.

The WPA projects involved a lot of direct and personal contact with concerts and free classes, each project involving hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of people in a single region each year.

According to the latest statistics released by the Federal Music Project, 2,399,446 students unable to pay for private musical instruction attended the free classes of the project in its 140 music centers throughout Greater New York during the year ending June 30. The number of classes held reached the enormous total of 145,133. (New York Times 1936)

When the federal will and funds were aligned behind the arts, a great deal of activity occurred. But my intent is not to get into the very politicized discussion of why there should be more federal support of the arts.

One thing that struck me from a post suggesting the Depression had a far more devastating effect on classical music and orchestras than seen in current times, is just how integrated into daily life live music performance once was.

Even if you manage to convince large swaths of people to take music lessons and put a piano in their living rooms, our current lifestyles almost guarantee that we will never have such as large proportion of the population that possesses some degree of musical training as we once did. Nor will we likely return to the frequency of exposure to live music people once enjoyed.

In the early 1900s musicians weren’t just performing in concert halls, they were providing music in movie theaters, restaurants, pubs, hotels and even funeral homes. As radio and recorded music become more available, (not to mention Prohibition closing down pubs) thousands of musicians were put out of work.

From the research Silpayamanant cites, it appears that even though live music was no longer as present in everyday life as before, during the 1930s the Federal Music Project brought live performance and practice back into people’s lives pretty personally and directly.

So people of my grandmother’s generation who were born in the early 1900s were exposed to live music on all sides and then had the Federal government validate the value of the arts through myriad WPA programs. They passed these values on to my mother’s generation. My parents passed these values on to my generation, though they were further diluted by the times.

You probably see where I am going with this: these first two generations are dying off as audiences right now.

I am not suggesting that returning arts to the schools won’t be helpful. When I was a kid, it reinforced the perception of value my parents and grandparents passed on to me. Reading Silpayamanant’s posts have just reminded me that not only do arts organizations need to change the way they operate in order to acknowledge changing times, arts education has to do the same.

It is so easy to say, if only we have more of a certain type of activity, things will turn around. It is easy to forget the larger social dynamics have changed. People are no longer surrounded by the same sort of artistic exemplars in their every day life to normalize the pursuit of an artistic discipline. Celebration of those who can create in an electronic medium is more prevalent and likely provides a more familiar touchstone for today’s fledgling creatives.

Welcome To The Emporium

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There is a method of teaching math colleges have begun using called the Emporium Model. Basically, it is an inversion of the usual classroom experience. The student spends time watching videos of lectures or interacting with teaching software outside of the class period. During the class period, students essentially do “homework” with assistance from each other or the professor. The approach has shown some respectable success, especially with remedial classes.

I was wondering if a similar approach might be constructive for the arts. One of the things audiences say they value most about an arts attendance experience is the social aspect interacting with friends and other people.

It got me to thinking if there might be some value in setting up a situation where people could watch a performance or participate with some sort of massive open online course (MOOC) before gathering in an interactive setting. This interactive setting probably wouldn’t be a full live performance, but rather some sort of workshop/master class/discussion where people would have close contact with an artist/facilitator while also having informal social interactions with their friends.

This is sort of an imperfect application of the Emporium model idea because who would want to spend a few hours viewing a performance or participating in an online class of some sort in preparation for a social occasion with their friends?

Except, maybe they would. To those of us closely involved with providing live performances or opportunities to experience visual arts in person, it may seem absurd to set up a situation where we encourage people to substitute a recording or picture for the full live experience. But if people are increasingly interested in having these experiences on their own schedules, rather than ours, there may be some logic to this solution.

People can watch something in 20 minute segments throughout the week and then have fun with their friends at one of three facilitated sessions scheduled every day over the course of a week.

While this may eliminate the full live performance as we know it, it could also provide an entree to eventual attendance by making it seem like something you would inevitably do at some point. You have been going to workshops and discussions with friends for months now, why not actually attend one of those performances some time?

Peer pressure may not only motivate people to attend, but to pay closer attention to the materials they review in advance. If your friend asks why you fast forwarded past a particularly interesting section, you might be more apt to watch the video all the way through the next time and pay closer attention.

Those discussions about what was skipped can also provide hints about programming decisions to the arts group facilitating the sessions — a workshop and focus group in one!

I don’t claim this idea is full developed. It just struck me as an alternative way to use people’s desire for a positive social experience. Probably the biggest hurdle for arts organizations is making what is now seen to be their central focus ancillary to the education and social mingling.

But if colleges can make the homework the focus of the in class experience and the “lecture” portion secondary, it can be accomplished. Since it will require artists who have the skills to teach and interact as well as perform, it could provide more employment opportunities to artists.

I haven’t looked at the full active offering of MOOCs, but one benefit of this approach that I see is that a fair portion of the educational material and media has already been developed and placed in accessible locations. If the internet doesn’t already host suitable content, the distribution channels are available for anything you might create yourself.

The Tao of Kermit the Frog (Be At Ease Making Green)

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Over the last two months, I have found myself returning and pondering a review written by Maria Popova of the book, Make Art, Make Money, by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. The book uses the example of Jim Henson to inform people’s creative careers.

Popova discusses Elizabeth Hyde Stevens’ use of Jim Henson as an example of a person who balanced himself between artistic and commercial success. In particular to “debunk this toxic myth” [that] …tells us art is necessarily bad if commercially successful, and commercial success necessarily unattainable if the art is any good.”

The book apparently start out talking about Henson’s 1968 Muppet appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that sets muppets chanting business jargon against those chanting idealist credos. The idealists knock the business muppets down, but soon begin to take up their jargon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97iZQvyPinQ

Stevens notes that in 1968 Henson was doing commercial work for Getty Oil, IBM, Oscar Mayer and owned a print making business. He started working for Sesame Street in 1968, but didn’t decide to stop making commercials until 1969.

I didn’t take much from the stories about Henson being a capitalist who also walked around barefoot and got together to “sing, laugh, and play with puppets in the kind of collectivism that hippies celebrated.” The social dynamics of that era have passed and there is nothing to be gained by artificially trying to recreate that environment for yourself.

What did catch my attention was a comment made by a collaborator that Henson never saw the money as an end.

“..Fraggle Rock producer Larry Mirkin, who worked with Henson:

He viewed money as energy, the energy that makes concrete things happen out of worthy ideas. Money was not an end in itself. It could provide physical infrastructure or it could help him hire other artists and technicians to realize a nascent idea. I don’t ever recall him being the least bit concerned or afraid of money or obsessed by it, which many people are. It just wasn’t what drove him — at all.

Apparently an artist’s inability to disregard money as an end and find the balance between creative freedom and commercial success is where the perception of art being tainted by money originates, according to Stevens. Finding that balance and resisting the fear or obsession with money is a difficult skill to master.

It didn’t initially occur to me as I wrote this entry, but the Muppet Show might have reflected Henson’s outlook. It was set in an old dingy theater and there were occasionally plotlines where Kermit was worrying about paying the rent, but it wasn’t a constant plot point and the Muppets never seemed to be starving artists. (Granted, they didn’t have to worry about “being stuffed” at the end of the day.)

It always just seemed like a place Kermit was running to give his friends a place to express themselves, from the borderline inept Fozzie Bear and Gonzo to the hard rocking, enthusiastic Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

What I appreciated was Popova’s closing paragraph,

“…concept of “selling out” is just as oppressive as the very commercial ideology which it purports to defy, and that pitting doing good work against doing well robs culture of its dimension, flattening both art and financial stability into mere caricatures of real life.”

I liked the thought that extreme devotion to any ideal, whether it be art, money, fame, justice, education, becomes a “caricature of real life,” despite the frequent insistence that we are living authentically.