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Suffering Your Own Penalties

June 26, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

Via Arts and Letters Daily, there is an intriguing article in Reason Magazine about how penalties for undesirable behavior can actually result in more poor behavior if people perceived paying the penalty as license to continue.

Citing a study in Science, Ronald Bailey gives the example of six Israel day cares who instituted a fee to penalize people who pick their children up late. Instead of solving the problem, this made it worse.

According to Bowles: “The fine seems to have undermined the parents’ sense of ethical obligation to avoid inconveniencing the teachers and led them to think of lateness as just another commodity they could purchase.”

The same thing happened in an experiment in Columbia. Researchers were conducting a game where people were involved with divvying up forest resources. The results of many scenarios reflected concern for the resources and other users until a situation that simulated government control fined those who overused their alloted share. People felt paying the fine justified pursuing their short term interests rather than the interests of the whole.

I tried to think of ways the arts might be providing disincentives for their audiences to act in the interests of the organization, audience or community through what they perceive to be penalties. I haven’t really thought of anything but maybe something will occur to you readers.

First thing that came to mind were the ticket fees we charge for buying tickets online or over the phone but might not charge if people come to the window. Or that we charge a lower price for subscriptions and buying single tickets before a certain date.

But neither of these things seem to create an incentive for people to buy early. I don’t think it creates a disincentive either. I think people are just busy and have changed their buying practices.

Next I wondered if holding people in the lobby for late seating hoping they, (and those they annoy when they are seated), are discomforted enough that they arrive promptly next time might have some unintended consequences. It is easy to foresee that both late comers and those seated are likely to be annoyed by the timing of the late seating interval even if it has reduced 14 potential interruptions to one. No surprise there.

It is likewise easy to anticipate reactions to policies like; No food in theatre, no exchanges or refunds, no video taping and no cell phones. Perhaps no cell phone policies and signal jammers may have caused a rise in texting, (I seem to remember jammers don’t impact texting frequencies, just voice) but even that is not unforeseen. As annoying as the glowing screens can be, it isn’t as bad as having someone pull out their cell phone and say, “Yeah, I am in the theatre. No, no, I can talk,” in the middle of a performance.

So does anyone know of a policy that was meant to control undesirable behavior that has essentially reinforced it? Drop me an email or comment below.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, General Musings, State of the Arts

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Art for the Obsessive Cleaner

June 24, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

The technical director in my theatre has been talking on and off about putting together a photo show of all the attempts to paint over graffiti around the city. The paint the city/county/state has been using doesn’t match the color of the concrete, of course. But it often doesn’t match the paint color they used to cover the graffiti the last time around either. The result is a patchwork that sort of looks like someone took the Army’s desert camouflage pattern and blew it up on a photocopy machine. Who knew there were so many shades of institutional gray, beige and tan?

So when I saw this video with a caption of Reverse Graffiti Project on Artsjournal.com earlier this week, I thought someone had the same idea. It is actually a lot cooler. Take a look.

For those of you who don’t have the time and inclination to take a look, the artist Moose Curtis, makes stencils (in this case of plants indigenous to California) and then uses a power washer and natural cleansers to clean dirt away from concrete walls. The result is a reverse “graffiti” image that is temporary by the nature of its placement in a dirty location.

One of the first ideas I had upon taking my current position was to have a contest with local schools to create a mural on the two ugly concrete walls at our theatre entryway. The location has been likened to a freeway underpass by some. (Although people love it for the shelter the covered area affords them when it is raining.) Many dismissed the idea saying it would attract graffiti even though the blank walls have been fairly graffiti free. I am intrigued by this project and am wondering if those walls are dirty enough to allow the technique to work. Though according to Curtis, it is probably dirtier than I think.

Given that a number of arts organizations are located in or adjacent to dirt producing/attracting locations like freeways and industrial districts since the rents are cheaper thereabouts, I wonder if this might be the basis of some inexpensive decoration for unattractive exteriors.

Of course, now this this technique is being widely promoted. someone will want to make an “artistic” statement and create dirty pictures by cleaning. Yes, even clean art can be lewd.

General Musings, Terms and Ideas

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Forget Snakes on A Plane, How About Arts on a Train?

June 23, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

Thanks to the lovely people over at GrantStation, the deadlines for two interesting arts related funding opportunities came to my attention.

The first is community based grant program administered by Union Pacific. Essentially if you live west of the Mississippi River and have train tracks running through your town you are probably in a Union-Pacific community and are eligible.

The second is some what more interesting. Johnson Johnson/Society for the Arts in Healthcare are looking for programs that “promotes the evaluation and replication of promising models in order to strengthen and expand the arts in healthcare field.” The most difficult eligibility criterion appears to be membership in the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. Otherwise they are primarily interested in programs that have been in existence 3 years or longer and that can be replicated on a national level.

When I saw this, I immediately thought of a program in Brooklyn I had written about three years ago. At the time the hospital, Woodhull Medical Center, was offering inexpensive health care for artists in exchange for their performance or interactions in the wards and units. They may have expanded the program since then. In any case, I sent the grant information to Laura Colby who is mentioned in the NY Foundation for the Arts article referenced in my entry. What she helped start would definitely be a boon to artists if it were rolled out nationwide.

Hopefully some of my readers out there have some similarly good ideas or at least know of some being enacted right now.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Management Philosophy

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They Shoot Dancers Don’t They?

June 18, 2008

by:

Joe Patti

In one of my first blog entries I noted a speech by Chris Lavin promoting the idea that the arts be covered like sports. I still get a kick out of his suggestion that:

When compared to the open access a sports franchise allows, most arts organizations look like a cross between the Kremlin and the Vatican. Casting is closed. Practices closed. Interviews with actors and actresses limited and guarded. An athlete who refuses to do interviews can get fined. An actor or actress or director or composer who can’t find time for the media is not uncommon. How would a director take to a theater critic watching practice and asking for his/her early analysis of the challenges this cast faces with the material — the relatively strengths and weaknesses of the lead actor, the tendencies of the play write to resist rewriting?

Over in the UK, The Guardian has taken up that idea a little. They had their arts writers review sporting events and their sports writers review arts events.

Since the critics approached the events they attended from their own point of view, some of their observations were rather fun. Writing about a horse race, dance critic Judith Mackrell notes that unlike the race ballet attendees have no desire to see a dancer fall to the benefit of another ballerina.

“And if, by some horrible chance, she gets injured, she isn’t going to be put down after the show.”

Visual arts critic Jonathan Jones went to a football/soccer game and noticed that:

“Wembley is a thrill, for all sorts of reasons. There’s the architecture – the raised external ramps are like walking on a north London Acropolis, and the roof leaves a small space over the pitch, generating powerful contrasts of light and shadow.”

Being an arts person, I was more interested in what the sports writers said about their experiences. In some cases, their comments echoed those of many first time arts attendees. Rugby columnist Thomas Castaignède noted, ”

I’ve passed Covent Garden so many times, but I had no idea it was so beautiful inside. As a social phenomenon it surprised me as well – the champagne, the way the audience had dressed up, the feeling that people were there to be seen, as well as to see.”

Golf writer Lawrence Donegan went to see the San Francisco Symphony perform and exclaimed,

“…when this concert ended the audience went (and I use the following word advisedly) bonkers. This reaction shocked me, because I had no idea that people who were into classical music were also into going bonkers at the end of a performance.”

Two of the sports writers were ultimately disappointed in their experiences because the unpredictability and high stakes inherent to sports was missing. Two others stated their appreciation for the parallels of mastery and passion common to both athletes and performers. Steve Bierley, a tennis writer who went to a gallery was greatly affected by what he saw.

“It should have carried a warning: This woman is deeply dangerous. I go back to the comfort of Roland Garros, though Bourgeois remained a haunting and disturbing presence. I’m still spooked.”

I thought that was great. What I really appreciated was Castaignède’s observations about seeing Tosca. I think he states the case for the value of arts attendance best. Perhaps it is because he was a top notch rugby player he was best of all the sports writers to appreciate the mastery possessed.

“I came to the conclusion that there is a parallel between what you feel during a top-class rugby match and what an artist feels on stage – and it’s not just the roar of the crowd. The people who are watching influence how you behave: they were viewing Kaufmann and driving him forward, just as they used to inspire me. I could empathise with Kaufmann’s total concentration on the performance, and the way he had to become one with the orchestra, who gave him the power to go beyond the norm. There is a physical aspect to opera, certainly; but more than that, on stage you see what in rugby we call “automatisms” – where you become conditioned to move and act by pure instinct. I had a sense of two completely different worlds coming together.”

As I noted, it is fun reading how each person filters their experience through the lens of their particular expertise so take a gander the both full articles.

General Musings, State of the Arts

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