Week Three

I had a hard time this week with the class screenings and art work. I had trouble seeing most of it as art. We started off with the performance called "step piece". I didn't understand how this was considered an art form, it was just somebody stepping up and down. If we gathered a group together and watched as people walked down the street, would that be considered art or a performance piece? John Cage's 4'33" was kind of out there as well. I didn't find it amusing until I read the article about the piece. It said how Cage was imitating how there is no such thing as silence. It's interesting to think about it this way. When you would normally consider a moment as "silence", you can still hear ambient noises. You can hear humming and buzzing of buildings or heaters, etc. or you can hear animals like birds if you are outside. I never thought about it this way. It makes me wonder how Cage came up with his ideas. Was he just sitting around one day and he realized all the noises around him? Carl mentioned another piece in class, yet I can't remember who he said performed it. The piece consisted of someone saying they were having a poetry reading, so everyone gathered together, and then he came late and on his way he would call at every payphone to say where he was. It is an interesting concept in the way of how this person thought of it. Something you don't really pay much thought to, someone else saw it as a work of art, a performance piece of some sort. I wouldn't call it art myself, yet it was interesting. The thing that bugged me the most in class, was the picture we saw of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. It bugged me because it was just a urinal; a urinal with his name on it, that was turned on its side. I got the impression that he didn't physically make this urinal, therefore I don't feel he had the right to call it art, let alone his own work.