Big Ideas/Big Money
2 02 2007After viewing/experiencing Peter Sarkisian’s wonderful piece, Dusted, in the Ulrich Museum, I started to wonder - how does one position themselves so as to have the ability (financial and otherwise) to create such a thing. Dusted involves five projectors each projecting video onto five sides of a cube as well as an audio track with two speakers. Additionally, five DVD players are necessary to power the projectors plus a CD player and power amplifier for the soundtrack. That’s a lot of equipment, a lot of setup time, and a lot of expense.
I came away feeling inspired by Sarkisian’s creation, but also frustrated because I lack the resources to create something comparable in the foreseeable future. What if your artistic ideas are bigger than your available resources? This problem isn’t necessarily related only to installation art either. I spent the summer of 2005 learning most of Charles Wuorinen’s fiendishly difficult Janissary Music for solo multi-percussion only to discover that when the Fall semester rolled around I could no longer keep the massive percussion setup maintained. Not only were the instruments required for large ensemble use, but we didn’t even have room to keep it set up even if there WERE available instruments. Janissary Music is famous for being one of the most unwieldy setups in the whole of the repertoire requiring 26 instruments that take well over an hour to assemble, so maybe I was asking for it. Nevertheless, this piece is out there and I put in the work to learn it and was unable to perform it, not due to desire or ability.
This is a frustrating situation. How did Sarkisian come to create the installations that he does? How do you experiment and learn if you don’t get to even try until you’re a “financially stable artist” (if indeed such a thing exists)? Until I get to make my own video piece for ten independent projectors with octophonic sound, I’ll continue to make my electronic music in good ol’ stereo. One day . . .
Your reviews are amazing–I browse them when I have time.
Regarding how one does art when one’s ideas exceed one’s resources–I know it sounds trite, but I think the answer is to reenvision the ideas. I mean, let’s say I want to wrap an island in pink plastic, but I can’t afford to buy an island . . . you see where I’m going?
It’s a different twist, but I think it’s related: What if one’s ideas exceed one’s skills? I was never a solo-level violist, but each year I’d dutifully prepare a piece for solo competitions. I got 2’s, no big surprise. In the case of skill level, the solution was simple: I was an adequate ensemble player (at the time), and enjoyed playing in quartets far more than solo work anyway.
How can this translate to resources–financial and otherwise? I don’t have a perfect solution; but–reenvision your ideas into something that you can do now. Maybe the practice, experience, and recognition give you the ability to do a series of pieces culminating in your original dream.
Start with a shadow box with moving puppets, or a PC with two monitors pushed up against slightly translucent walls that blur and hide exactly what’s behind them. I certainly grant that I haven’t seen Dusted, so maybe I’m insulting the work by even suggesting these things.
But as frustrating as it may be to look at a work that seems financially unattainable, I have to believe there’s something worthwhile that can be made with fewer resources. And maybe in the process of exploring it, you find a niche that you like even better than the original vision.
My $.02.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
I think your question about ideas exceeding skills requires a post in itself. I’ll have to think about that because you brought up an interesting question and something I faced attempting to learn extremely difficult contemporary solo rep.
You’re totally right that doing *something* is better than nothing. However, in the case of Janissary Music, reenvisioning the work would have meant substituting different instruments. It’s a tough call. John Cage would be perfectly happy to let me substitute a woodblock for tibetan prayer stones, but Charles Wuorinen is an East-coast serialist (read anal) and would probably condem my decision regardless of my performance ability. Is there a point where the work becomes at least partially mine to change? Perhaps after absolute mastery, I can bend his rules because I took the time to learn and understand it.
Anyway, you should check out Dusted at the Ulrich. It’s pretty effective. I went back a second time recently. Awesome.
No, I totally get your angst about Janissary Music. I’m not a fan of musical adaptations and covers unless the adapter really has something new to bring to the music–genuinely new, and to introduce it to a new audience that will learn to appreciate a piece they would never have considered before. I’m getting even more off-topic here; but all this is to say that in the case of performing a piece of music with a particular and complex percussion setup, I take your point.
A few years ago, I saw Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls (I think) at the Wichita Center for the Arts. It has two sets of reels that are run simultaneously through two projectors side by side, for an extremely wide aspect ratio (and complex effect, as the multiple reels are completely separate footage). It’d be very easy to transfer this to a widescreen DVD format–but somehow, that doesn’t feel right to me. I have a certain amount of respect for the creator’s intentions, and I’d rather the movie be screened rarely than differently. I think I’d tend to feel the same way about Janissary Music.
My comments about adaptation were targeted mainly at your own works–at your frustration about being financially unable to create something comparable to Dusted. If you envisioned a work like that but couldn’t afford those particular technologies, would any reenvisioning you could do reduce its effectiveness, or might you come up with something that was effective in a different way?
Warhol has some crazy films. I don’t know anything about “Chelsea Girls”, but it sounds cool.
Your point about reenvisioning ideas for the means at hand is true and I agree, definitely. I’m realizing that I need to get into this type of thinking where “old” or “boring” things can be reworked into “cool” things. You usually work in something old that you took off something else (like the 386 reset switch today). If it were me, my instinct would be something like - I need a switch. I guess I’ll buy a switch. It’s a different approach that I would do well to adopt.
About my reuse of old stuff–almost everything I do with electronics is with salvaged parts. I hardly ever buy anything–I think I’ve spent more money donating the pushbutton switches on the LogoBoards and the pushbutton switches for Thing 4 than I’ve spent on parts for myself in the last year.
I do that for a combination of reasons that makes sense to me, but is fairly complex and hard to articulate. The crux of it is that it offends me to discard things that still have use–to the point that I take broken computer monitors and desolder every single component out of them for my parts bins. If you have the space, and the time, and the inclination, you can build up quite a collection of usable goodies for very little investment. On the other hand, if you don’t already have a collection, it’s a lot faster to go buy a switch than to look around for one to “harvest.”
So anyway, what I do working in something old isn’t so much about something borrowed, something blue, as it is just the way I am. And I guess maybe making a point to try to open people’s eyes to the possibilities in what our consumer culture discards. Which is pretty far afield from your original post.