Drowned Alive

Just added "Drowned Alive: Performance Art or Performance Stunt?" to my links. It's an article on the nature of performance art, in response to David Blaine's 2006 attempt to break the world record for holding breath underwater. I recently wrote an essay on the man for Experimental Performance, and in researching, discovered some very interesting insights. The majority of people (particularly here in the UK, not so much in his native America) think of him as nothing more than an attention-seeking weirdo. Yet his 2003 performance "Above The Below" attracted an audience of thousands over 44 days. And yes, I myself was among those thousands. Curiosity got the better of me and, living only a half-hour train journey away from London, I decided to go and see what all fuss was about. For those who are unaware of what the piece entailed, Blaine spent 44 days in a Plexiglas box, suspended 30 feet in the air above the south bank of the River Thames. During this time he didn't eat and only drank 4.5 litres of water per day. So what does a man in a box who is weak from not eating for weeks do all day? Answer: not so much. Mainly, he just sat. Sometimes, he lay down. Every once in a while, he stood up. If you were really lucky you might get to see him do a wee into a tube. And people were going, "This is brilliant. He's an inspiration to us all." Now, during my research for the essay I discovered that, as uneventful as it may have been to watch, Blaine's did in fact have deep personal meaning. It was more about what he would go through physically and emotionally than aesthetic value. But no one watching would have known that, unless they researched as extensively as I did, which I doubt. He did not, before or since the performance,
offer much in the way of a public explanation of the reasons behind this, or indeed any of his performance pieces. Which is a shame in a way, because when David Blaine does something, we are interested. We watch. Every time he performs he has a platform to make a statement about something, yet seemingly chooses not to. "Above The Below" mirrored some of the major problems in the world today: starvation, lack of drinking water, incarceration. But he never mentioned this in relation to the performance. And it seems no one was particularly bothered. Who needs meaning when you could be watching a man in a box?

Wii-D

Following on from today's discussion on the nature of cool, I've just added a YouTube video showing how you can use everyone's favourite "exercise machine", the Nintendo Wii, to create 3D images on a TV screen. Not satisfied with the ability to play motion sensitive sports in the comfort of his own living room, this guy has taken it one step further. The infrared camera in the Wii remote and the motion sensor bar can be modified in order to track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. I am yet to try this myself, so accept no responsibility to anything that may happen to anyone who does so.

The magic of YouTube

Ah, YouTube. A world of wonder, open to all.


This week I have mostly been searching for more "cool links" and also amusing YouTube videos. So far we have myself and Sade discussing whether or not Chop are better than Inarchy (hint - they're not) Russell Brand playing REM on a mandolin, and AFI's amazing cover of Ziggy Stardust on AOL sessions. All of these things are lovely and through the magic of the Internet you can watch them all at any time. They're all saved as favourites on my YouTube channel, lucethemoose. I am so cool it hurts me.


I don't really know whey anyone would want to watch a video of me myself and Sade discussing whether or not Chop are better than Inarchy (hint - they're not). Yet it has amassed 323 views since September 2006. It seems that via the Internet, anyone and anything can get a platform. But just because something gains an audience, does that mean it's worthwhile viewing? I've posted a few more thoughts on the subject of worthwhile performance on the runthematrixbackwards bloggywog. Viddy.

Cool links

I've posted a few links to some "cool" content, some of which are also fine examples of Web 2.0. For those of you who aren't as "down with the kids" as I am, here follows a little description...

Last FM: "The social music revolution". You download a plugin for Windows Media Player/iTunes/Winamp/whatever program you use to listen to music and it then logs a record of every track you listen to. From this the site builds up a "music profile" for each user, listing your top artists and songs of the week/overall, as well as connecting you to "musical neighbours" with similar tastes to you, and recommending new artists based on your musical tastes. However, as discussed in class with reference to other social networking sites such as Facebook, this too allows users to create an online persona which is not necessarily an accurate depiction of reality. I am sure that many people use the site purely as a platform for showing off their hip and happening taste in music. It is in fact only necessary for the user to listen to the first thirty seconds or so of the song in order for it to register. Now, I am in no way ashamed of my diverse musical tastes which range from manufactured 90s pop groups such as Aqua, 5ive and The Spice Girls to the epic progressive metal of Dragonforce and Tool. However, with a bit of simple manipulation, certain artists and tracks could easily be removed, making my playlist appear far more "cool"in the Radio 1 sense of the word...

The Ride Pimper: A lovely little application which lets you modify your own cars. You too can be as cool as Tim Westwood. Let's face it, we all know the UK version is much better. Sick up your ride, cuz.

Russell Brand on BBC Radio 2: Radio? Through a computer? "How can this be?" I hear you cry. Welcome to the wonderful world of BBC Radio's "Listen Online" funtion. A step up from digital radio, this allows users to listen live to their favourite shows direct from the website using RealPlayer. Many shows are also available to download from iTunes as podcasts. For those not in the know, a podcast is simply a catchy term for a digial media file (such as an mp3) which is distributed via the Internet. It can then You can even subscribe to a show so that it downloads automatically every week and you won't miss a single one. I dread to think what would happen if I didn't get my weekly dose of Russell Brand and co-host Matt Morgan's discussing such topics as revolution, sex with flamingos, pin-pinnery and the Chinese occupation of Tibet...

Lolcats: Who would have though that posting photos of cats with gramatically incorrect captions would be so funny, or indeed popular?

Bloggy McBlog

True fact.


So. Essentially, I will be using this bloggywog to document my time studying Virtuality and Performance. Viddy this space, oh my brothers.