Last night I went to the Art & Drinks, a temporary video art space/bistro for a performance by Renee Lear. Lear put on chance based video piece in which dice determined the selection of video camera and treatment of the footage.The event being recorded is a little more difficult to describe. it is a video work that is contingent on the live experience. 

the man pictured above sits in front of balloons that have been silk screened with patterns suggesting an Indian or middle eastern style. a consistent noise is playing in the background that has the same influence, vaguely sintarish. The man plays a broken balloon the way you can play a bland of grass harmonizing with the background noise. The effect is both legitimate music and a humorous act of play. It would be akin to playing Mozart with a whoopie cushion.You can get into the music and then giggle when it sounds like a fart.

While the event is occurring, Lear is editing live from three camcorders. The results are projected onto the wall on one side of the room an a small mirror on the other. The mirror is perhaps not essential to the piece and more part of the architecture  (although its placement is intentional in some way). I mention it here, however for the quality of the projected image. The mirror removes the digital aspect of the image and makes it seem “real”, a compelling effect.

as Lear edits the footage,  a different experience of the event is created for us. It’s as if we’re experiencing the event through someone else’s perspective in real time. The man becomes washed out and slightly  removed from the background, at times the background balloons take prominence.  One notices the video and checks it every 30 seconds, but is hard to take your eyes of the man playing for very long, so the true nature of what is happening to the video is somewhat unknown to me (This might also be due to my position in the room.)

a full evaluation is not quite possible for me yet, but after it was finished I felt as if cultural expression have been evaluated, dissected and put back together for me.