Monday, November 26, 2012

Performance Art - Rough Draft



This is a rough draft of my performance art piece. It's still a little over the desired time length for the video, so I'll keep working on it to cut some feed out to bring it down closer to three minutes.

But my project in "Questioning the Role of Technology in Our Lives" was to push the question "What do we use it for?"
I took the most simplistic and general answer I could come up with for myself - I use it as an escape. But while I know I have my own motives and reasons to use it as an escape, I was wondering how others might use it in the same way.

I took an old pair of sunglasses, taped my iTouches onto them and played two different music videos - Poker Face and Bad Romance - to symbolize how I use technology to blind me from what I do not wish to see. I duct-taped my mouth with the most popular and brainwashing of the technology brands - Apple - to show how you cannot disturb the paradise I have escaped to with mere words. I then stood out in very publics spaces with my shirt saying, "Technology is my distraction from ?", and held a marker out for people to answer.


I filmed this in Chicago, first at Navy Pier and then again at Union Station. In Navy Pier, I got the most responses and the most feedback, mostly because the people there were there for leisure, aka their own escape, and understood the message and were more keen to engage themselves in it.

At Union Station, most people either ignored or disregarded me, as at a train station people have places to go and people to see - there's no time for any sort of distractions.


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