Is it art?

Posted at 10:58 AM on April 15, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Arts

If you create a symphony orchestra out of hundreds of individual videos of people playing their notes by themselves somewhere else, is it really an orchestra?

YouTube asked people -- amateurs and professionals -- to send in videos of themselves playing a piece composed by Tan Dun. Then they created a mashup of all the submissions.

There actually is an orchestra, however. The winners are appearing tonight at Carnegie Hall.

Could this method of creating art somehow bypass the regional orchestra?

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Comments (4)

How about a choir doing something similar--without knowing what song they were singing?

Posted by Lesli in Minneapolis | April 15, 2009 11:18 AM

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I think we should create a News Cut...err... something. Circus maybe?

Posted by Bob Collins | April 15, 2009 11:28 AM

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Something more impressive (in my humble opinion): ThruYou. Kutiman is an Israeli producer/musician who scoured through clips on YouTube and mashed them together to make new songs. What's neat is going back through his credits and watching the clips alone — really neat stuff.

Posted by Matt | April 15, 2009 11:54 AM

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Uh, Bob? That circus already exists. It's called "Facebook".

To your actual question "Is it art?", I'd answer with an unequivocal maybe. These compositions are simply being orchestrated and delivered in a new way, using the tools of the age. If you consider the result aesthetically pleasing, emotionally provocative, or evolving the medium, you're probably onto something.

Posted by Lesli in Minneapolis | April 15, 2009 4:14 PM

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