Once the video art project "Embrace the error" was announced, I immediately had absolutely no clue what to do. My brain froze up. I went though a total of three ideas that I followed-through with, but none of them were fruitful. I hated all of them as soon as I had finished them.
Finals week approached, I had lots of dinners to go to, plans to sort out, projects to finish, things to study, and my freezer had turned into an ice cube. A lot was taking over my mind.
And nothing was coming to me. What sort of errors could I use? Sound? No, that was too difficult. Video processing? No, I didn't have any software equipment on hand.
As I was frantically trying to force out an idea, I realized something: I couldn't think of anything. My brain refused to function. It was frozen. FROZEN, just like my freezer, which was also an error. Instead of worrying about cleaning out my freezer... Why not make it art, first? Why not illustrate my inactive brain on finals week?
For my performance art, I took my friends Sammy (camera girl), Gershom and Tim on a little serenading adventure.
Gershom is pretty much a musical genius, although he doesn't like to think so. He's great at making up melodies on the spot, and so I asked for his help.
Tim, however, while being a rather decent guitar player, has been gifted with improvising lyrics on the spot, so he'll be singing.
I don't really play an acoustic instrument, so I'm on the cajon; a wooden box-drum with a snare built into the top corners.
...So we went around to random people. Gershom and I were dressed nearly the same in a rather plain, monotone outfit so that all the attention would go to the bow-tied Tim. We wanted our performance to be more about the words than the music. We sang love-songs to total strangers who were men, songs about what people were doing. Some songs were intentionally made a little bit uncomfortable, and some were accidentally super-uncomfortable, and while some people didn't very much enjoy our performance, some played along and became part of the performance.
None of this was pre-determined, and nearly everyone we played for was a stranger. We decided to just go out and play for whoever, whenever, wherever. We realized how many people at school seemed to drone on with a sad, blank expression. Hundreds of students each day plodding along, treating each day like it was just a "back to the grind" kind of day. Staff doing their jobs whom we've seen dozens of time. People we so often, but never see smile. And so, we went on a quest to change that.
And... most of the time, it worked. Here's my favorite scene. Notice the group of men at the table in the beginning, and look at their expressions before we approach them, and watch how we quickly change them.
And here's a quick compilation of everything.
A little bit of this was solely for making people happy (usually) and a little bit of an experiment, as well. I consider this a success.
