Source: The Joy Of Painting with Bob Ross – Youtube
Cue the iconic slow jazz entrance of the legendary artist Bob Ross. Ross, born in 1942, was a classically trained artist that became an icon in pop culture due to his hit television series where he “paints happy little mistakes” and his “tree friends”. Ross guides audiences on a surreal 30 minutes journey through television as a medium, at the same time, talks with them about his philosophy in art.
Source: CTVNews – Then and Now
On Ross’ show, The Joy of Painting, he usually stares directly into the camera when addressing his audience, drawing similarities to live television broadcasts, and also as if he was conversing and interacting with his audiences back at home. This was unusual in the 80s as the only live platform people were used to would be onsite news broadcast to studios which would then be live telecasted to televisions all around the nation. The live concept would never have involved the millions of audiences sitting at home.
One could argue that beyond the fact Ross was creating art through his brush strokes, he was also engaging in a form of performance art. (Explains performance art) And through the medium of performance, Ross not only was able to convey his feelings and messages, he captivated a whole generation of audiences and beyond. With the rise of popular media, Ross quickly rose to the leagues of Mr Bean and Bill Cosby as iconic pop culture icons because of visual performance art.
In the same time, in another part of the world, another form of performance art in a not so wide spread medium was taking place.
Source: Marina Abramovic Institute (YouTube video screengrab)
Marina Abramović, a performance artist, who engages in social topics of feminism and the role of a female figure in society, was tackling issues in the realm of reality. Her performances would range from gasping for air as her and her partner kiss with nose plugs, to laying out equipment and tools for people to do anything they want with her naked body. A very distinct part of many of her performances is the form of intimate interaction with the audience. This participatory interaction with a sense of anonymity in the past would cultivate a platform for people to actively engage in her performance without any filters.
With the advent of current day modern technology, we have the ability to live stream instantaneously to all our followers. And they, our audience, would receive a notification about the art right after. The ability and access to view the medium of performance so easily has changed how we access art and performance. With digital interventions, we close the gap of physical space with a portal through our phone and let the voices of our audience be heard. This changes the experience of what it is to perform.
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Source: Twitch, Twitch Plays Pokemon Stream
Source: Reddit, Twitch Plays Pokemon Original Team Fan Art
Very briefly, Twitch plays Pokemon was an experiment to see if people would be able to cooperate on a platform to reach the final goal of becoming Pokemon Champion. Millions of audiences on the stream can input their comments onto a stream of Pokemon Blue is while a bot goes through them and executes a command after a command is complete on a PC emulator. With millions of people on the stream with the mindset of disrupting or moving the game forward, you can be sure there was chaos. A reddit forum thread of the experience was created and even had many story elements of randomly nicknamed Pokemon portrayed as mythicalogical beings, or habourers of destruction. Different modes were later added called Democracy or Anarchy that would determine how the game was played. The community made a simple stream of a game into a much more woven narrative that have captivated millions of people on the internet.
Source: Instagram, @jxketan
In October 2018, I was in Baltimore, Maryland for my semester exchange. Whilst there, the infamously cheap fast food branches would regularly compete for market share by offering ridiculously low prices. To comment on this situation and to understand what it means to perform art, I did a live stream of myself eating a hundred nuggets.
I would sit by the window of my apartment flat with my room mate’s cat who casually enters and leaves the frame as calming lo-fi music plays in the background. This was what the kids called “big mood”. What the audience doesn’t know is to get that stream to work, I had to move many items in my apartment and it was a highly curated art direction. It was nothing less of a set in terms of production. My performance was a big hit as a lot of my followers joined the stream to understand what was going on.
Source: TAKIS FRIED CHICKEN + POPEYES FRIES & MASHED POTATOES MUKBANG | Eating Show
Little to my understanding, a year later, the term “Muk Bang” was coined as a 4 dimensional, time based media to watch performers eat, either live or recorded.
This performance lasted a deep impression with my initial followers as I executed a similar style of live streaming nuggets for one of my micro projects. This led to a lot of my initial followers privately messaging me about it. Even a year later, the impression of 1 of my art forms have not wore off. This time, I would be more interactive with my audience.
With my exploration into performance and my surprisingly, analogous approach to live streaming, this has led me to recreating the popularised Bob Ross TV show into a live format where instead of the performer informing the audience on what to paint, the roles are flipped. Agency now lies upon the audience as they can stream their comments and let the performer paint intuitively and creatively on the spot. No longer will the audience be left in the dark as the spotlight will be shone upon their opinions.
The idea would be that it is sort of an exquisite corpse of everybody’s opinion; John123 could decide the color, and kawaiigirlxxx could be the one who tells me to paint a tree. A red tree is what they want, so a red tree is what they get. This form of power engagement would give audiences a sense of belonging on the screen, immersing them into an environment they are not physically in. Their voices carry consequences in my world, on my stream.
I would also want the message to be about the overwhelming state of our creative industry in Singapore where corporate marketing leads dictate the creative direction of artists and designers who train for their whole lives to create work in a critical and creative manner. In a way, I, along with the industry, are but technical monkeys. Trained well, but waiting to receive commands.
I view the internet space as some sort of reality of it’s own. Instagram, a gallery or museum of sorts that holds my live broadcast as a form of performance art. The act of me painting on the screen is but a mere portrayal of a performance solely led by the power of the people and the spiritual essence of Bob Ross’ performance. My body is now a tool, my voice and personality, but a medium to express Ross.
The idea is not to let audiences know that they are part of an experiment or that the stream they are watching is some from the internet or some other form of digital space, but to be immersed, completely and fully, into the performance.
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