Party and party culture. Its obviously got some roots in primal instincts, but the concepts involved with it, such as dress code (most of the times unwritten), behaviour style, drinking culture, smoking, clubbing, rave, dancing, et cetera.
Looking at tradition there are also those big things such as weddings and funerals.
I don’t want to overdo it, so I am going to pick 4-5 strongest ones for the installation on the 11th February. The ones I like the most so far are in bold print.
Each subject will be exposed simultaneously as a collage of: photography, selected paintings, videos, pre-recorded (+ live sounds?), live audience action and live actors action. Hopefully this will have the desired effect and will make people notice themselves in relation to these sounds and images.
It would be nice to spot each of these points in the audience, so that would could be included in the mash-up. I can do that with greetings and eating (by serving food before entering), fashion should be an easy one (lots of hats people wearing nowadays), maybe get them to pose before entering too, and the hardest one would be depiction of manners or the hygiene façade.
I didn’t include religion, or “praise” in the list, as I originally wanted, because it would be difficult to integrate it with the environment and the audience. There are bits of tradition, in greetings, eating and manners, so I don’t think I really need to dwell on that.
Again, thanks to Barney for the 2 hours on Skype to brainstorm this at such a late early 4-6 am time.
Quick update. I have just watched a Lars von Trier film, which specifically deals with the problem of social mechanisms. I am glad. It reassured me with the updated concept, that I need to expose the norms with the perspective of their dualism, and not just treat them as a necessary evil.
By the way, I found the film itself to be very good: The Idiots
Thanks Nic, for the recommendation.
The subjects of social interactions, behaviourisms, and the concept of looking glass self in social psychology have been drilling holes in my brain for many years now. Observing others (and myself) is a personal hobby of mine.
I decided to finally do something about it, and amplify the constructs in some sort of an art installation. Since I have this opportunity, this will be my idea for my universities “Creative Music Media” project in my 2nd year of Ba Creative Sound and Music.
I hereby attach my initial explication on the subject, as a kind of a draft of the idea. The original is in Polish and I am not planning on making a translation – this is only a draft, which I sent out to some of my friends working in art-related fields, to debug the concept and clear it up a bit. I will publish an English follow up soon. Click on read more, to see the draft. Thanks to Barney Dixon for all the hours of Skype-chatting about these ideas.