Assignment A6 - Performance Art

In the beginning I really had no idea what I wanted to do for my performance art piece. I came up with some ideas but I wasn’t sure how to effectively execute my them. Finally, after some help from friends I came up with the idea to paint a section of my face as if I had a robot shell under my human skin. Then I was going to just stare at my computer, iPad, and iPhone screens while they had nothing on them but static playing. I also then decided to put up a sign that read “Is technology taking over the world or us?”

I originally wanted to perform the performance in a library because I thought my performance would be more effective in there rather than just anywhere. Unfortunately, the school wouldn’t let me do it and neither did the public library, so I ended up doing it out in front of the Tampa Museum of Art. My friend Jasmine, who was recording, and me ended up spending about an hour and a half out there and as you might see from the video not as many people were out there as I intended.

For the most part most people just walked by and didn’t even look at me or the sign and if they did look it was only for a quick split second. I personally think most people didn’t want to be recorded so they tried their best to avoid us. I thought I would get more weird looks than I did, but I didn’t. Even walking back to school I ended up passing a lot of people and they would look at me and see the face paint but it honestly just seemed like they didn’t care.

Overall, I think my performance art project came out okay. I really wanted to have an interactive element but with the original ideas I came up with and trying to include technology and an interactive element was a lot more challenging than I thought. Besides that, I’m happy with my final piece and hopefully for the few who did look and read the sign it made them think about the technology consumption in their lives and how it’s affecting them.