#MagicMonday Video - Signs

I was suffering through some cabin fever during our recent harsh winter, so I decided to go over some people's houses and ask them to record magic videos with me. What you see is first takes of magic that is so impromptu that there wasn't even a camera person. Instead, I handed my cellphone to whoever was nearby to record what was about to take place.

Random Acts of Art #2 - Beck

I don't mean to tell you what art is or even what is artistic. I only plan on showing you a few of my inspirations, some may not technically even be "art." Many of them won't be considered art by everyone, however, I share these things for a few reasons, not all of which I'll explain.

Art can inspire, connect, and enlighten.

Let's continue:

Sound and Vision

If you've followed me or my blog for any decent amount of time you'll already know that I'm a huge Beck fan. Beck is coming to Detroit for the first time in nine years, so in celebration, my next Random Acts of Art post is about The Beck. I have a pretty major list of things that I would consider artistic that involved Beck, but I'm hoping to narrow down a few of them into this one blog post and have him be involved a little less in the other posts.

Beck's cover/reimagining of David Bowie's Sound and Vision is an incredibly ambitious project. I would have loved to be around for the development of this concept. Before I fall into a terrible tangent of how insanely creative Beck is, I think I'll just let you watch what I'm talking about. This performance includes over 160 musicians of all kinds (including a yodeler.) It also features a stage ...or an audience...that spins so that you are constantly moving through the music. They recorded the entire thing with some microphones and video cameras that were set up specifically for this performance so that you can go online and actually hear how the song would have sounded from each seat in the auditorium, you can even use your webcam to move your head and the sound moves with it! I'm told you should listen to it in headphones to get the full sound. Anyway, here's the video:



Also, here's a very quick Behind the Scenes that shows the rotating stages and the camera set-ups:



Shortly after that Beck went an entirely different route by releasing an album of sheet music. None of the songs had been recorded and each song was a sort of "bare bones" take so that people could inject their own personality into the music and really make it their own.

These are the sort of ideas that I love; taking things from the past and adjusting them for the present, helping people see something normal in a different way, bringing people into the experience as an active participant. The past holds so many ideas and actions that can be very beautiful in our "hands-free" society. For those that are looking for a playlist for their day, here's my ever changing playlist of the songs from Beck's "Song Reader" sheet music album:

Childhood Hero

Random Acts of Art #1 - OK GO

When I was younger I thought that art was poetry, drawing, painting, or sculpting. I could draw things very well. People recognized the things that I was drawing. I was an artist. However, I didn't understand people that could stare at a painting in a museum for more than a couple minutes. What were they looking at? The brush strokes? The details? Some of these paintings didn't even have many details. Then there was those "weird people" that would be doing some random act that seemed to have no meaning and call it "art."

As I got older I began to understand. In fact, it was perhaps only even a few years ago. Not only that, but I started to see art beyond just rhyming words and having people recognize your sketches. I even started to FEEL something while watching someone do a "random act." I took a meaning out of it, sometimes a few meanings. Not only did I understand that the performer was trying to say something, but I felt that I understood what that artist was trying to say. Sometimes I had multiple ideas of what they meant and sometimes my opinions changed when I saw or thought about it again later. The act seemed to change with me and reflect what I was going through. It was as if the artist was telling me a secret, something only the two of us had gone through. Perhaps other people went through something similar, but only YOU went through the same thing.

I don't mean to tell you what art is or even what is artistic. I only plan on showing you a few of my inspirations, some may not technically even be "art." Many of them won't be considered art by everyone, however, I share these things for a few reasons, not all of which I'll explain.

Art can inspire, connect, and enlighten.

Let's begin.

The Writing's on the Wall

I originally planned on writing about something completely different than this, that is until I saw the new OK GO music video. I actually plan on writing about OK GO in a later post, but this was too cool to pass up, plus everyone likes something NEW! Here's the video if you haven't yet seen it.



I have a sort of love/hate relationship with music, mostly a loving relationship though. Music is this invisible force that can travel through space to affect multiple people all at once. It's just not even fair sometimes! Music often receives instant recognition from people as a beautiful talent and an emotional experience. It is, that's just that. It IS an amazing and beautiful talent. With that said, you'll have to do more than just sing nicely to make my Random Acts list. OK GO, however, does so much more than just play nice music.

The thing that I found while watching this video was that the music, at first, was secondary to everything going on. Each visual piece of art in the music video was pretty awesome and took much of my attention. I noticed the music and definitely thought it was nice, but I wasn't fully aware of the message. It seemed pretty upbeat and I liked it, that was about the extent of my thoughts. However, about halfway through the song I read the "I think I understand you, but I don't" message and my thoughts begin to shift. I instantly start to recall past moments in my life, a past relationship, where things were starting to unravel. Suddenly a clever video has caused me to relive a moment, something that feels like a life-time ago. I find myself much more aware of the lyrics as the second half of the video plays.

I don't want to write everything I thought during the video and the song, but I'd love to strike up a conversation in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to share the blog or check out some of the things I do. I have new videos coming each Monday (#MagicMonday)

- Steve

Subconscious Analysis and Reprogramming

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