Art Digital 2004
View of installation

Karaoke

2004

Interactive video installation

The project was represented at the 3rd video-art festival PUSTO, Moscow, 26.08.2004 and at the exhibition of ART DIGITAL 2004. I CLICK, THEREFORE I AM festival (in the framework of the 1-st Moscow Biennale of contemporary art), Contamporary Art Center M'ARS, Moscow, 25.01-28.02.2005

Sergey Shutov's video project Classic Karaoke was first shown at the video art festival Pusto. It is one of the most ingenious propositions on the interaction between audience and the work of art, in the specific a video.

The structure of the artwork is very straightforward: a series of images show live the audience filmed with a camera, while famous classical music "hits" are the sound: Tchaikovsky's "The Dance of the Little Swans", Jacque Offenbach's "Orfeo in the Underworld", Edward Grieg's "Per Gunt" and, in the end, for real connoisseurs, John Cage's "4'33". As in traditional karaoke, at the bottom of the screen scroll the lines reciting the notorious words (to be precise, they express the rhythm, since there can not be a text): ta-ta-ta-ta ta-ra ta-ta... The interactive mechanism in this work is rather simple: almost automatically the audience starts singing the known melody, trying to tag along the running text. It is this live act that becomes the Work of Art.

The achievements of the show business in the field of contemporary art allow the visualization of the field itself. If on the walls of a Moscow 's house - the involuntary screen of a popular street festival - is imprinted the general rapture and delight of recognition, it is possible that in "white cube" of the gallery one solitary spectator finds himself in an unpleasant situation. Instead of the habitual external perception of the art objects, he meditates on the nature of the high and the profane in contemporary culture, or suddenly feels on himself the burden of the entertainment society.

At the end, if this video project turns out to be interesting or boring depends on the same context and on the audience reaction. The author's aim was to create the frame. What will be inside depends on us. Therefore, paraphrasing a popular bestseller related to karaoke "Sing, sing, sing"! While the music plays, sing...

/Ekaterina Lazareva/

“PUSTO”, 4th open-air video art festival, Moscow