Re: Juggling Podcast 49 - Juggling as Art?

Luke Burrage wrote:

Hello Pod People,


The podcast is out now. I talk a lot about a subject many people don't
bother to go into much. I hope I don't go too deep, but by the end I'm
sure you'll understand why I wanted to say what I said, even though you
may not agree with all my conclusions.


Ok, so a few comments on your podcast Luke..

Firstly, I agree in general as to your "rules" on what defines art. I
think however that the definition needs to be tightened up a little:

For something to be classified as art it has to be a something that has
been intentionally created to challenge/elicit a response from an audience.

a) This defines that there be a creator/creators who had the intention to
create the something (I'll refer to it as a piece from here on - as in a
"piece of art") - these would be the artist(s).

b) It also necessarily defines that the art is intended to have an
audience (which may or may not be the artist themselves).

c) It also defines that as a conscious decision has been made to create a
piece to elicit a response from an audience there must be some design
process being used to achieve the response you have decided to elicit.
This design process is used by the artist to work out what
materials/skills will be used in the piece of art and how they will use
them to elicit the desired response.

For instance if you look at the work of the impressionists, the aim of the
artist was to elicit an emotional response to simulated movement and light
- by giving their impression of the scene they were painting. In order to
achieve this they employed certain types of paint, certain types of brush
stroke, and certain ranges of scale which when combined in a skilled
manner would elicit this very reaction - by design. You can of course read
a lot more about this on the really quite well written wiki page
concerning the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism

However I don't want to get into the ins and outs of Impressionism here,
but would like to use it as an example of the difference between design
process and the skills, materials and craftsmanship that are employed by
the artist in the creation of a piece of art.


Listening to your podcast, the sections that particularly highlighted the
blurring of understanding of art for me were the following:

Your discussion of the chair builder seemed unclear as to how
craftsmanship, skills, design brief and design process inter operate. The
skills of material workmanship and usage, combined with the quality of the
build of the chair in terms of finish, structural integrity of the
material joints and workmanship have nothing to do with the design brief.
The two are inherently different.

As an example, it would be perfectly possible to design a chair that was
unusable as a chair. Perhaps by giving it a centre of gravity and leg
placements that allow it to stand on it's own, but as soon as force
(someones bum) is applied, the chair will fall over. Or perhaps a design
that will support it's own weight but would break on the application of
any more force than it's own weight. Perhaps the inclusion of a
particularly uncomfortable surface to sit on making the chair unusable. In
fact these exercises have been used in the teaching of design process to
students of art to show that design process is a means of satisfying a
design brief.

If these chairs are constructed according to the design a craftsman is
given to the best of his ability - this should not reflect on the quality
of the skill or craftsmanship of the building work - even if the chair is
unusable. Hence it is possible to clearly define the difference between
materials, skills/craftsmanship, design process and design intent.


Design brief - is the aim of the piece defining the response you wish to
elicit.

Design process - is the process by which you workout how to fulfill the
aims of the design brief.

Materials - is the types of media to be used and encompasses things in the
realm of sound, paint, choice of construction materials, props etc. It's a
big area..

Skills and craftsmanship - is concerned with the ability of the performer
(ie. someone who performs a skill - be that in materials, juggling or
acting). The skill is the thing they do, and the craftsmanship is the
quality of the thing they do.


So, lets apply that to juggling...

By deconstructing a juggling routine we can see what each part of that is
the analog of in the chair building exercise. Something fairly recent
might be a good starting point - I'll choose Ady's "Baby Bono" routine as
I saw it the other day and I think it encompasses a reasonable number of
examples that will make things clear. I also happen to like it..

Design brief:

Well, I can only guess at it as I'm not Ady - but lets see how close I get
(cue Ady).

"To perform a juggling routine, to a music track he really likes, with
some characterisation and technical ability to try to gain better results
in the BYJOTY competition voting system (ie. and audience of judges and
crowd). Also to create a piece which has the potential for possible
corporate work and a possible way of working with a specific band in the
future.

Design process:

This is also guess work for me as I'm not sure of the process Ady used for
developing his routine - but this is how I would probably have done it if
I were Ady.

1) Choose juggling as a skill - as it's the first thing in the design
brief.
2) Choose music track I like - U2 obviously, select song based on fitness
to juggling speed and lyrics.
3) Pick a character - yay BONO!
4) Pick a selection of tricks of varying skill levels you *want* to
include.
5) Pick a selection of tricks you *can* include
6) Put them into one side of Ady's head and see what comes out the other
side (I can't comment on this as I'm not Ady)

What comes out is a selection of the following:

Materials:

Props - both for manipulation and for purely visual effect (yes - that's
you Luke. Nice beard BTW)
Music - that music track he chose.
Clothes - to set the characterisation (nice hat and glasses BTW)


Skills and Craftsmanship:

Juggling - rings up to 7 with lots of nicely choreographed to the music
tricks
Acting - lots of time looking at Bono vids is evident and a good shot at
getting the characterisation.
Dancing - well 2 out of 3 ain't bad Ady ;)

From this it becomes pretty obvious to me that Juggling is a skill. How
skillful a person is at juggling is a measure of their craftsmanship. How
you measure that? Well that's probably where sport juggling and audience
judgement come in - however that's a can of worms that has been covered
enough..

As a final point, coming from the other direction:

If juggling is a sport why do we need the name "sport juggling"?
If juggling is art why do we have the term "artistic juggling"?

The simple fact is that juggling is a skill, and how you decide to use
that skill defines whether it seen as a sport or an art form.

In conclusion, I think the name of your podcast is somewhat misleading -
it should perhaps be "Juggling used in performance as art". Of course that
wouldn't be quite so catchy or provoke the desired response I know you
were aiming for with your title - ever the artist Luke, ever the artist..

Ewano - not saying what type of artist though..

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