"Hybrid" Art at its finest.. Joseph Arthur

This piece of "Hybrid" Art comes in the form of a musician known as Joseph Arthur who is currently in a new band known as "Fistful of Mercy" with Tom Morrelo from "Rage Against the Machine"

This link is a video of one of Joseph Arthur's live performances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx_LH2KlDDk

In the performance and in each of his solo performances he works as a one man band, building a series of loops with various guitars and basses and other improve additions including tapping, beat boxing, and vocalization, which he then sings over and occasionally will play harmonica over as well.  In addition to all of this throughout his set he creates a painting in the background while his music is playing and he is singing.

To me this adds an entirely new level of complexity that is rarely seen in live music performances.  While some acts will have creative teams assigned throughout a venue, it is extremely rare to ever see a musician create an entirely separate piece of art in addition to their music.  Combine this with the fact that Joseph Arthur serves as a one man band and it is something special indeed.  The picture / painting can be comprised of many different mediums and is completely created on the fly, on stage, in front of the audience.  This painting adds another level of story telling and commentary to the song that Joseph is singing and gives the audience a prominent visual aspect.  It allows the artist to communicate on an entirely separate level away from his music, all the while he continues to play and sing his music.  This creates a stronger relationship between the artist and his audience resulting in a completely unique and satisfying show every single time, no matter how many times the audience has seen the artist before.  Further it deconstructs binaries of seemingly obvious mediums, portrait art and live music, as this artist proves they can be thought of as one single entity to create deeper and more profound meaning.

Having seen Joseph Arthur perform live and having seen countless other types of music performed live, a Joseph Arthur show is unique.  While many live performance artists today expel the disconnect between audience and artists, there are many live music productions which strive to keep that barrier up as to create a more immersive experience.  An example could be a large symphony or orchestra, or perhaps a live musical or play involving a symphony where the goal is to try and make the audience unaware that they are watching a play or watching a symphony and the music is simply abundant to the setting.  Joseph Arthur however like many other musicians takes a more post modern approach.  He strives to get his audience involved, taking requests, talking directly to the audience, and feeding off the audience's energy playing or switching up songs, taking a new direction with the painting being created on stage, and ultimately taking the audience to where they want to be.  Creating a painting on stage with his back turned to the audience is rarely ever seen, and in much of the music business it is thought of as impolite to ever turn your back to the audience as it is seen as either a sign of disrespect or that there is a problem on stage-- both are bad.  However Joseph somehow changes this stigma into a sign of respect.  When he turns his back to the audience it is so that he can show them something greater than just himself, so that he can show the audience what it is he is creating, something eternal, a new form of art working symbiotically with his music.  This, to me, seems incredibly post modern, or maybe even post-post modern as it's unprecedented.   

The fact that Joseph Arthur basically plays off of his audience in his song choice and the direction the painting will go seems to fall into a gray area of analysis.  While it is possible to analyze live improvisation, this would seem to defeat the purpose and deflate the skill of improv.  Improvisation in many ways mimics the spontaneity of real life, not the structure and rigidity of life.  Close analysis and applying theory to a creative piece involves dedicated thought.  Live performance improvisation takes little account for any of this, it is not set in stone and has very little structure.  Applying dedicated thought to something that is ever changing and in a state of constant uniqueness is near impossible.  While a recording of one of Joseph Arthur's live shows is set in stone as is, analyzing that live show to garner understanding for Joseph Arthur and his live performances will inevitably fail because no analysis will convey a singular meaning.  This is not to say that for all other pieces of music, literature, or art have one true definite meaning, it is easier to set parameters of understanding and analytical theory because the medium is remaining constant.  In the case of this piece of hybrid art the medium is highly malleable and therefore the parameters can never be set.  It seems foolish then to try and garner a true analysis of this form of live improvisational hybrid art because the show could suddenly turn and become related to what a structuralist would believe to be related to drug addiction while the second half of the show will suddenly turn to what a feminist would believe to be related to gender empowerment and then out of no where a marxist would jump in and decide that the show must be related to consumerism.  It becomes muddled and in turn, in my mind, causes each argument to lose its' critical prowess.  This is not to say that these shows are purely mindless entertainment, because there is a real and true meaning in each and every second of this hybrid art.  However as I stated this seems to break into a realm of post-post modernism, and seeing how this class is in direct relation a violently spiraling realm of digital media-- it seems crucial that new methods of thinking and analysis must be generated in order to better criticize and understand this rapidly changing digital and psuedo-hybridal art forms.

More information on Joseph Arthur and Fistful of Mercy can be found here:

http://www.josepharthur.com/

DXP.. The Wikipedia Article

Found an interesting new drug being called DXP on Wikipedia.. Yeah.. I ummm... "Found" it... more like "Founded" it.

Enjoy