>> Richard's work doesn't exist for any reason other than itself, not
>> to market a product (like a game boy) or sell toys or even promote
>> Richard himself (as far as I can tell; his professional portfolio is
>> somewhere else on the site). Gameboy products have a lot of art
>> going into them, in many senses of the word, but they are there only
>> to make money.
>
>So, if Richard were commissioned to create a work, it would cease to
>be dance?
>
>--
>
> Nick Rothwell Cassiel.com Limited
> nick@cassiel.com www.cassiel.com
> systems - composition - installation - performance
Not at all. If he were commissioned to create a dance, that's what it would
be. Especially if it were commissioned simply to be a dance, such as (I
imagine) Biped was. Art has a long history of being commissioned, the
present state-of-the-arts notwithstanding. However, when they are
"commissioned" to create something--dance, image, whatever--in order to sell
something else, I would call that advertising, not art. Nothing wrong with
it--but it's what, in my mind, separates Richard's work from the Gameboy,
which was the question I was answering.
Of course, I would never presume to define any art form for anyone else.
This is simply how I keep it straight in my own head. Primarily, for me,
it's a motivation and order of precedence sort of thing. In other words, if
Richard creates a dance in the hopes that a lot of people will buy it and
give him lots of money, that is perhaps less "artistic" than if
Creativ-Capital comes and asks him to build an interactive dance. Purely my
own opinion, but hey, we starving artists have to get by on pride, since the
funds aren't there.
Jeff