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Outcome

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Work

The piece I decided to review in detail was Drei Klavierstucke op. 11 by Cory Arcangel, displayed at the Carnegie Art Museum. This artwork was displayed on a simple CRT television (perhaps not to distract the viewers from the video itself) in a dark room that only contained two other television screens with other videos on them. Having a background and passion in film production I was thrilled when I saw video artwork also being displayed in the museum, which was how I was drawn to the piece. Although I was told not to record the artwork while I was in the museum, the piece is available between three videos on YouTube:

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Experience and Response

Funnily enough, I wasn't exactly struck by this piece when I first happened to look at it. My first impression of the piece was that it was just random cat videos that didn't make any sense, and my girlfriend with me dismissed it as "modern art that we won't understand." However, when I happened to read the description, which explained that the artwork was actually the composition Drei Klaierstucke op 11 by Arnold Schoenberg recreated through cat videos, I realized how complex the project really was. It reminded me of the idea about "if you give a monkey a typewriter and an infinite amount of time, it will recreate the entire works of Shakespeare." Between all of these videos, there were enough unique keys hit by the cats that Arcangel could actually recreate a famous composition. Not only that, but enough of these videos (of cats stepping on piano keys, a rather specific subject for a video) are also readily available on the internet, which I think highlights just how easy it is for people to create and share their own content nowadays.

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Product

While I watched the video, I thought a lot about the chances that each particular note in the composition would be hit by a cat in at least one of the hundreds of videos. Although individually each of the cat videos does not have much meaning besides being mildly amusing, combined they are able to create a work of art, as ridiculous looking/sounding as it is. It made me think about life on a larger scale, how in the grand scheme of the universe our own lives are vastly insignificant but the combined impact we all leave as a human race perhaps will have more profound legacy. The thought left me feeling quite small. This is the idea that I tried to capture in my own artwork. Everyone's lives, choices, experiences, etc. all have an effect on everyone else's lives in some way. Ultimately we're all contributing to and taking our own paths towards something, but we probably will never know what that is until we reach it.

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Reflection

The experience I had while observing this piece is certainly one I was not expecting (most people wouldn't begin to have an identity crisis observing a video of cats playing pianos, I think), although I did appreciate the serious reflection about my life and impact that it led me to have during those 30 minutes of observation. I feel like my artwork does not quite exactly reflect the cosmic-y feeling I got while watching the video, but that is probably mostly due to a lack of experience in creating artwork to accurately portray my exact thoughts. The most important part to capture, however, was the idea of universal convergence into something larger than ourselves, which I think is shown quite obviously in this picture.

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