Audience_Instrument (2020) - Code, Webcam
Part of my artistic background is in clowning. Clowning performances involve a lot of audience participation. I used to be the kind of person who hates audience participation, but I ended up realizing the audience's necessity to performance and I had to come to terms with having to use audience participation in my performances. This all lead to this instrument.
Audience instrument shows the implicit part that the audience plays in any performance. My instrument gives control to the people standing behind the player, the audience. This illustrates the influence that an audience has on a live performance. Whether it is a concert or a circus performance, performers pay attention to the audience. If the audience does nothing, then the performers feel it and it affects the performance. The best shows will always have a good energy coming from the audience. With this instrument the audience creates the performance.
Marcel Duchamp said: “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” These ideas lead to experimentation in performance art. This leads to happenings, which needed an audience to exist.