Evaluating a Work of Art

How do you talk about a work of art anyway? Easy! Just consider the work vis-a-vis these 6 key terms from Team Blueberry. For the images I put each key term in a Flickr / Creative Commons / Interesting search and picked one. The photographer’s name is under the image. Click the image to go to the photographer’s Flickr page.

A BESPOKE RUBRIC FOR CONSIDERING CREATIVE WORKS FROM TEAM BLUEBERRY

1. AUDIENCE

I’m interested in the ways in which my work can be welcomed by the audience, quite aside from whether or not they judge it as artistically “good.” To me, taking care of the audience means a number of things, all of which come down to offering a unique experience in a polite manner. Three considerations:

A. Non-Confrontation:

I am interested in how performances can speak to audiences in a compelling manner that doesn’t require adversarial confrontation or a negative feeling of challenge. Does the work offer an experience of its themes in a way that feels and promotes positivity?

B. Interactive Agency:

Are audiences offered ways to interact with the work that are inviting, accessible, and allow them agency to determine the extent and quality of their participation? Are the modes of interaction either obvious or well-explained, so that audience members do not feel unsure about what they’re “supposed” to do in relation to the piece?

C. Gifting:

I am interested in finding ways for audience members to have “takeaways” that are meaningful to them as well as delightful; i.e., something they actually want. Does the work offer something to its audiences, either tangible or intangible, that is specifically for them? — RL

2. USEFULNESS

I would welcome and benefit from basic advice and/or critique, not so much from an aesthetic sense, but more from the question of form, functionality and usefulness. With a class as diverse as this, with so many tastes and interests pertaining to style and genre, there is no way to effectively react to such diversity, except in the most general of ways. Only then can we even begin to build international dialogue across materials covering so many variances including (but not limited to) culture, gender, educational focus, experience and technique. — MM

3. MAGNIFY

Does my work magnify an ordinary experience so that the experience is transformed and becomes (momentarily, for a lifetime) extraordinary? — CF

4. URGENCY

Art can function on many levels or wade in the currency of pop culture. It can bristle with powerful theory ideas, or luxuriate in finish fetish. Art can do many things and exist in many ways, but I think a key to a successful work of art is that whatever else it does, that it have a sense of urgency. That this art demands to be considered at this time. You can have a lot going, but if there’s no urgency, how engaged can your audience really be?

To some degree, I disagree with myself. Or at least I worry. “Urgency,” in part, makes me think of Hollywood movies that have so much aggressive action and so little of any real human substance. So I don’t mean that. Still, I do think that powerful works of art engage their moment in some compelling way. Michael might look at the history of EZTV, or I might look at our species-long relationship to the planets in the night sky, but even so, I think to be really successful, and compelling, and urgent, these works must contextualize these grand sweeps of human culture in some way that sparks with connections to our contemporary moment. — VB

5. TANGENT

As frustrating as they may be tangents in critiques are an important part of the process of giving and receiving feedback. Therefore, I am proposing a formal place for the tangent in our bespoke rubric. Inspired by Liz Lerman’s critical response technique our tangent criteria should be situated towards the end/bottom of our rubric/evaluation. Lerman refers to this as “opinion time” and requires responders to ask permission of the artist before stating an opinion about the work. In the earlier stages of the evaluation process, you are required to frame everything as a neutral question (very challenging!) — MR

6. RESONANCE

A. Resonance:

in physics refers to frequencies of greater amplitude and vibrational energy. Then there’s “limbic resonance,” mutual empathy and attunement between beings (wikipedia/Limbic_resonance). There is a strong basis in soundwaves… amplification, reflection, reverberation … resounding, echoing, heightening. To what extent is the work “resonant”? To what extent and in what ways does it create a state of resonance, of heightened vibrational energy between performer and participant (or between work and reader/viewer), and later within the participant’s mind-body as s/he recalls the work? How might the work intensify its resonance?

B. Generativeness

is the quality of being generative, of sparking ideas and insights and thought patterns and feelings and neural synaptic pathways. To what extent and in what ways is the work generative for the participant (or reader/viewer)? To what extent does the work engage the participant in a process of active creation rather than a passive state of reception? How might the work intensify its generativeness?

C:

Does the work’s resonance (or lack thereof) influence its generativeness (or lack thereof) and vice versa? Why or why not? — KS

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Team Blueberry is:

Christa Forster, Katrina Schaag, Michael Masucci, Molly Ross, Rebecca Longworth & Vanessa Blaylock.