Art, performing

« performers in instancing their work is not to say merely that performers are means for the work's transmission.

Thefoundry workers who follow the sculptor's instructions and the film's projectionist help to create or transmit thework, but theirs is not the pivotal role of the performer.

They might be replaced by technologically superioralternatives without thereby altering the artistic character of the statue or film, whereas the performer's task isineliminably part of works created for performance.

Artists work with media; the appreciation of art requires theaudience to be aware of the limits and possibilities of the media employed.

In the performing arts, the requirementsof performance are part of the medium in which artists operate.

Artists do not create works that happen to beperformed; rather, they write for performance, taking into account what will be involved for performers when they produce the outcome.

(So it is that a new, though derivative, piece results when a musical work is transcribed forinstruments different from those specified for the original.) Just as the viewers of a painting consider not only whatit represents, but also its surface and the manner of its representation, so audiences in the performing arts considerthe artist's use of the performers and their props or tools.

They should be aware, for instance, that a dance depictsthe death of a swan, that a given actor is playing the parts of several characters and that organists use their feetas well as their hands.

Many works for performance employ the performer's skills in order to achieve narrative,expressive, formal or other effects.

These, rather than the performer's activity, are the proper focus of appreciativeconcern, even if that concern involves an awareness of the connection between the artist's instructions, theperformer's efforts and the artistic result.

In other pieces, though, the artistic point of the work is to highlight theexpertise and techniques of the performer.

This is the case with works providing virtuosic roles for one or twoperformers; some genres, such as the concerto and étude, are of this kind.

As Thomas Carson Mark suggests(1980 ), such pieces are about the talents required to perform them; the audience's fullest appreciation requires a recognition of the difficulties overcome by the performer in making the rendition seem effortless.

Combining thepoints just made with the earlier emphasis on the relation between the work's identity and its means ofperformance, it is possible to see why the tools, techniques and skills of the performer come to be valued andpreserved in their own right, sometimes despite the availability of simpler alternatives.

If a new ballet shoe werecapable of doubling the height of a dancer's leap, it would not be appropriate for dancers to wear the new shoes forperformances of nineteenth-century ballets; even if exaggerated elevation is a desirable feature in such works, thedifficulty of achieving that elevation is also part of those works.

Similarly, the programmed synthesizer is nosubstitute for the violin when it comes to performingBach's Partitas , even if it exactly reproduces the sound of a violin.

It is not surprising, then, that musicians, dancers and actors of the past formed guilds, not only to trainnovices but also to keep secret the tricks of their crafts.

Contemporary performers are expected to maintain therequired standards.

The central place of artistic skill and creativity in performances helps to explain the distinctionbetween, on the one hand, the disc jockey or ink-printer and, on the other, the performer.

The former might beinvolved in delivering a work of art to an audience, but their roles lack the particular skills for which artists plan theshapes of their works.

Tragedies are written for actors and concertos are written for pianists, but films are notmade for projectionists and bronzes are not made for casters.

Thus it is sometimes said that performers are artists'collaborators, not their servants.

4 Works made through performance By contrast with pieces created for performance, some kinds of art involve performance not in instantiating the work but, rather, as an essentialelement in its creation.

This is typically the case in cinema.

Unlike a play, a movie is not completed as a work whenit is scripted; movies must be made, and performers contribute to this process.

Once finished, the cinematic work isscreened, not performed.

The cinematic art work is the master print, which is multiply instantiated by prints clonedfrom it.

The same is also true for some kinds of music, such as electronic pieces that use tapes of the voice orinstruments as their source material; the work is the finished master tape and the copies made from it.

Aninteresting puzzle is raised by popular music, in which discs derived from the master have a dominant status and'performances' frequently involve 'lip- and hand-synching' to recordings.

(Multi-tracking might preclude genuine liveperformance.) Is the importance of these recordings a sign that they are definitive of the work? If so, artists'rerecordings of their own compositions result in new works, not merely in new performances.

Alternatively, is it thatthe recording is a model instance that may be performed live? In that case, the recording is the more important, notbecause it is that work's only instance, but because it sets the standard for the work's subsequent performances.(Or are these questions redundant, because the piece has become the music video, which has superseded theaudio tape?) 5 Performance in the absence of works So far I have concentrated on the connection between performances and art works, but performances might take place in the absence of works, as is sometimes the casewith street theatre.

Dancers might dance without making an instance of any work, or thespians might act withoutperforming a play or making a film.

Where there is no work to be followed, the content of the performance isimprovised.

While there is much to appreciate that is common to both improvised performances and performances ofworks, there also are differences to be recognized, as Philip Alperson has noted ( 1984 ).

Obviously one cannot criticize free improvisers for lack of faithfulness to artists' specifications, since they follow none.

(There can bemistakes in improvisation, however, when, for example, conventions of the adopted style are violated.) Spontaneityand inventiveness are valued in improvisation; meanwhile, some looseness of structure and lack of polish are lessblameworthy in an improvised performance than in one in which such factors are produced by the artist or resultafter hours of rehearsal.

And where there is common ground for appreciation the basis for evaluations can differ.Both improvisations and works for performance might be enjoyed for their narrative or formal structures, innerharmony or overall beauty, but it is relevant that, in the case of the former, responsibility for the achievement liessolely with the performers, who act freely and do so at the moment of performance.

Why not say that improvisationresults in a work created by someone who acts both as performer and artist, even if the piece that is the outcomeis not itself for performance? The difference between improvisation and the creation of a work through performance does not depend on the number of instances, because an improvisation might be taped and, thereby, duplicated,just as a film might have many prints.

The results of improvisation are not more ephemeral in principle than areworks created with the help of performers.

The basis for the distinction, I suggest, is a matter of convention - wetalk of films as works, yet we do not describe sessions of free improvisation by this term.

This way of talking. »