Spencer Tunic/ Phish festivals

http://www.spencertunick.com/
this is his official site.

For those who don't remember, Spencer Tunic was mentioned during our first discussion. He photographs mass groups of willing volunteers laying down, sitting up or standing up completely nude (coed). The work, which he refers to as temporary installations, are done in semi public venue. By semi public I mean the area is legally used but removed from general public use, much like an event in a park. Some venues have been parks, beaches, and museums. The pieces are obviously the most temporary of temporary installations but the moment of the event is captured in the photo. The way the bodies compare and contrast in size, shape, color, and organic qualities is sculpturally genuine in an intense natural sense. Tunic also takes deep consideration into the site in which the nudes are displayed. For instance he organizes the bodies in positions that are SITE SPECIFIC. For example, if he were to do one in the tall trees of the redwood forest he would most likely have the people standing tall to reflect the trees. If he were doing the shoot in an urban park he would have the people laying flat in the streets. The actual act of organizing the bodies is done completely random. Basically the people wait behind a line, like at the start of a marathon, then once the line is dropped run into position and follow the orders " lay down. sit up. stand up. hold it. okay your done!!" The picture is taken to capture the moment. So in my eyes the actual art is in the moments before the image is captured rather than the final "framed finished photo". What a different way to look at the idea of a TEMPORARY installation!!!

My experience with his work was through a documentary featuring the jam band Phish (my absolute favorite band). The band commissioned him to compose a "nude photo" at the bands finale: a three day festival in Limestone Maine called the Great Went. This brings me to my next "topic". The band puts on festivals, normally at the end of a long tour, to celebrate and bring closure to the tour. The festivals are normally in remote locations ( the second to last one was in Limestone Maine, a small town of 300 people 1 mile form the Canadian border). Unlike other festivals, Phish is the headlining act and the only act for the nearly 80,000 fans in attendance. Apart from the music, the band puts on events during non show times for the fans. This is the relevant part for this class. The band finds art to be an intense way of interacting and communicating with the fans. Installations are an important part if not the most important part of this experience. This includes such exhibits as "The sunken city", a nostaglic city half buried in the ground and allows people to walk in, through and around the buildings. The "tower" was an interactive sculpture that complied pieces of wood painted and cut by the fans throughout the weekend that ended with the bands "piece of the work" being passed through the crowd, like a band member crowd surfing, to the site, attached to the fans pieces then lit on fire and left to burn for the remainder of the festival/ tour finale. One event that reminded me of the project that Deborah told us about fro her teaching in Cali that involve the student staging the death to cause a change in traffic, is the visual maze. This included a series of different experience taht manipulated and distorted poeple as they move through the space. Different experiences were a bubble room, where so many bubbles were produced that the person loses their orientation, a mirror room, a fog room, and one of those rooms where the lights spin around the people as they walk through the bridge and makes the walk uneasy. These and many other events are interactive installations that the band appreciates and encourages its fans to partake. The band also organizes a design/live program where artists are given housing and studio space in the bands former recording studio in Bearsville, Vt., to design and create art, most often sculpture, in conjunction with the band. This is not as relevant to the course as the Tunic info but I found inspirational and interesting how two different forms of fine art can compliment each other while entertaining and engaging the fans of both.

arj
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