There is a concept in the performing art world known as "derivative work", "detritus", and probably a few other D-words I can't think of right now. It's basically a fancy way of saying "souvenir." My friend Christine Olson, when she staged the performance in which two dancers attacked each other with flour and chocolate, had them do it on a large white canvas tarp. That tarp was later used as the screen on which she projected the video documentation of the performance piece in an installation at another art show. The texture, colorful stains, and suggestion of motion and anatomy that glimmered on the screen gave a depth of meaning, a sense of place and tangible presence to the otherwise two-dimensional video.
In other performance works, the derivative is sometimes the only real evidence that anything happened. Chris Burden's body work, for example, is only documented in photos, and my Hero du Jour, Alan Kaprow, has many of his works which are simply written descriptions of what happened. These aren't the works themselves (try suggesting to a choreographer sometime that a video of a dance is the same as seeing it live. Then duck and run. Fast.) but they take on a life of their own--much as a score written by Mozart would be, in spite of the fact that it's not actually the work itself. How much is one of Shakespeare's First Folios going for these days?
If we take the idea of Kaprow's life like art, and extend this idea to it: what is the derivative of our lives? Jason Pettus, of slackermanager.com, suggests that in the digital age more and more people are somehow realizing that a digital record, an iPhoto backup disc and a database on livejournal, is not enough:
"An argument can be made that we as humans need our occasional sacred objects; that as much as electronic media helps us with our lives, and as much as it speeds up the day-to-day practical waits for things, all of us still need that occasional physical book of poetry we cherish, that paper letter that came from a lover, that blank paper notebook full of our thoughts and dreams."
He suggests that may in fact be the reason for the huge popularity of things such as moleskine notebooks.
My youngest daughter is as technologically savvy as any teen I know. I've come home to find the entertainment system rewired by her, she manipulates myspace with practiced ease, and a CD player accompanies her everywhere. But she also carries along a beautiful notebook, with hand-pressed paper covers and vellum-style pages with a blue satin thread to wind around the rough-hewn wooden button on the cover. I asked her what it was, and she gave me that "oh, you poor clueless grown-up" look.
"It's for my ideas, Dad. So I don't lose any."
Nice to know my kids are smarter than me. Makes me feel like I've really accomplished something. And I enjoy the idea that at some point they can look in my notebooks, regardless of what OS their data runs on, and see a glimpse into my ideas, into my weeks, into my work. It's a little extra motivation, not to change the way I live--just to document it more clearly. To makes sure the derivative is as joyful as the work itself.
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