A Thought on Site-Specific Work

March 31, 2010

I just read about a social experiment where an anonymous violin player played six Bach pieces in the DC Metro station and very few people stopped, or put money in his hat.  Apparently several children stopped but were pulled on by their parent. The player was world famous Joshua Bell.  Two nights before, he sold out a theater in Boston at $100 a ticket. He was playing a 3.5 million dollar violin. While it might be important at what metro station he was placed, and time of day, there are implications in this experiment about site-specific performance -such as, the influence of context. I think a better experiment would have put him on the street, but the experiment still raises interesting questions.

– Amelia