I enjoyed the Grand Rapids MI Lip-dub. It was entertaining and I was trying to figure out how they got the timing down so well with having that many people participating. The video showed the cultural and artistic diversity of the city while demonstrating a sense of unity those who live there seem to have. It made me want to visit the city and see how friendly and fun it might be.
By having this video on YouTube, it was available to many audiences and I'm sure many companies and advertisers were happy to take advantage of the free advertising. I noticed many web addresses and logos on T-shirts. The entire video was actually an advertisment for the city to promote tourism. Does the fact that this creative, fun and artistic video was made to promote tourism and those who participated in the making of the video were also promoting things on their T-shirts take away from the artistic value of the video? Does it make the entire video just a creative advertisment? I think the note in the beginng of the video stating it was affiliated with a non-profit and the raw imaging using regular citizens and not actors makes the video seem more of an artistic endevor and a labor of love. The people of the city making the video appear to be very happy to promote their town for tourism and would in turn most likely have enjoyed the hard work that went into making the video.
Artists working hard for an end product for others to view is part of what makes art, art. Appreciating the difficulty of the task and perfomance and the amount of work that went into a creation is, in my opinion, what makes a piece of work great art, regardless of the what the goal the creator made it for.
The other mash ups viewed, The Bratpack/ Listamania videos, were on the other hand kind of annoying. Maybe it was because the kids in the video were just mimicing a script in a different setting of their city and seemed to be just mugging for the camera in hopes to be seen on YouTube by millions. I don't think they worked as hard as the Grand Rapids crew did in creating their video. Considering how un-origional they all were copying the origional mash up, it was pretty annoying listening to the song over and over and seeing the same thing with different people. But, I suppose if I saw my friends in my city doing the mash up I may be entertained by it. I guess the reason I didn't care for the Listamania mashups is because I have no connection to the people or the cities they were made in.
So in conclusion, if a piece of work can demonstrate the hard work, origionality, creativity and commitment that went into creating it, I would consider it a great work of art and enjoy viewing it. Or, if I have a personal connection to the work, I would also enjoy the piece.
Those lipdub Bratpack videos were annoying enough to make me not want to hear Listamania ever again, though.
