310mc First Project – POWER
What I intended to create with this piece was the feeling that power, gives people the ability to have sway over people. For example, the way in which an audience will respond to their favorite act. With unwavering attention on the star they can say and do almost everything and it is highly unlikely that they will be questioned. So what I have attempted to do with this piece is highlight the way in which a ruthless dictator like Adolf Hitler, and rock concert and the church are all comparable.
If we look at the top three images we see a concert, the sermon on the mount and a scene from Triumph of The Will, a film about the Nazi Parties rallies in the thirties. The way in which they are comparable is the fact that the audience is all listening with open minds, which creates for the person on the “stage” as it were, to create for them a reality in which they feel comfortable and can enjoy and understand their lives. In terms of the concert the artist as a scary amount of power held over their audience, maybe they will hold back that really popular song that everyone knows to keep the audience guessing, and when it comes it is like a wave of relief over said crowd providing comfort in the knowledge that one of the things that they had come for has been fulfilled. In terms of Hitler, it begins to get more interesting. Hitler promised his people that he would make the country “rise-up” out of the ashes of the first world war and the treaty of Versailles that had followed it. He gave the German people hope that they would become a super-power once more and tried to renew their lost pride, once again a man standing in front of people and giving them what they want as a means to control them. In my opinion, the religious institutions in all their forms all over the world do this as well. They do it by comforting the people and making them feel safe, much like Hitler did and a rock concert does. Religion tells people that by following rules set out in an ancient text from dubious origins, they will be “saved” from damnation and saved a place close to what ever Deity they pray to wether it be Allah, Jesus or Odin. So Religion comforts its followers by saying “Hey, you’ll earn eternal bliss if you pray here every day”.
SO what i did in terms of creating the piece was a contemporary sound piece encompassing all of the said institutions of a concert, Hitler and Religion. I started with a robotic voice saying the the lords prayer, as to say how the power of these institutions turns us into mindless robots subject to our masters will. I also created a short piece on garageband on my computer using a organ so listeners can really get the sense that it is in a church. Then we finish the lords prayer with laughter and applause the kick into concert mode with a short piece also created on Garage band using its magic garage band feature, while i played my guitar over the top of it creating a piece evoking in my mind artists like Carlos Santana, meanwhile while this “concert” and cheering is in full swing, the voice of Hitler and his crowd can be heard in parallel to the concert, really giving the listener a chance to compare in their own mind the similarities between the two disciplines the piece then fades out to polite applause, reveling in my own self-sardonic nature, as I realize that by creating a piece that people may listen to in years to come i am now a part of those institutions I am critiquing.
