This is a project where I pay workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to review my art and website and pay them $5 for 500 words. This is the 47th review I've received.
As a photographer
and someone who has been drawing with charcoal and pastels since she was seven,
I thought that it would be wonderful to review someone’s art website – and be
able to make a few buck while doing it! It was definitely an eye-opening experience
about what I have been considering art. I never really thought of something
like a video of someone showing picture after picture of cars that they have
owned art. I’m not entirely certain that I still consider some of the works on
this website art, but I can say that I am highly impressed by Paul Short’s
work. I think that he has a lot of interesting points to make, and that he
comes up with some creative ways to make those points. That being said, I was
very amused by the “Contemporary Good-Byes page” and “How to be Narcissistic”
pages. Although I don’t necessarily consider the latter art, because it seems
more like just a workshop to me, I think that it says a lot about self-esteem.
I also think that you can tell a lot about a person by the products that they
come up with in this workshop. People who have really low self-esteems would
have an issue with this workshop, and people who have really high self-esteems
would come out with totally different results (such as longer lists, longer
speeches, etc.) The “Contemporary Good-Byes” project was very amusing to me –
especially the video with examples of the good-byes. I think that the book
would be very interesting to own, and would be something amusing to share with
friends. I think one of the most interesting things that he is doing is these
reviews. I think that it is very interesting that he is soliciting his own
reviews as a way to show the differences in how artists create press for
themselves. It is a bold statement – insinuating that artists can create their
own good press by picking and choosing the reviews made by others or writing
their own reviews under a different name. However, Paul Short is including even
bad reviews in his book and on his web page, so it seems to me that this
project is less about creating his own favorable press and more about the point
that he is making by doing the project. This says a lot of me about his intent
to make the points that he is trying to portray in his works. I think that Paul
Short has a lot to say about the human condition, and that he is trying to find
new and interesting ways to get those points across; however, I am unsure about
the terming of some of his works as “art.” With his “Please No Photos” project,
it felt to me that a lot of the pictures were just snap shots – something that
anyone could snap away with a point-and-shoot camera. Some of the pictures
seemed very similar to tourist pictures. As a photographer, this kind of bugged
me, because I spent a long time learning how to create art with my camera;
however, I think that his finding a “different” way to discuss this aspect of
the human condition was very interesting. I don’t know, for sure, what I would
call some of his work, but I think it is a genius way to discuss some points
that should be made. Bravo!
