This is a project where I pay workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to review my art and website and pay them $5 dollars for 500 words. This is the 7th review I've received:
While I am not an art connoisseur I enjoyed looking at all the various forms of art that Paul Shortt created. Particularly I liked the different types of mediums that were used and how interactive the works were. I think we've all been in the situation where we've walked into a museum surrounded by beautiful works of art only to be told not to touch. The Paul Shortt pieces actually encourage the audience to take part in art. The “corner piece” made me laugh a bit because I can definitely see myself walking up to the piece and doing exactly as it instructs me to do. I found the ROFL rug humerous because it invites you to actually do what we text soo many types a day. It's pretty ridiculous when you look at it that way. What I encountered time and time again was that most of the works were basic and simple such as the “Free Poster” work. It is, as it states, just a free poster but in actuality it became something more and an actual piece of art by itself. That is the magic of art that it takes on a life of its' own and sometimes goes beyond what the artist intended. One of the pieces that I liked the most was the “Please Do not climb” sculpture. From far away it seems to say “Please Climb” which ofcourse would draw me towards it, ready to do its' bidding. Upon closer inspection it really says “Please do not climb” which would leave me in a predicament because at this point I would want to climb it even more. My favorite piece is the Missed Connections piece. Out of curiosity I have clicked on the craigslist link only to find a world of people who are desperate to find that one person that made them feel something for that moment in time. I loved that those ads were re read and placed in the settings that those people wrote about. I could have sat here and watched hours of that footage. I think that it touched me because most times we assume that we don't matter to many people when it reality it may be that we've changed someones life without even knowing it. I would say most of Paul Shotts art is “tongue in cheek” so to speak, like the certificate that states “I was totally impressed by the depth of our random exchange.” It is seemingly absolutely random from the step sculpture to the ROFL rug but what all the pieces have in common is that they invite an audience to interact with art in a way that is non threatening. Once that initial hesitation is over, the audience can then use the art to see the banal in a different light. Many times we walk through life just going through the motions without actually noticing anything around us. I think Paul Shortts art encourages people to experience the world by being an active participant in it.
