Art for Arts Sake

Pipo Tafel & David W. Pyke

Since 06/2022 8 episodes

AFAS E05 The Vortex (The miracle of success)

Is success a question of perspective

2022-10-06 58 min

Description & Show Notes

An artist conversation about the mental mud wrestling of wondering why we cannot say what creates a success. David feels like an outlaw, a cowboy, because he has trouble selling tickets for a music show with Italian music, and despite advertisement, sales are slow - what's wrong - is there something wrong or is it a question of how to look at it and unpack another view and logic? The department store of life - how do you know on which floor to look for the answers for our questions of measuring success.

The video version has automatically created captions:
https://vimeo.com/pipotafel/afas05pt1

Recorded 2022 Octobre 6th in Australia | Germany
Music by David | Postproduction by Pipo

by David W. Pyke
https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/pyke-david
and Pipo Tafel
https://www.pipotafel.com/

SHOWNOTES
(some of the persons and references mentioned in this episode):

LET THERE BE LIGHT
Project Development for an installation with light and color
EN
https://issuu.com/p_tafel/docs/en_web_let_there_be_light_project_documentation
DE
https://www.pipotafel.com/let-there-be-light/

Performing Art Conversations PODCAST is available with all episodes
https://www.pipotafel.com/darstellende-kunst-podcast/

Transcript

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] 3 to 1 and ignition. Which episode is that? Ignition sequence? Well, Apollo 13, I think it's the moon. But there was Apollo 11. Oh, I could be wrong. Apollo 11, perhaps the moon and Apollo 13, the one when they tried to go to the moon. But there was a problem. So where are we flying today? I'm dealing with the situation in my experience at the moment, which is a well, it's a problem, but it's a challenge. But it's every day it's something that I guess all of us always have this problem, the commercial type entertainment sort of gets the limelight and gets the bias and the focus. That's why it's commercial. That's a no brainer there. But we're you're trying to do well, we're doing a we're doing a Neapolitan, Italian music not coming out, but we're trying to sell tickets. And it could be the poster could be a million reasons. But actually, the the sales are going fairly slowly. But there were some other shows recently, more quirky, catchy or risque type titles, and some of them sold out. But some of some of those shows sold out. So I know there's always the packaging of the product is very, very important. Um, but I'm also wondering about the psyche of, of audiences. I know there's always niche audiences that like particular things and I'll spend their money when it's available. But there's this other audience which is, it's like marginal. Do I, do I go to that show or another show? What, what will I decide to go and spend my money to go and see? Okay. Can you explain us a little bit more what the kind of music is that you will be playing? Because when you refer to commercial and the arts, you think what kind of what kind of music would that be if I would go to that concert? Well, if you went to the concert that we're putting on, it's what's called Not in Roma, and it will be Italian based music, some of the popular by even American artists like Dean Martin and Martina, Neapolitan traditional. It's a concert about the music of Italy. So it's not Italian pop, it's not Italian rock, some Italian heavy metal. But yeah, the sort of music that a couple of generations ago would have been played in clubs, I guess it would generally target an older demographic, but, but, you know, the, the place where advertising is, is full of retirees and people like this. So we're just doing some soul searching. Why why are the ticketing why is the ticketing so slow? And I know that some very famous, uh, classical artists tried to put a concert on in another city, Mackay. Where you been? And they were playing very high standard classic. That one was the professor of piano from the Ukraine. This is before this trouble we're having. And the other one was a Russian born violinist and they were playing Paganini and all sorts of things. And they they did a concert in the town and they attracted out of 115,000 people town, probably a village or other people's standards. But the township in Australia, they attracted four or five people in a church. okay. So did they have a marketing problem as well? These are questions because if you went past, you're in Cologne and Europe, the center of lots of this kind of stuff is available and around and people on the streets from Conservatorium and the history is there. You would be astounded by this Russian violinist playing as well. He's is at the higher end rather than the lower end of the of professional players. And yet three or four people for the concert, despite putting posters around town and doing what they can to attract people. Okay. So what is going on in Australia? What is it? Is it something that I can put my finger on? Is it something I'll never know? Who knows? This is this is bringing back to a core debate that our colleague Kenneth LUDDEN talks about is in the ballet realm, about the place of fine arts in a culture and the continuing emphasis on on fine arts in the culture. Okay. So, so you can imagine that people that make up boards of theaters look at financials, they review ticket sales, bar sales, things that work commercially, things that are good to the theater, things that that are well supported and things that are not so supported. So this this small theater that I'm going to be working at currently, where I wake out, we've only got bookings for about 37 people and we have been on radio and we have put up 100 posters, man. And we have got people out there talking at the other communities and markets and we've got a Facebook campaign as well running. I know that the radio advertisements going on, at least eight or nine times in a day on a popular local station. I was even in a hairdresser in one of the places and the posters up. So it's always for me goes back to Kenneth Ludden's always saying the importance of these putting on fine arts and having fine arts in our diverse community and audience. Because if we don't do it, then we never see it. It's not there. And if it's not there, then there's, there's nothing to compare. The the more commercial, the more risque burlesque night or risque sorts of bawdy humor or those sorts of things. Some of it's witty. Some of it's just provocative. But either way, it's getting people on seats. Okay. So there's a couple of thoughts and. This is art therapy. How how can we you know, I read a quote of you of a conversation we had about Dawn and then this quote, I can look it up. You said, oh, lord, there we go. Here we go. And I'm just opening the document. And you say it's all an illusion. But what time does is it puts things in a slow motion. It is a construct. We invented it. A dolphin doesn't know what time it is. Only humans come up with a measurement and we define it as a linear measurement so we can analyze it. It's all a theater. So we were talking about, DAWN as the concept of creating an artistic work, and we were talking about time. And you came up with this idea of measurement, and then you continue and you say, when the Buddha meditates and gets calm, that's because there's another entity. When you get to nothingness, what means that time exactly stops? Time is like the farm fences in nature. There's no farm fence. There's only mountains, forests, lakes. That's what man does. We put time there to have a measurement. And when you talked about the numbers, that is measurement. And that is what, as you say in the commercial world, things are measured all the time and the importance is given to things according to the amount of whatever the unit is that one chooses public money, dollars, and then there's this other thing that comes without measurement, which is artistic expression, which is coming from a distance from a land where you cannot measure, and the amount of artistic something, you know, usually it's a very often it's a unique thing. And because it comes from very often it comes from the inside. And I'm reading a book at the moment of Ben Shahn. I'm so bad with those names. Okay, it's a painter. And he talks about doing something according to the inside and he talks about the material. And so when I was listening to you, I believe there's different factors. And one is the level of measurement. And when you compare things which we nowadays do a lot, we tend to compare things that aren't comparable. So how can we compare ourselves to other people? Actually, we can't because we are unique, but we do it all the time. I do it all the time and I compare myself and I end up in this conflict that you're describing and I can completely understand also from the standpoint of what I'm working on at the moment, that I'm questioning what I'm doing because of the outside view. However, from the artistic standpoint and the question of the importance of doing the artistic rather than doing the commercial, and I'm going to define them as the commercial is done to an outer purpose very often, whereas the artistic is often done not always to an inner purpose. Of course, it needs to serve an outer one, but it cannot develop an artistic thing because someone asked you to have a success. You're not making an artistic work to have X amount of money made. You're making an artistic work to make a statement. And very often you do a commercial work, sometimes to make a statement. And the arts can come into that. But you often do it for the purpose of renumeration, for the sake of selling a product. For many outside reasons that are legitimate. You know, we need to feed our families. We need to to, you know, pay for our rent, all of those things. So that is one level, the measurement and it always comes in and and then the next is that's why I was asking what kind of music it is that when we get into that, that's a it's like a department store in the building. I go to a floor and suddenly I'm in an area that I might be confused because I, I didn't plan. I was planning on buying a new frying pan and I end up in the in the shoes department and I start to look at things and maybe I need shoes. I don't need shoes, actually. But they're put there and they look attractive and and so we end up in a different department in the building and we start to question ourselves about things that are totally legitimate from the standpoint of commercial success. And then there's this other part, which is the necessity, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm listening to you, you're doing this out of the necessity, out of your artistic need to do something that makes sense from your standpoint. You're not putting up the the the room. How is it called to show story? Oh, it's just a nominal night in. And night in Roma. You're not putting up a night in Roma because you are calculating that a night in Roma is at the moment the most trending thing on Instagram or in Mackay or anywhere, because you decided for different reasons that that would make sense. And you put together a program, I guess, and again, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, because that is something that you could fill in and you could from the inside fill this balloon not with air and having a nice shiny outer color, but it had some content. A water pump you worked on the night in Roma water bomb to people and you put together a nice program that has heart in it, that has expression in it that you are, you know, changing the world by putting on the station night in Roma. But you're you went through those songs and you were looking at what they were saying and you compiled it, you know, like a beautiful record. And that can be a success. And when it's no success, it's still something very important. However, when we look at it merely from the standpoint of how we sell and we take a 100 is perfect and zero is a failure and we're at 32%. That feels like, you know, like in school, like you get graded what you just said and then your exam wasn't that well, it wasn't total crap. But you're in the lower third, whereas someone else might have scored 90 or 100, you know, like a house concert deejay guy going to be playing in front of 50,000 people flying in with a private jet kind of thing, and it's booked out and the crowd is cheering and you can have a trending on Instagram and everybody posts stories and ticket sales go up and the CDs sells and he ends up on iTunes and has more. However, I can imagine that the guy in the bizarre I'm not saying it's a must. I'm dealing with doubt at the moment a lot for different reasons of different projects I'm doing on my own. And I feel like, Oh my God, what I'm doing here. But it's both of the person's can end up after that night with the sales and without the sales questioning themselves and and so I wonder what is the purpose that as artists and you mentioned Kenneth Lennon, who represents classical theatrical dancing in in a very high standard in a way that is not so much represented anymore nowadays. And he keeps on representing that. And so why do we do that? What keeps us doing that? And what is the the purpose of selling low but offering something to society that has the standpoint that isn't purely looking at the numbers. What is it? Why are we I mean, what do you think? You told me that you were thinking of going into the scoring film of film music, and you talk to a composer who is in the business and he told you that you need to change your way of composition to be successful. If that's what I got, and you said, well, then I'm not going to pursue it further. So. Well, yes, the bottom the big lesson, and I'm sure it was completely true from his perspective, was don't make it so interesting and busy because the film producers want something that does not take or detracts from what's being film, the love scene, the car chase, whatever. Yeah. So he you listen to some of my music and said, whoa, whoa, whoa. And it's interesting because he obviously makes a lot of money. He's very successful, I think was based in New York and goes to Beverly Hills where he has to do his thing. Grammy Award, perhaps even, I'm not sure. But then I've seen films on that score where film producers take them from a sound library. Shostakovich. There's nothing unsophisticated about Shostakovich. There's nothing that the Shostakovich what I like about that is Shostakovich had no intention of putting it on a Hollywood film. When he was writing, he wrote he was inspired as a as a true artist to write music that was within him in the context of whatever. The fact is that the film the film producer said, Hmm, I've got a very interesting film here and I need something very suitable for what the what I'm, you know, presenting or might be another film that I was in, but I can't remember the name of it. And it was a British film. But anyway, I could hear this music. And then I realized that wasn't just the normal Hollywood standard of composition, which is a company type music, it was actual composition. You could you could tell as someone who writes a bit of this music that this person had crafted this at the highest artistic levels. And it was it was a pleasure to be in the cinema for me to hear. I get I'd like action films. I'm like everyone else, but I get disappointed sometimes when I'm hearing the, the soundscapes that are attached to the what they're doing. And yeah, so, so I wonder if Shostakovich had auditioned with this guy or how he would have fared as well. I'm not saying I'm Shostakovich, of course, but I'm saying the principle. Not all films or not all filmmakers have that formula. But maybe out of I don't know, maybe out of 90 filmmakers, 90% do prefer what he was saying. He was talking like a person who was successfully financially making film music. Yeah. I at the moment I'm working on the project that we started together, the performing art podcast and it's the work is to go through the conversations and then we needed to replace some music for copyright reasons because the composer is registered with a company. And although you played it as a free band, you know, there are copyrights also of other musicians. And then you and I talked about it and also we made a recording of a composition that you did for three or four years ago. And I spent quite an amount of hours and in revisiting this work, which had already been finalized, when I talk about the amount of hours and I'm talking about between 40 to 60 hours of work of going through it again and taking pieces in and out and changing the music and choosing the parts and then also changing the levels and changing the dynamics on each sentence, which was said for some, some for technical reasons, because of the microphone which had been used. But also some of, as we talked about, dynamics in classical music that there's highs and lows. And because when I put it through the machine, the artificial intelligence did a normalizing process that was kind of flat and there was an and then and then that and I got to do that for six more episodes. Some of them haven't even been edited, and this project has received a grant last year, and it was supposed to be published last year in December. And by December I only had three episodes out of now seven originally six, but I recorded another one this year ready. And I had received the money and I had to hand in the grant report. And then I handed in some of the episodes and I'm working on it again and I'm asking myself like, What the heck am I doing? Because of course there's other projects that have started and I'm touching base again with this from 2021 project and the degree of how would you call that craftmanship it requires to do it again is pain, painstaking. You know, you call it the quiet work. And I find it's challenging to go and sit down and because I want to go on and this process I'm mentioning, I also experience it when I do commercial work that, you know, it takes it needs you to sit down and do stuff you don't even want to do. But you've got to do it because you want to make money or you got this contract and you want to expand your contacts and you want to have clients that book you again and or it's a client that booked you already and you want to keep the client and you want to satisfy the public. All of those things. I believe it's not very different what I'm doing at the moment and it's artistic work and it sucks to some degree, although when it's done the result and I look at it a year later, I go like, Shit, man, that's good stuff. And then the same in the commercial, you know that I feel like, Oh wow, I did good stuff. So I'm not quite sure how to deal with this distinction between artistic and commercial because either of them serves a certain purpose. What I get from you saying that is that we are in an environment where we miss the exchange and the the appreciation of the artistic as well, because the appreciation of the commercial sometimes comes through. I don't know, a lot of commercial things are done also without pay and without being high sales. You know, if you want to be in the business, you've got to do very often in my experience, personally, experience a lot of projects for free, you know, and so what is it that we're talking about that that is it the renumeration of it? Is it that we're trying to do distribution, which is not our work originally? Because you're a composer. I used to be a dancer and now I'm a media artist. And all our work is doing doing the stuff in the work, right? Playing the trumpet, composing. You're also a musician. And when we talk about distribution, sales, all of that, do you think maybe it feels like we're stupid kids again in school and feel like, Man, I'm doing my best and I don't I don't get it completed and I feel like I'm failing. And because that is it's there are people doing that. There isn't a university where you can study to be an inspiration to study to be an influencer. So this is regarded as as a job. Is it that because when I'm in, I hear you. You know, when I used to sell my project to the public, I don't know how to do it. And it's I feel very I don't even know how to call it. I don't want to go there how I feel. It's just is it that is it distribution? Because when you talk about the public valuing that and being interested, then I feel we are connecting us to an outside eye, which I understand. And I wonder, is that what we're talking about, that someone says, I want to I'm interested, or is it doing distribution work and not figuring out yet how to distribute it, how to sell it?