Kinetic Art

I was recently looking at some video art on YouTube, when I stubbled across this piece by Tim Fort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLRYo4V3HB8

Tim fort deals with kinetic art. His pieces are an giant elaboration on what we all used to do with dominoes as kids. The work is about cause and effect and are truly amazing. What I'm interested in is what part of this performance is the art.

Normally with art, the general consensus is that the finished process is the art. For artists like Jackson Pollock, it was the act of making it that was the art. But for kinetic artists like Tim Fort his work is destroyed when it's finished. The art exists only for its own destruction. Because of this, for kinetic art and other performance based works, it is not the finished product nor the act of creating it, but its own destruction that is the art.

Since this art only truly exists when it is being destroyed it can only be viewed as a performance. That means that this art can only reach larger audiences through video. Before video, if art like this was made it would exist only for the small group of people that saw it in action and then would be lost forever. It could be talked and written about, but it would never truly exist ever again.

Video has become a not only a method of creating art, but also immortalizing it. So many pieces of art have been lost forever because of an inability to record it. Through sites like YouTube we are able to spread art faster than ever before and also immortalize it further. People will copy that video from YouTube and duplicate it further than further. This ensures that the piece will never be lost, even if the creator destroys it.