Some people say that all great ideas are simple. Obviously this isn’t literally true. Some
great ideas are incredibly complicated. And of course not all simple ideas are great.
But one great, simple idea is exemplified by a piece of art title Walking by the Chinese artist Deng Tai.
It was shown at the Hammer Museum in LA in 2015, at a time when I was living in LA and could have gone to see it but I’m only reading about it now
The description from the Hammer runs as follows.
“Walking is a series of photos made over a three to four year period of time, in different cities, always at night, using only the street and shop lights for illumination. It is simply the recording of a journey, walking an endless road, without a map, to some distant and undefined destination “
The description goes on for a while getting a bit artspeak-ish, but concludes more or less sanely with the words
“Walking is a simple travellers (sic) passage down streets, over bridges, up stairs, around corners, past buildings, glass, trees, and lights. Each photo, or each frame, is a painting of a day in the life, but all together it is a bigger story, a journey without beginning and without end.’
In other words it’s a video of a couple of thousand blurry photographs of some bloke’s feet.
And not only is this a simple idea, but it leads me to the thought – I COULD HAVE DONE THAT!!
But of course I didn’t.
However the most telling line on the website is “Music for Walking video by William Basinski.” Now, getting William Basinski to do the music for your art is a great idea, but I’m sure making it a reality is not at all simple.
