Gondry's Visuomusical Experiences and What is Art?

We have watched several music videos directed by Michel Gondry in class. Gondry, a French director who has worked extensively with feature films and music videos, often incorporates ideas about how the progression of time relates to musical structure. The first video we watched was made for The White Stripes’ The Hardest Button to Button. The video featured the two members of The White Stripes playing their instruments in various city locations. However, rather than merely film the band playing, Gondry used stop motion and duplication to highlight the rhythm and repetition in the song. For example, every time guitarist Jack White plays a certain melodic line during a “shot” of the video, he appears at the beginning of the line, plays it, and disappears at the end, leaving behind an amp. He then reappears for the next line and, if it is the same as the other, plays it with roughly the same motions. The distance between each appearance is proportional to the time between the lines in the song. As the same occurs with the drums, this formula allows the viewer to essentially get a look inside the rhythmic structure of the song.

Another Gondry video we watched was for a Kylie Minogue song. This video focused more on visualizing the structure of the song than the rhythm. The song has a cyclical construction of several verse-chorus sections of equal length. The video represented this visually by showing Kylie walking around in a circle several times. Every trip around the circle, another version of herself and many of the people she passes is added. Thus, by the end of the video, there are five or six Kylie Minogues walking together and interacting with each other.

The third Gondry video we watched was for Chemical Brothers’ Star Guitar. The video consists of a view from a train as scenery passes by. However, it soon becomes clear that each element of the scenery is representing an element of the music and has been digitally inserted at the proper moment and position to coincide with the rhythm of the song.

The ideas expressed in the music videos of Michel Gondry are fascinating. His perspective on the art of music videos is very different from that of most directors. Rather than show what’s discussed in the song or merely stick a video onto it, he entwines the actual musical structure of the song with his videos, enriching both the film and the song. Gondry’s work makes me consider how video and music can be utilized together in the future. Thus I ask, can video and music someday interact, not just as a way to enhance and promote one’s music or add emotion to one’s film, but as equally vital parts of a piece? Do artistic, musically-based music videos such as those of Gondry prove that this has already occurred?

Our in-class discussion on the idea of “what is art?,” while interesting, did not seem to me to go much of anywhere. Everyone seemed at times to agree that basically anything can be art, but then there always arose exceptions. This discussion made we wonder, what is the point in debating such a vague, general topic? Is there any value, artistic or otherwise, to having a working definition of “art” or is the topic mostly just useful because it makes us question the boundaries of art and perhaps then push them?