For this project I really wanted to play with the idea of what a performance is. Prior to this class I would have really only thought of a concert or a theater performance as a form of performance art. In that line of thinking I wanted to capture in photography a parody of a rock concert. In this series a group of friends are simply playing a video game but when presented in a tweet and given context through the description and hashtags it begins to take a different meaning. Additionally in some of the shots it captures moments not usually seen when playing this game due to the script given to the performers. The script which was essentially “be a rock band, perform with lots of energy” has the gamers step out of that role and into the role of rock star.

The picture above also brings into question the role of an audience. Lighters, or now cellphones, are commonly held up during rock shows. However, in this series there is an audience of one, an appropriate size for the “show” that is being put on but the behavior exhibited is unusual from a spectator of video games. Again the format of the tweet and the hashtags used also give some comedic value to the situation as the tweet would seem completely appropriate if sent out at a real rock concert.

In these two pictures above I tried to capture different angles of the concert for aesthetic purposes. However, considering the audience and platform on which the photos were going to be presented the captions about sneaking backstage had to be fabricated in order to keep the context consistent.

The response was fairly interesting. There were not a lot of replies and the ones that I did receive were mostly from bot accounts which automatically scan for certain words or phrases and respond by retweeting or liking them. This response was received due mostly to the hashtags utilized in the tweets.