response 1: Chris Burden and Terry Fox

I watched Chris Burden's Documentation of Selected Works first, and I thought that it was pretty interesting how he taped events that have some sort of psychological impact on the viewer even if the viewer is not watching it live. Through a screen, Burden still knew that the impact of a viewing live would still be the same as it is taped. When he crawls through broken glass, gets shot in the arm, and stays in a bed for twenty-two days, I feel in some way what he felt but in a more disgusting feeling. At first I wondered if he was doing this for entertainment like it is now with the Jackass movies, but adding the commentary to his videos made his artistic intent more believable.

Visually it was actually good for those at the time to not see the actual blood and see those scenes in black and white. It probably could have had a worse reaction to it especially when a little snippet of the broken glass scene aired on T.V. Though if it was in color I think it would have had a greater visual impact in terms of the psychological effect he wanted to portray. The sound he didn't edit or cut contributed to the visual impact at least. Although the quality of the sound was not as clear, given the time of the making of the video, it still had somewhat of an effect psychologically.

After watching Terry Fox's The Children's Tapes, I could see why it was titled so. To adults some scenes might be as amusing as they are to children but some of the scenes may come across as pointless and boring without action-packed explosions and booming sound effects. I am not going to side with neither children or adults but sit in the middle on this one. I thought that the scenes were amusing but also boring at the same time. The use of just a spoon, a bowl, water, and matches was pretty simple but the way he used them was what amazed me about the video. He used things so simple and ordinary to create elaborate schemes and devices to entertain young children. Although the lack of sound was what made it boring for me. But having to go back in time to when people do not need that much to get amused, who do not need sound effects, I probably would not think it was too boring to watch.