Introducing a 4 D Colour Mark Up Test

Four Fundamental Dimensions of Performance Art – A Colour Mark Up System

Conceptually charged - blue
Creative ground breaking - green
Emotionally engaging - yellow
Mentally disturbing – red

These four dimensions will make it possible to characterize any work of performance art in a colour code strip. It is a tool for discrimination and judgement, which might help me express my personal perception and share it with others using a simple bar graph. The height of each bar in the diagram would then indicate to what extent the artwork fulfils each dimension. But instead of a graphical representation I might use more or less formal expression like slightly, very, and extremely, which would result in a four graded scale where:

slightly conceptually charged = blue 1,
(simply) conceptually charged = blue 2,
very conceptually charged = blue 3,
extremely conceptually charged = blue 4,
et c.

An artist cutting himself with a razor blade, for example, might be conceptually charged, and very mentally disturbing, while being only slightly emotionally engaging, but it would not be an extremely creative ground breaking act. Of course, the perception of and the response towards an artwork are very personal matters, but it might still be helpful to have some standard expressions to start out from. The audience of a certain art form is capable of making judgement in advance on an artwork or event by reading reports of the critics, as long as they are acquainted to the habits of the critic. Key words and standard expressions are useful as a measure of the critic as well as the artworks. If you trust the critic on the judgement above, you might get interested in the artwork, or discharge it, depending on whether you like, or dislike mentally disturbing experiences. In the long run it is possible to work out better concepts and a sharper critical response if you start out from some set of concepts and elaborate your discrimination by comparisons. That is the reason for me to apply the grid of my chosen key words on the artworks of the festival in the upcoming entries where comparison will play a more important part.