Lecture: Joe DeLappe

     Joe, as you well know, is an art performer, sculptor, video game player, an artist, etc. He has many works that range from using computer mouses as drawing tools, or creating a giant sculpture of Gandhi made out of cardboard.

     I have not seen many similar works as DeLappe's work, which was really sparked my attention. Starting off the lecture with a piece about the male and female sex organs made me feel a little skeptical about the whole thing... since I've never experienced his work before. As a gamer, I was really drawn to a specific piece he did called Dead In Iraq. This was a type of 'in-game performance' where DeLappe would interact with the game while other people played and watched, too. What he did was created a player in the American Army online shooter game and would start listing names of dead American soldiers. Personally, if I was another person playing the game and happened to run into this, I would not start yelling at him, but most likely just watch and see how many people are on the list that he has in front of him. Another video game piece that was pretty cool was called Quake Friends. This was about another online game that was performed by himself and 5 others who all reenacted an episode of Friends. How awesome would it be to see that happening while playing in an online game. Sadly, it was just an experiment that happened to be hard to control since they were killed so often by other online players. Although that happened, I think that it was a creative way to interact with others while in an online game. 

   Probably my favorite piece Joe made was his  Gandhi March back in 08', I believe. He reenacted a 240 mile walk which Gandhi did way back when. DeLappe walked these 240 miles on a treadmill connected with the online game, Second Life. Second Life allows people all over the world create their own world and their own character. Joe created Gandhi and walked those miles all throughout the virtual world. 26ish days of walking, he ran into random things everywhere, people even joined for a bit as well. This is a project I would have liked to participate it. I wouldn't mind getting exercise and walking throughout a video game for a few days. It seems like too much fun to wonder around a huge virtual world. I would have also liked to see this in action. My only question is how was the treadmill connected to the character in Second Life?

     Speaking of Gandhi, I was really drawn to the giant sculpture of Gandhi that he created out of cardboard. Understanding from experience, this seemed so time consuming. Especially when art museums around the world ask for him to create a whole new Gandhi sculpture from scratch. How many times was that thing recreated? Three? Either way, with a lot of help from volunteers, anything can get done and it was.

    Overall, the lecture was interesting and kept my attention the whole time.I wish i was able to see more videos during the presentation, but besides that it was really interesting learning about my own professor and his work.

Joe Delappe and Giant Gandhi!