Physical description:
15 minutes, black and white, sound digital betacam created by Electronic Arts Intermix on 9/27/2010. Fujifilm D321 Digibeta NTSC format (resolution is 720x480) cassette size is S (holds up to 40 minutes). Digital Betacam records component video with 10-bit YUV 4:2:2 compression. The bitrate is 90 Mbit/s. There are five audio channels - four main channels (uncompressed 48KHz PCM) and one cue track.
Content description:
The tape shows a black and white video of John Baldessari sitting with a microphone and singing the minimalist artist Sol Lewitt's forty-five-point tract on Conceptual Art to the tunes of The Star-Spangled Banner and Heaven, among other songs. In an ironic intersection of two systems - arcane theoretical discourse and popular music - Baldessari sings a tract by Minimalist artist Sol LeWitt. Introducing this performance by noting that "these sentences have been hidden too long in exhibition catalogues," Baldessari sings Lewitt's forty-five-point tract on Conceptual Art to the tunes of The Star-Spangled Banner and Heaven, among other songs. Baldessari's witty "art aria" functions as a meta-conceptual exercise.
