The post that took off was a 12 second clip of me grinding a weld flat
I posted a 12 second clip the other week. No music, no voiceover, just my grinder taking the slag off a weld joint on a steel piece. Filmed it out of boredom, honestly. My daughter had been telling me for months that the polished shots of finished work do nothing and the raw stuff does something. I didn't believe her.
That clip has more views than every finished sculpture I've put up combined. Comments are mostly people asking what disc I use and whether the sparks will ruin the stone nearby. Not a single word about the piece itself, which is fine, because the piece was barely in frame. What got attention was the noise and the motion and the fact that a real person was doing a real thing with their hands.
I don't know what to do with that information. I'm not going to start filming every hour I'm in the shop and pretending it's content. But I can't argue with the numbers either. There's something about showing the labor instead of the result that lands, and I've spent thirty years being told the result is what matters.
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Your daughter gets it, and she told you exactly that, ha. There's something about watching a person's hands do a thing they're truly good at that pulls people in, even if they can't name why. The finished work is how we judge ourselves, I think, so we assume that's what others want. But people don't watch process to critique it, they watch it because it's alive. A finished piece is already decided. The clip is still happening.
I get the same thing with my work in reverse, sort of. When I post a finished portrait I get a handful of likes. When I shared a little video of me smudging pastel in progress, just my hand going back and forth on the cheek of someone's face, people commented like crazy. They didn't know anything about technique. They just liked watching it come together.
Sparks ruining the stone, though, that part made me laugh. People worry about the silliest things.
That bit about the finished piece being decided and the clip still happening, that's exactly it. I never could've put words to it but that's why I keep most of my best stuff off the internet and post the wobbly middle versions instead. People ask me why I'd show the mess and I don't really have an answer. But you're right, it's alive in a way the finished thing isn't.
The smudging video bit got cut off in your comment, I'm curious what the response was. Because pastel doesn't read all that well on video usually, the pigment goes on so soft. Did it surprise you?
The smudging did surprise me, yeah. I half expected it to look like nothing on the screen. But pastel catches light in a way video actually likes, the pigment sits on top of the tooth and you can see it shift. People seemed to like watching me screw it up and fix it more than the clean passes. That's the part I keep coming back to. Nobody claps for the part that went right the first time.
That's the funny part, she did tell me so. More than once. I just tuned it out the way you do with your own kids until they prove it.
You're right about the critique part though. The finished piece, people feel like they gotta have an opinion on it. With the clip there's nothing to judge, just watch. Nobody's standing there going "hmm, I'd have ground that bead different." They just watch the sparks fly and move on. Which suits me fine, honestly. I've spent thirty years not caring what most people think of the work anyway.