As much as I like YouTube, more than any other site the commenters on YouTube can be surprisingly, well, horrible. In my research I found this was true even on videos of the highest-of-high culture. Operas and symphonies had the same hostile, petty, and juvenile comments as nearly any other video on the site.

The commentary track I made for this video is literally the commentary from the original Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 video, read aloud by actors.

Created for the Artists’ Space WebCast for January 2009. Thanks to Joseph Del Pesco, Emily Gallagher, Scott Vermeire, Jeff Crouse, and Christina Kral.

About Artists’ Space YouTube Commentary Project

Like ‘special features’ commentary on a commercial dvd, The YouTube Commentary Project involves injecting ideas, critique and comments recorded by artists about a YouTube video of their choice. After overlaying the recorded audio onto the video, we upload the results back onto YouTube and present it here. It’s part of Artists Space’s new WebCast: internet and computer based cultural content co-produced with artists around the world.