As technology becomes part of the everyday (almost a body part) and people become more melancholy city numbers than social beings, art takes an ego-oriented turn. Whether it be for financial, pragmatic or creative reasons, more artists are choosing the crew-free approach to make their projects. Filmmakers who take on all technical and creative responsibilities of their films, musicians without a band, photographers with the company of their tripods. Sure, everyone needs a little input, but ultimately these creators bravely take on the entirety of their projects unaided. While shooting a 16mm film requires a sound team, camera assistants and a clapper, all you need is two hands and a set of eyes to shoot something with your webcam. Ironically, it was more than 40 years ago when filmmaker Glauber Rocha proclaimed that to make good cinema, all you need is “an idea in the head and a camera in the hand.” But what effect does this individualistic approach have on art-making? Less criticism in the process, more isolationistic routes? Are we also speaking of things so personal that team-work would spoil everything? And as the format behind art works change, their contents shift along with them. Not that there is more good art because more people have access to technology. There may be more crappy art, too. But perhaps we enter an age of more diaristic (egotistic?) art works. We create unwatched, unbothered by the pressure and opinion of others. Masturbative art? Not really — our desperate need for approval is still there. We make it alone, but for many to watch. Perhaps we want to hog all the merit for ourselves. Or perhaps we just love freedom too much. Perhaps we simply cannot afford to hire a production assistant and a script girl. Perhaps, in a time of socio-political disillusion, our needs become so introspective we cannot trust them in the hands of anyone else. And are creating alone as a conscious choice or as a contextual inevitability? The Post asked a variety of artists with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ties how they felt about “alone art.” Self-sufficiency or self-indulgency?

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