“Skin Wars”
We thought we’d seen everything exotic and unusual that TV had to offer, but a show we viewed recently, “Skin Wars,” still blew our socks off. It featured the best body-painting artists in the United States.
A long time ago, we watched another TV tilt involving gifted tattoo artists, but “Skin Wars” is even better, because the impermanence of their finished artworks on their models’ naked bodies enables the creators to use a wider range of materials, styles and techniques.
They have only five hours to create their masterpieces, but their best works are amazingly and even stupefyingly great!
The best challenge we’ve watched to date required the 12 contestants to come up with body artworks that made their models “disappear”—a unique specialization of leading body artists like Emma Hack, who was appropriately tapped to be a guest judge on that particular telecast.
As instructed, the contestants each chose a section in a supermarket and posed their model on a shelf of products, which were depicted so well on their bodies that the models indeed “disappeared” and all viewers could see were the “products” like the rows of cans or bottles on each “shelf.”
—How fantastic is that?
Another challenge required the artists to use their models’ heads to come up with unique and far-out “centerpieces” for a festive fantasy table. The contestants came up with surrealistically creative concepts that wowed the judges, and pushed back the limits of what viewers thought possible in artworks that use the human head as a “canvas.”
It turns out that “Skin Wars” has already had a number of seasons on US TV, which indicates its “sustainable” popularity and viewability. The show and format deserve the success they’ve been enjoying, because the artists discovered and showcased to date are that good.
Yes, it’s a “novelty” niche for artists, but the range of techniques it requires is truly challenging and impressive.
Seen in a non-novelty way, skin art can become a significant form of artistic expression, because it adds to creative people’s ability to surprise and amaze.
In addition, its “disappearing acts” make viewers provocatively question the nature of reality and existence itself.
If a human can “disappear” into a shelf of canned goods, how can we trust our eyes and expectations to vouch for what really is? And, if “reality” turns out to be fictive and evanescent, why should we so stolidly and unimaginatively insist on making it the delimiting basis and fulcrum of our perception of life and its many possibilities?
Digital traffic
In 2016, www.abs-cbn.com garnered more than 3 billion page views, averaging 40.3 million users per month and trailing behind Facebook, YouTube and Google, according to Alexa, a web traffic data and analytics site.
Music channel Myx’s Twitter account has 5.8 million followers. On Facebook, ABS-CBN and ABS-CBN News garnered 13 million and 12 million Likes, respectively. And, on YouTube, ABS-CBN posted 5.6 billion views.