Sacramento State 2006 art history alumna Kristina Marrone showed the culture being produced in the 21st century with a presentation of her thesis, “The Twenty-First Century Tiller Girls: Natalie Bookchin’s Mass Ornament” on Monday.

Marrone, 26, presented her master’s thesis she completed at the UC Davis to more than a dozen students.

Marrone compared Bookchin’s Mass Ornament, which is a group of people performing the same activity, and Siegfried Kracauer’s Mass Ornament.

Bookchin made a collaboration of videos from YouTube showing how people believe their acts are unique and individualistic, but are really all similar, Marrone said.

She said a single mass ornament is taking place because the people performing a dance to a mainstream song, like Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” are performing the same moves as others are doing in their own individual setting.

This 21st century Mass Ornament is compared to how Kracauer looked at the Tiller Girls from 1925. The Tiller Girls were choreographed to perform a standardized move such as the Can-Can. Each of the girls looks to be individualistic, but as their legs and arms move, they are part of a “collective machine,” Marrone said.

In the 21st century, this can be seen with videos on YouTube. People believe they are being individual, but everything is a collection of others performing the same act.

Bookchin edited and spliced particular YouTube videos to show similarities side-by-side.

Toward the end of the Mass Ornament video, there are girls performing gymnastic exercises in their individual homes, but when put together the gymnastic moves are similar to each other.

Amanda Strack, a senior interior design major, said it was interesting learning that Bookchin took videos on the internet and made it into her own creation.

Bookchin showed some similarities between Tiller Girls and the Youtube video dancers that tend to be young, middle and upper-class females, Marrone said.

“Bookchin made this [21st century] mass ornament more noticeable,” Marrone said.

Marrone said rather than audiences watching the Tiller Girls perform in one room, the YouTube audiences are watching similar videos alone.

“Now internalized consumption of the mass ornament has changed,” Marrone said. “Everyone is watching separately. A modern day Mass Ornament.”

Strack found it interesting that people are trying to be unique, yet the videos are not individualistic.

Amanda Ramirez, a junior art history major, said she will not look at YouTube videos the same.

“When you watch these videos you think it is all different, but it is all the same,” Ramirez said.

Michelle Curtis can be reached at [email protected]