Putting the cool into collaboration
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Walk Off The Earth share the one about only remembering one guitar for the gig.
A few years ago I was sent a great video by Canadian band Walk off the Earth, playing a cover version of Gotye's Somebody I Used to Know. Five musicians, all playing just one guitar simultaneously, was not just quirky to watch, the song was brought vividly to life (perhaps more than the dark original) by the wit and fun of it all. A few years later and a meagre 170 million YouTube views hardly seemed to do it justice. If you never saw it, it's posted CLICK HERE.
Then just this week, I came (somewhat late to the party) across Pentatonix, a five piece vocal harmony group doing the same song; this time without the guitar, but with beat-box and an extraordinary array of voices from very high to deeply low. You can watch, open-mouthed I guess, a showcase of their talent here. Which got me thinking. Is it the fact that the music produced is good, or is it that the challenge of the creative process itself that amazes? If these were just audio recordings, rather than videos, would we have taken much notice, or is there something in the fascination of watching great creative collaboration that inspires us?
I was reminded of the wonder of collaboration when The Tate in London curated a work of art created by the artist Kusama. But the artist did not work alone, she involved every single visitor to the exhibition to take part in the creation of the work [see Kusama's Obliteration Room below]. All visitors were invited to apply stickers: dots of colour, exactly where and how they saw fit to a blank white room. The more the collaboration was extended, the more colour was added, the more personality and variety added. If you have a few minutes to watch the film, or just skim through, the results are rather wonderful.
Over the past few years, I have designed a series of collaborative exercises for teams that mix the wonder of that creative process, but with the added 'business' fuel of real world competitiveness and pace. The remarkable thing is not just the resultant work, which is often amazing, but that there is also something deeply involving and engaging in the use of art itself as the object of collaboration. Way better than running over a muddy field. There is something in simply creating together which teams would do well to hold fast to when they return to the workplace.
Then this week via StumbleUpon, we discovered another form of artistic collaboration which is intriguing and strangely compelling. In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon (website link here) and developed with contributions from users all over the world. The videos can be played simultaneously - the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders. Sometimes, to these ears, it sounds a mess, but every now again through the serendipity of a the right mouse click at the right moment, it can sound rather lovely. [Think making Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden in your own office!] And by its very nature, every single "collaborative composition" you create in the comfort of your own home - is uniquely yours. So, invest in headphones. Enjoy.
You can play with In Bb2.0 here, or just browse the short film below.
