The Creator's Project

The history of electricity and music is a fascinating one.  Beyond analog vs. digital, there is also the debate of how synthesizers and other devices inhibit or enhance the control of a musician.  Lending fear to the hearts of many purists, silicon chips forged their way further and further into music production.  Today, however, we can breathe.  Though some personal touch may be lost on some sides of the equation, the expanse of our listening environment has become ever wider.  Besides enabling technology.  Today, musical trends are broad and far reaching.  The internet has enabled us to have as much access to rare soul 45's as the latest digitally chopped remixes.  

On the side of performance technology, in particular technology has heightened the ability to produce ever more complicated music.  Take Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms no. 6, a piece that creates the illusion of a piano making sounds never thought possible.  The seamless conversation between tape and piano brings new challenges to the performer as well but the results are out of this world.

This trend has certainly not subsided and historically speaking made a quick transition from academic theory and esoteric technology into an essential piece of the modern music industry.  Today from the synth laden indie pop anthems to Akon and Kanye's vocoder I don't have to tell you that it's is true. The most recent development is the way, with the advent of super powerful personal computers, technology has enabled the armchair musician to use advanced technology to enhance their creative experience.  Loads of commercial and open source digital audio editing programs allow anyone to clip, reverse, copy, overlay, filter, or even synthesize what we hear.  In suburban basements kids all across the country are recording their shitty first bands and the children of the iPod generation are using Serato or Ableton to mix their favorite mp3's, which for proponents of the creative process is cause for celebration even despite the shittyness of their bands.  Or take Kutiman and his efforts in making original compositions based on amateur Youtube videos.  Here a person is using the computer to share their craft with others, and in their attempt and further computerized mumbo-jumbo unwittingly become part of collaboration on a massive scale.  I love his work for many reasons but I most like how he takes everyday people's work and makes it into something undeniably virtuosic.

Such trends, however, have become so commonplace and prevalent that when I first heard of the Creator's Project from my friend Kaley, a collaboration between Vice Magazine and Intel, I thought little of it. But after thinking about it more the event as a whole has become more interesting.  Bringing together Mark Ronson, Phoenix, Interpol, Spike Jonze and other artists from a variety of backrounds this world wide venture features panels, concerts, screenings, and exhibits with the artists.  The event lends both new high brow exposure to Vice's dogged hipster veneer as well adds new vitality and direction to Intel's chip deeply established microchip empire.   

Vice being the essential culture magazine for card carrying hipsterati and Intel the inventor of the world's first microprocessor the two coming together says something larger about the direction music and technologies relationship has taken in the past decade.  No longer is it a statement on a conservative present or a deep exploration into uncharted territory.  The future is now as they say, and more than ever technology in music is part of our daily life.  A reason to come together, to learn a new program, to write a new program, to cut and mix as we please.   The Creator's Project shows in glaring detail how multinational corporations and counterculture have co-existed in the past decade, giving and taking from one another.  Computers have seemingly provided a bridge between the two, bringing creative and social possibility beyond our wildest imagination.   I am excited to see what Vice and Intel have in store for New York when they launch on June 26th in lower Manhattan, then the world thereafter. Hopefully the Creators Project will be more than just a fashionable technological exposition, with the excitement of progress, innovation, and the new social world it creates.  The same biting amazement of symbiosis between man and machine a la Davidovsky or man... I hope.    

A nice little vid. by "Creator" Mark Ronson...