The Creators Project at Coachella
Financed and produced by Intel and Vice, The Creator’s Project has been amongst the most ambitious and creative marketing initiatives in America since it’s launch in 2010. In a similar capacity to Scion’s Audio Visual, the new Levi’s Film Workshops, and Converse’s coming recording studio Rubber Tracks, it attempts to give unique user experiences by aligning with the forefront of the creative industry.
So far, it has done very well. Constructed as a multi-year program and working across multiple platforms of technology and interactive media, The Creator’s Project is a program that is truly dedicated to showcasing creativity at the highest level. It doesn’t just identify leading artists across various media and formats, but also enables them to showcase their works in a way that is truly inspiring and appealing to a wide range of people.
One good example of this was seen at this year’s Coachella, where the presence of The Creators Project literally couldn’t be missed. Amongst many projects, some of their most significant installations included Interpol Under Surveillance for Interpol’s concert on the festival’s first night. Here, The Creators Project brought together a collaboration between the band, David Lynch, Andi Watson, HPX, and Wieden+Kennedy to present a “visual juxtaposition of the seen and unseen”. Through live manipulation by HPX and animation of Lynch’s “I Touch a Red Button” and track “Lights”, the audience was given an incredible live experience.
Another one of my favorite works was the light and sound installation Untitled by Jonathan Glazer and J. Spaceman, which was created as a physical manifestation for Spiritualized’s legendary track Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space. Throughout the festival, the anonymous looking tent had gathered queues of several hundred metres long, of people who actually no idea of what was waiting them. Curious to see what it was, I asked one visitor who said it was ‘like taking a journey through the unknown´. Intrigued, I wanted to see what was inside this massive tent and arranged to meet up with the installation’s architects, Bryan Flaig and Alejandra Lillo of Undisclosable on the festval’s last day. They explained “The sound of the installation centers around Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, which has been broken into five different tracks. Some are vocally driven, some are instrumentally driven. As the tracks go through the narrow dispersion speakers, the sound is focused into these beams of light.”
At the end of the interview, Bryan took me for a short walk through the tent, which you can see here. When watching, try to note how the noise of the festival calmly transcends into silence, before the sound of the installation takes over and the music then changes as you enter the different areas of light.
In addition to that, the Creators Project consisted of collaborations between between Animal Collective and legendary noise rock band Black Dice, booking the festival’s first ever bands from China, Brazil and Korea, and a special Creator’s Project Tent with works by Feng Mengbo, Mark Essen, Hujong Song, Lumpens, Miles Regis, Brian Quandt, and Aldebaran Robtotics. Besides the work at Coachella, the program has included The Studio, an international event series, a TV documentary series, multi-disciplinary collaborative projects and the video website, TheCreatorsProject.com
By Eric Welles Nyström