on the lookout for the cool stuff…

#8in8′s Nighty Night doesn’t re-define the album;
it UN-defines it.

as artists, we can do absolutely anything we can think of…
maybe we even have a responsibility to do so.
the internet expands those possibilities exponentially.

the internet is about connecting, interacting, collaborating.
the #8in8 project is a delightful, wonderful example of this.

8in8 now has its own website (http://eightineight.com/) primarily as a place to store and to share the art submitted by fans.

it’s turned out to be SO much more than what i expected, and i’m sure that even Amanda had no idea what this would develop and grow into.

this thing just keeps going and going and going…

for those of us fortunate enough to be in on it from the beginning, from the webcast, we’ve been able to watch the unfolding of a glorious and unexpected explosion of interactive creativity.

it started as a lark, an experiment.
4 people locked in a studio, creating an album from scratch, live webcasting the whole process.

the album itself, the 6 songs… it’s good music.
fun, quirky… both deep and frivolous, usually in the same song.
the rough edges show,
but they only enhance the beauty of this truly unique project.

if it had stopped there, it would have been an amazing, wonderful piece of work.
but it didn’t stop there…

fans have been making videos with the songs and posting them on youtube, mostly shared thru twitter with the #8in8 hashtag. (Amanda set a deadline of Sunday, May 1, for the “Fast Videos”, but i suspect we’ll keep on seeing more anyway, as well as other #8in8 related projects…)

some of these videos are just amazing. hilarious.
i’m not going to try to link you to all or even most of them.
if you’re interested, do a twitter search on #8in8: you’ll find them.

but to give you a taste, i’ll share 3 of my favorites. so far…
they’re all for the same song: “The Problem With Saints”.
it’s not my favorite Nighty Night song, but i like it.
wonderful to hear Neil Gaiman “singing”… it actually fits the song quite well.
and the lyrics definitely offer some intriguing and graphic possibilities for videos…

 

 

 

 

 

 

those familiar with Gaiman’s Sandman series will appreciate the appearance of Death in this one…

 

 

 

and then there’s this one, for “Before The Origami”…
about which anything i would say would seem to be hyperbole… but it’s not.

just watch it.

 

Because the Origami – 8in8 from Ben Jacobson on Vimeo.

 

 

i feel that the #8in8 project is a taste of what we have in store for us in the future, as we discover the internet’s role in Art: artists not only interacting with their audiences, but actually collaborating. interactive involvement.

we will see artforms develop that we haven’t even imagined yet….

will they be like #8in8??
no, of course not.
that was just the way that this one project worked.
the whole point was that they were creating music in a way that no one had done before. and yet it was also created JUST like all music has been since the first drummer banged 2 rocks together…

i’m tempted to suggest that we start using the #8in8 moniker as a term for a new art movement. an #8in8 project would be one that invites the fans to actively collaborate on the work: exactly what that means, and how it would work, will be up to the initiating artists and their audiences.

let’s have more projects like #8in8.
in other words. let’s have more projects that are completely different….