Re: Self Produced Media

I’m very interested in how the relationship between music and self-produced media will develop. Obviously this has a huge impact on the audience’s experience with media. But also some artists are beginning to respond to this and encourage interactivity in their products. For example Beck’s CD The Information is packaged with a blank CD booklet and one of four sets of stickers. The consumer is then supposed to personally create their own CD cover. This is interesting because all the artwork remains in the artist’s personal style, yet it still gives the audience some creative license in the product.


Another example is Coldcut’s CD Sound Mirrors. When I popped this CD into my laptop I was delighted to find a free demo of the software VJamm that they created. The software allows you to mix and manipulate their audio samples. Each audio sample has a corresponding visual clip and these overlap together to create a visual track to the music you are creating (very cool!)...


These kinds of products reveal a shift towards a more active audience. Producers are responding to the rise in audience interaction. This rise has come about due to increasingly available technology that facilitates the self-production of media. It will be interesting to see if more artists will find ways to accomidates audience interaction in their products.