Intel captured New York's attention Saturday with “The Creators Project,” a unique cultural event that that threw together art, film, music and 3,000 young New Yorkers into one cavernous, collective space in lower Manhattan.
Collaborating with media company Vice, Intel took over Milk Studios—an eight-story film studio and gallery—to showcase how some of the brightest young artists from around the world are using technology to make their creations.
“The Creators Project” is our most ambitious effort yet to make Intel’s brand more relevant to an important new market segment: the “Millennial” generation of tech-savvy young adults worldwide.
The event’s highlight was a surprise appearance by controversial Sri Lankan rapper MIA, who sang songs from her new album “Maya” in front of about 1,500 delirious attendees.
“We’re getting close to the edge with her,” Intel Chief Marketing Officer
Deborah Conrad remarked, “But the most important thing is that we are getting on
people’s radar screens of being a part of really edgy innovation and
art.”
MIA was just one of the young international musicians performing
last night. Also appearing were rapper Die Antwoord from South Africa; New York
rock bands Gang Gang Dance and Sleigh Bells; and the British -guitarist and DJ
Mark Ronson.
New York rock trio Interpol played early in the evening on the loading dock of Milk Studios. Though the event had limited attendance, the loading dock was open to the street, allowing any passersby to participate in the show.
Long before MIA and other artists took the stage, hundreds of young people began
to line up outside the conference venue, New York’s Milk Studios. Attendance was
limited to 3,000 people—yet more than 10,000 people sent in applications to
attend. One twenty-something Google employee told me, “All my friends wanted to
go to this. I was the only one who got in.”
Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Conrad, left, and John Galvin, director of
partner marketing, led Intel’s participation in The Creators Project. Here
they’re standing in front of one of the first things visitors saw when they
entered the venue: a bank of more than a dozen Intel-powered laptops. Attendees
were free to use them to peruse the artistic line-up, and to communicate with
their friends via email, Twitter, Facebook or any number of social media
platforms.
Though Intel was the sponsor of the event, visual branding was kept to a minimum. “We’re really trying not to hit people over the head with marketing hype,” said Abigail Pontzer (above, left) with Intel’s Corporate Marketing team—herself part of the “Millennial” demographic. “But people can see that Intel is the technology used to make the art and music.”
For example, scattered throughout Milk Studios were large HP TouchSmart PCs.
The touch interface made it easy to find information about the artists at the
Creators Project. The colorful computer kiosks themselves were designed by
visual artist Takashi Murata, who said he uses computers to come up with new
visual textures and colors that would be impossible to do with standard artistic
tools.
One of the most intriguing installations at the conference was a participatory
art project called “The Digital Flesh” by an artist collective known as Radical
Friend, widely known for their music videos.
Pontzer described it this way: “You enter this giant cone. Then your image is scanned in 3D, using a desktop PC. Then the image is uploaded to this ‘holographic being’ that includes all the scans, that you can see online.”
Once the installation has travelled around the world—next stop, London, followed by Sao Paulo, Seoul, and Beijing the completed digital “being” will be unveiled at a “digital séance” that will be part of a three-day finale in Beijing later this year.
Conrad and Vice Founder Shane Smith touch a light sculpture by U.K art and
design collective United Visual Artists. Consisting of three huge panels with
thousands of computer-controlled LEDs and a concert-quality sound system, the
sounds and lights change in reaction to movement and touch of viewers in the
room.
Intel worked with Smith’s team for months on the Creator’s Project. After taking in the whole experience, Conrad said, “This event has exceeded our expectations by far. We’re hitting exactly the demographic we were looking for, and connecting young people to the experience of making art, while using our chips. That’s key—it’s not about the chip, it’s the experience you get from it.”
Down the hall, thousands of lights float, changing colors in complex patterns. Muti Randolph’s Deep Screen was a 3D installation using 6,144 animated light spheres, controlled by his computer. The installation was big enough to walk into and get immersed in the light.
What’s an “art happening” without celebrities? Here film actor Josh Hartnett,
center, poses with Intel’s Arlene Villaneuva, Rebecca Brown and Kimberly Swank,
of Corporate Marketing, as well as Arjun Metre of SMG.
Hartnett observed, “The way the artists are using technology is really interesting. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, but it’s all very cool.”