The line between technology and art continues to blur. In fact, one could argue that technology, especially coding, is an art form all its own. That’s certainly a point of view that we have here at Blue Door Consulting. Heck, we even have a programming poet. See? Art.
In recent years, the emergence of technologies that create more social and interactive experiences has accelerated the convergence of art and technology, and today we’re seeing some truly unique applications of technological innovation in the areas of art, music, video and design.
One of the coolest examples I’ve stumbled across is from an Australian band called Brightly. They’ve just released a new album called ‘Beginnings and Endings,’ and along with it, an entire interactive web experience that encourages fans to download and share the first single from the album, ‘Preflight Nerves.’
What’s so cool about what Brightly’s doing? Other than the fact that the site is beautifully designed, and the single is pretty dang good, they have built two very unique tools to help users access and share their music, artfully adapting technology to expand the users’ experience to make it more social, and to include some discovery too.
Documenting your travels
A site visitor can download the single from the band’s website along with a unique code. Then, visitors are encouraged to the share the song. As soon as ten people sign up to download the single using your code, you get the entire album for free.
Pretty cool. But here’s where the really swank technology comes in. Brightly developed an interactive online map that tracks where your code has travelled. You can go to the site, enter your code and actually see how many shares you’ve triggered and where. It’s pretty sweet, and definitely helps the band create a unique experience for its fans.
Reading between the lines
The second tool that Brightly developed as part of this project is something they’ve named Tweetflight. It’s a custom API (application programming interface) built on Twitter® Search that pulls in tweets containing specific words. Brightly used Tweetflight to power the music video for ‘Preflight Nerves,’ and the end result is pretty amazing.
The program dynamically pulls in tweets from Twitter that contain the lyrics of the song as their being sung, and lays them over the top of the video, which is relegated to the background. The net effect is this unusual experience of discovering a ton of sub-stories as you’re absorbing the song. And each time you view it, it’s different because all the tweets are new. It encourages multiple views just to see it in action, but also to follow how the sub-stories change.
Brightly has artfully used technology to create a unique customer experience that differentiates them from other indie bands launching albums online. They’ve really leveraged technology to enhance artistic expression in a subtle and purposeful way, and it adds value for their fans. If you’re planning to invest in any web development in the near future, check these tools out and consider how you could artfully and subtly leverage technology to create the same valuable experience for your customers online.
