RAAK

What happens if you let a classical composer loose on the Internet?

Eric Whitacre is such a composer, and he managed to take the creative process to an entirely new level. This week Whitacre premiered a new piece called Virtual Choir 2.0 – Sleep, a major feat in co-creation and crowdsourcing.

Based on an experiment he did a few years ago, which in turn was inspired by a fan video on YouTube, Whitacre posted a video of himself conducting one of his pieces and invited singers from around the world to post their contributions, again on YouTube.

The selected submissions got cut together in one, big crowdsourced video. The 3D-work on it isn’t to our minimal tastes, and the music leaves us cold.

But hey, de gustibus non disputandum est. The fact that he managed to integrate no less than 2,052 performances from 1,752 singers in 58 countries is simply massive.

What’s more: a nice addition is the Facebook page that Whitacre created, to give the singers a place to share their sometimes heartfelt testimonials about this social creative project.

Whitacre was invited to do a TED talk about his project back in March, where he explains a bit more.