Output-Oriented Endeavors

The following is an excerpt of a 27 November 2014 email exchange between Art and Will. It should be noted that, since 1 November 2014, all Art's emails have originated from Farthington's account.

Clay Shirky

I'm getting ready to do the Basement Songs bit and here's the italicized note I have in mind for the top:

The purpose of Basement Songs is to allow our fans to play and sing along with Arthur's Concert for Iceland songs. We would like to encourage you to send us any recordings of your own renditions to carltonfarthington@gmail.com. Who knows, maybe one day you could be up on stage with Arthur White!

Please revise the wording for that if you can think of anything better.

This, of course, is in the new spirit of (1) making people feel good about participating, (2) giving users autonomy, and (3) keeping the system as open as possible (Shirky). After the note, there's the embedded video of me playing the song, and then after that, there's the lyrics and chords. This is also in the spirit of Matthew 10:8: "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give."

I'd like to prime the pump if possible, by requesting that a more inner orbit of friends send in some of these initial videos. That's kind of like the "play within a play" idea, wherein we script ideal audience members to model the desired participatory behavior for the rest. At some point, that wall between the scripted participants and the passive audience begins to break down as the passive audience members become active. And, if their content is posted on the blog, they become the performers as well, completing that circle.

It might be a final goal from the project to be able to walk away from it having created some kind of feedback loop!

So who do you think you could approach about doing this? And what do you think the goal is? Honestly, I don't have a clear goal in mind. I just want to put it out there and invite people. I want to be more inviting and see what happens. So this first step is good in the sense that I'm not just sitting on the songs anymore.

But it hasn't come to fruition until other people get involved.

So I want to get Father involved if possible. I want to get as many people into my basement as possible. And honestly becoming passive in the whole process may be the ultimate goal. I'm open to letting the songs go their own way if someone feels strongly about them. I don't know if that is in the cards but I want to entertain any possibility when it comes to the songs. I think opening up this output when it feels right will improve things on the input side of the equation.

I'm thinking that my resistance to output-oriented endeavors has stifled my creativity to the point where I am willing to consider anything.