In 2009 Darren Solomon (aka Science For Girls), collaborated with YouTube users to create In Bb 2.0. It’s a crowdsourced interactive music website featuring 20 one- to two-minute YouTube videos, with people either playing musical instruments—everything from a Nintendo DS to an acoustic guitar to a xylophone—or speaking. The result is a DIY remix page where you can start the videos at varying intervals, as many or as few as you want, and layer them on top of one another to make your own musical composition. The site is like a unique collaborative musical instrument, as well as a testament to Solomon’s curating skills, because you can play the various parts completely at random and still produce something listenable.At the end of last year, Solomon followed this experiment with a new project called Marker/music, which took this concept and reworked it into an interactive musical map of Aberdeen, South Dakota, using Google Maps.He explains it as such:marker/music is an interactive sound and music map created by Darren Solomon, the students and faculty of Northern State University, and members of the community of Aberdeen, South Dakota. From October 18th-22nd, 2010, the group shot over 70 videos in the area, from which 12 were chosen to be embedded in a custom Google map. The project was inspired by Darren’s inbflat.net, and is intended to explore the concept by producing the entire project locally in a single community, rather than through internet-based crowdsourcing.The resulting map is a unique musical representation of the local area and a singular way to experience a city and its inhabitants. It’s just a shame more cities aren’t involved. You can read a detailed account of the project and some of the stories behind the videos over on his blog.
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