COWS IN JACKETS Speech on Intercreativity Cannes Advertising Festival 2010

1. INTERCREATIVITY
The Source Of Contemporary City Branding
JUNE 2010

2. Who’s behind COWS IN JACKETS?
Daniela Krautsack – Miss Ambient Media

4. COWS IN JACKETS (CIJ) Kick‐Off 2005
2005 ‐ 2009: 450 expert interviews and 600 street interviews in 40 cities
to explore ambient & unconventional media
2007/2008: Development of TV documentary. Sept 2008: Broadcast on Austrian National TV.
March 2010: Broadcast on Arabian TV.
Teaser film on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iU2RkvY1Z0

5. SK
S Collection & analyses of best‐in‐class
T A
CIJ OOH & ambient campaigns

6. SK
S Development and execution of
T A
CIJ unconventional campaigns

7. SK
S Discovery of new technologies
T A
CIJ & global media trends

8. S Sharing visionary thoughts about the
A SK
T
CIJ future of our public space with experts

9. Media perception
throughout the Mid 90s
The Mid 90‘s The Mid 00‘s Prediction Mid 10‘s

10. Media perception
throughout the Mid 90s
What‘s next?

11. s
ive Making citizens aware of the
at
iti
in visual pollution in our urban space
A RT
Artists make citizens aware that they’re flooded with a clutter of messages they don’t need.
What is the urban space worth without messages?

12.
CAL
L ITI ives Clean city laws
PO itiat
in
City officials will reduce the ‘conventional’ advertising formats – it is imperative to think of clever,
sustainable and community‐friendly alternatives.

13. Dense cities in 2000

14. Forecast of dense cities in 2015
How can we change the urban space in our metropolises of the future?
Regions and cities with a high amount of creative professionals “exercise” in transformation processes.
They bring the “greater world” into the region and offer its population wealth through cultural and
intellectual nourishment. Thus flexibility and innovation increase as well as the number of self‐employed
persons, the pessimism about the future decreases, which results in an improved “mental quality of life”,
one of the main success factors for the future.

15. One answer to the industry’s constant search for fresh
innovative ‘creativeness’ :
INTERCREATIVITY

16. What is it?
INTERCREATIVITY describes cross‐discipline working of creative
professionals in the fields of art, design, fashion, music, multimedia,
architecture and so on. Cows in Jackets believes that ambitious intercreative
projects that unite ingenious minds of different areas or those breaking new
ground through the development of innovative hybrid art forms represent
the source for contemporary and future city branding.
Text becomes sound, words begin to fly and fashion leaves the catwalk for
the theatre stage. Traditional communication is, in Cows in Jackets’ belief, no
longer appropriate to meet certain client’s needs. The new way of describing
creativity builds on diversity, on contrasts and friction.

17. The following case studies will demonstrate
the collaborative work between creatives
from different fields

18. Miuccia Prada's costume designs for the
New York Metropolitan Opera

19. “You are not collaborating with the horse
when you tie it to the front of your carriage”
Should the
involvement of both
partners in a creative
process be
simultaneous and
parallel throughout the
project's development
from beginning to end
‐ rather than a simple
and convenient
overlap?

20. The History of intercreative work
• Collaborative practice across different creative disciplines is of course
nothing recent. On the contrary, it is the distinctions between the
different disciplines that are in fact new. For centuries, there was a
complete non‐differentiation. Artists of the Renaissance such as Bernini
and Michelangelo would justifiably refer to themselves as architects,
sculptors and painters.
• The division of art and architecture is as young as the 18th century, when
each was awarded its own status in the European academies. Before this
split, it did not make sense to speak of any sort of dialogue between the
two ‐ it was routine and expected. Skills and disciplines were considered
to be interchangeable.

21. Gian Lorenzo Bernini

22. Michaelangelo

23. Arts & Crafts movement of
William Morris

24. Wiener Werkstätte

25. Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes

26. Bauhaus

27. Surrealism

28. De Stijl

29. Fluxus

30. Representatives of collaborative practices
• There have been many outstanding collaborative practices within the last
150 years. The Arts & Crafts movement of William Morris, the Wiener
Werkstätte, Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, the Bauhaus, Surrealism, De
Stijl and Fluxus all questioned the notion of division between creative
disciplines and advocated a revolutionary dialogue between them.
• The socio‐political and cultural forces that allowed them each to flourish
in the first place are as crucial to their understanding as is the manner in
which they each eventually perished.
• Where did the energy come from, why was it abandoned, and what was it
abandoned for? In several of the cases, it can be said simply that they
were too early, and too ahead of their time to survive.
Analysis by Jaspar Sharp, Curator in Vienna

31. Robert Rauschenberg‘s Open Score
Technology + Engineering

32. Robert Rauschenberg‘s Open Score
Technology + Engineering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZeZNnW57M

33. Herzog & De Meuron
Architecture
The architects Herzog & De Meuron, said:
"We have to admit, on the strength of experience, that artists are usually more
interesting than architects. The artist places contemporary problems at the heart
of his activity, whereas the architect tends to find these embarrassing,
inconvenient, undesirable even."

34. The Snow Show
Art + Architecture
Among the most established intercreative relationships is that between artist and architect.

35. The Snow Show
Art + Architecture
Slide meeting by Carsten Hoeller, Todd
Williams and Billie Tsien
Penal colony by Yoko one and Arata isozaki
Looking Glass by Kiki Smith and Lebbeus Woods

36. Literature + Art
The relationship between author Paul Auster and
artist Sophie Calle is found in their piece Suite
Venetienne in which Calle followed a complete
stranger all the way to Venice.
Calle responded to Auster's initial appropriation
by inviting him to write a new series of
'instructions' for her to act out.

37. Literature + Art
Collected in the volume Gotham Handbook, the
Auster & Calle include the challenge to claim for
herself a piece of public property in New York City
and maintain it over a period of time.
Calle's response was to decorate a telephone booth
on the corner of Greenwich and Harrison streets in
Manhattan with a note pad, a bottle of water, a
pack of cigarettes, flowers, cash, and other items.
Every day, she would clean the booth and
restocked the items, until the telephone company
removed and discarded them.
At turns witty and serious, it is an example of an
archival creative collaboration that challenged and
rewarded both participants.

38. Art + Music + Media
An even more open collaboration occurred in
1996 with the piece Graffiti Composition by artist
Christian Marclay. During a month‐long sound
festival in Berlin, Marclay plastered more than
five thousand blank musical notation sheets in
public spaces throughout the city.
Members of the public filled them in with standard musical notations as well as scribbles,
drawings, and random marks. Marclay then photographed the graffitied sheets, selected 150
from the group, and compiled them into a book to create a musical score.

39. Mobile Art Container
Fashion + Architecture + Art
The Mobile Art Pavilion for Chanel was a traveling art space designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The
pavilion, commissioned by Chanel head designer Karl Lagerfeld hosted an exhibition of artworks by
20 artists. All artworks were inspired by Chanel’s quilted iconic 2.55 handbag. The project was
unveiled at the Venice Art Biennale 2007. The 700m² pavilion visited Hong Kong, Tokyo and New
York’s Central Park.

40. Mobile Art Container
Fashion + Architecture + Art

41. City Branding – Iconic Landmark
Times Square in NEW YORK

42. Luci d‘Artista
Light Installations

43. The Lincoln Center – a platform for
intercreative projects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yust‐
Bq2xw&feature=player_embedded

44. The Lincoln Center – a platform for
intercreative projects

45. Art + Retail
The Japanese artist
Tokujin Yoshioka
designed the window
display for Hermés in
Tokyo last year.
What was it?
A video installation which the artist explains like this: “I intended to express a hidden
presence of a person. I created a design where one can perceive someone behind the
scarves as if life were being breathed into them. The window is designed with an image of
a woman projected onto a monitor. The scarf softly sways in the air in response to the
woman’s blow.” The installation reflects a gentle antipole to the loudness of today’s mass
media and conventional ’slogan‐screaming’ advertising industry.

46. Art + Retail
One of Paris' biggest department stores, Les Galeries Lafayette, invited artist & film director David
Lynch to design 11 of their store windows which he based on the theme Machines, Abstraction and
Women. This one, titled Woman with a Dream, featured a fully functional model train that drove non‐
stop along the tracks.

47. Wine + Fashion + Art
Collaboration between Invivo
Wines and Zambesi fashion house

48. Wine + Fashion + Art
Invivo invited Zambesi to design its wine
label, wine packaging and business apparel
Invivo collaborates with Zambesi and Air
New Zealand to support international
artists’ exhibitions, fashion shows and
related wine promotions for the trade and
customer market development around the
world. Promotion through:
www.invivowines.com facebook, twitter,
YouTube and flickr. Served on all Air New
Zealand international flights. Cooperation
with 53rd Venice Biennale, Italy, 2009.
Example provided by Curator Jillian De Beer (New Zealand)

49. Intercreative education
@ MIT Media Lab
Interactive Wallpaper
This project experiments with interactive wallpaper that can be programmed to monitor its
environment, control lighting and sound, and generally serve as a beautiful and unobtrusive way to
enrich environments with computation.
Run your hand across this wallpaper to turn on a lamp, play music, or send a message to a friend. The
wallpaper is flat, constructed entirely from paper and paint and can be paired with a paper computing
kit whose pieces serve as sensors, lamps, network interfaces, and interactive decorations.

50. Intercreative education
@ Harvard – Graduate School of Design

51. Some questions to ask
• As much as some of the larger, more established artist studios are
beginning to employ architects, engineers, animators and graphic
designers as a matter of routine, should we, as members of the
advertising industry, not also start to work in this intercreative mode?
• Should we look beyond the creative arts to even forge collaborations with
scientists, astronomers, doctors, cartographers, philosophers and
environmentalists?
• And ‐ will these kind of collaborations sell diapers, burgers and chewing
gums for the companies that hire us?

52. Intercreativity works on 2 words:
WHAT IF…?
… there was some urban space that you could design? How
would it look like? Who would you invite to collaborate?

53. Get in contact if you’re
interested to join the COWS
IN JACKETS ‘Creative Cloud
Company’ collaborative.
dk@cowsinjackets.com