TITLE: Content Isn't King: What They Know but No One Teaches
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em-t-uzFZEw

The art should speak for itself. And that's what a lot of artists think, a lot of purists. They think talent alone should matter, but that's how you stay invisible. As humans, we don't just absorb a message free of its context. Okay? If you're invited to two weddings on the same day and one of the invitations arrives by email and the other one arrives in a fancy envelope on a card with some embossing, okay? The information contained is exactly the same, but the message is fundamentally different. You'll probably go to the second wedding cuz there's a strong suspicion that anybody who invites you to a wedding by email is probably going to operate a cash bar. Let's be absolutely honest there. Okay? We infer all kinds of things from messaging and one of the things that makes a message really powerful is not just who sees it, but in which context it appears. Do you know where people consume your art? Do you even ask? Not where you hope they listen, where they actually listen. Where they consume your art decides the meaning of your art before you do. Is it in the morning on the car ride to work? Is it while they work out? While they cook in the kitchen? Do they listen to your music while they're studying? The crazy thing about art is the audience experiences your art through environment, not through your intentions. [music] The people never hear just the art. So, what things are, therefore, depend on the context in which they're found. I noticed that most artists obsess over the music, what hi-hat to use, what snare. They obsess over everything but context. They only obsess with the content itself. While you're obsessing over the art, the internet actually rewards framing and so does the audience outside of the internet. The real world rewards how you frame the art, not just the art itself. Drake. Drake. Drake. Drake's ice man is on the way. All right, Drake. May 15th, we got a release date. >> A mound of ice placed in Toronto at a parking lot, so it seems. And all of the Drake fans gathered to try to break into the ice in some way, shape, or form. Mhm. That idea was executed long before Drake came along. He recontextualized that idea for album release. >> What Drake is referencing is like a literal like rip a just a copy of Allan Kaprow's Fluids, which was a happening, which was one of his art event experiences, and Fluids was done in the '60s. Happenings are really cool moment in art history because they predate conceptual art, and they kind of form a platform for performance art, but they're not quite performances, either. Fluids is literally the same thing. It was a blocks of ice melted. When you gamify your art and you include everyone, what happens is your audience becomes part of the artwork. There was a point when people used to dance to jazz music. Then something changed. It was like a big band or a dance band. He had a dance band. It was seven pieces. It was It was three three horns, a guitar. I mean, you know. Like a small jazz band. Yeah, cuz because in those days, you danced to jazz. Then you get to the smoky lounge and the drinks, the fancy outfits. It changed the way people felt the music. Context decides the meaning. If you want to learn more about context, I have a link at the top of the description where you can download a cheat sheet. It'll ask you all the questions you need to be asked, and it'll force you to think about the context of every project. If you serve me Michelin-starred food in a restaurant that smells of sewage, nobody will enjoy the meal. I think we can agree with that, okay? Similarly, you can actually take KFC, put it on a white China plate, and dress it up with a lot of fresh vegetables, and you take it to an organic food fair in the Netherlands, because they've done this, and everybody goes, "Oh, it's marvelous. You can taste the authenticity, right?" That actually our perception is hugely affected by context. And the Austrians would say, "Great. What's wrong with that? It's a really efficient, and I might add, environmentally friendly way of creating economic value." Cuz you don't have to make anything, you don't have to chop anything down, you don't have to burn anything. You've just got to tell a story around a pre-existing something or other, and you create economic value. Context matters. You make the assumption that if the house is dirty, then the food is not clean, either. Luxury brands use uniforms, they use scent. Luxury brands use lighting. Museums use architecture. Films use soundtracks. Restaurants use plating. The crazy thing about artists, a lot of times they'll think of context as gimmicks. I don't understand why. You know, I also try to draw from, and this is a old trick that maybe came from early on sampling in hip-hop. You try to find the thing that nobody knows about, and then you you blah blah and so, um, my version of that is with film, because cinephiles know about everything, right? So, um, my version of that with film is to to find things that I like in other mediums and do a film version of that, right? So, it might be uh and this this is going to sound really pretentious and stuff, but like I do that like uh uh uh uh a painting or whatever, not to make the frame look like that, but like to think about what it makes me feel like. It's not I don't know if it means I'm doing something new, but it's just my way into making sense of it all. >> Art has never spoken for itself. Context has always been a part of the experience. AI is at a point where it can create infinite content, infinite music. AI creates the content but can't choose what room it's in. So, context becomes the biggest advantage. One great example is lo-fi producers. Lo-fi music outperforms some of the best producers. Lo-fi understands context. They don't make better music from a technical standpoint, but they do understand how the music is being used, where the music is being used, and they create context for that. Vic Mensa is a rapper who now makes content, political content, on Instagram. He's in his backyard. He has an orange tree. So, [music] he grabs a piece of fruit and he starts peeling an orange as he'll talk about political issues. And by the time he's done peeling the orange, he's done talking about the political issue. What he's doing is he's manipulating context. So, you know when he gets close to the end of the orange and it's almost completely peeled that he's towards the end of his message. It just has a subconscious effect on you, whether you want it to or not. It's very simple but effective. Subconsciously, you're not even thinking about the amount of time that you're watching them because the orange keeps your mind off the amount of time that he's talking. So, I encounter people who are purists. They don't believe in context. They believe that you should accept the art no matter how they deliver it to you. That's the ego talking. That's like a sense of entitlement. I think they hate that perception matters. We don't have the luxury to think like purists anymore. It's a new day. We have to think more like hackers. Many artists complain about being misunderstood. You're probably not misunderstood. You're just presenting your art in the wrong room. From the time that you left The Yardbirds and joined up with John Mayall and company, your head seemed to change tremendously as far as your music was concerned. What kind of things were happening to your head? Well, I really didn't change as much as you'd probably think because it's not really, you know, an individual change. I was just put into a different context. So, I mean, the things that I was doing reflected differently, you know. I mean, the the context of The Yardbirds as opposed to John Mayall and his totally different. One is pop and one is, you know, was then even more earthier blues than it is now, the stuff he played then. And, uh, you know, it was just I just played the same things, but they just sounded different. A Ivy League group came up with the term designated driver, but they needed the public to take on this term to make it part of the zeitgeist, part of their everyday language. This term, even though it was created in an office or a classroom, the first time you hear it is in a sitcom. Allison, do me a favor. You guys have had a few drinks. Sit down. Let me buy you some coffee. >> Uh, thanks anyway, Sam, but everything's under control. Pete hasn't had a thing to drink all night. He's our designated driver. Well, I'm glad to hear it. That's a good idea, Pete. I'm not the designated driver. What does Art Deco sound like? When you think of Art Deco, you think of Duke Ellington. But, when you think of Art Deco translated into hip-hop music, you think of Rick Ross and the Justice League. And one of the ways you can really make that connection is if you look up Art Deco aesthetic and you listen to Rick Ross's music at the same time. Particularly the music that's produced by the Justice League. You're going to feel the natural It's a natural connection. That's a change of context. Like why did you choose him to collaborate with on this record? I chose him because I'm heavily inspired by German Expressionism. That's like his goat aesthetic. When you look at him, you could tell The reason why I think German Expressionism is amazing is because if you think about it, it's almost equivalent to how you think about like uh sci-fi. Mhm. You don't have any ghetto sci-fi. You don't have any ghetto Expressionism. Okay. That's what I could provide. And I put my take on it and develop something new, which is genre-bending and which is like forthcoming, new of its own. It's new in its own light. You take two components that are pre-existing, mash them together as like infuse them Mhm. and make [clears throat] a hybrid of something that's brand new. The great thing about context is you can take one piece of art and if you can control the context, you can change the perception without changing the art. So you could take one piece of art and you'll show it in multiple different contexts. Stone Mountain has preserved the slave quarters of the people who built Stone Mountain. But once you put a painting in those slave quarters, you put it in a room where history breathes on it. It gives it a different life, a different existence, and how we interpret it changes. Or at least the intensity in which we interpret it changes. Someone has convinced people that the only way we can view paintings is on big white walls. I never understood that. A purist will keep trying to improve the song, but a hacker a hacker will ask himself where should this song live? If you're already feeling the song, if you already love the art piece, why change it? Don't explain the masterpiece, explain the experience. Stop asking yourself is your art good enough and ask yourself is the room good enough for the art to be felt? Context is not a gimmick, it's a craft. Remember, I can make you look, but I can't make you see. Seeing is a choice. If you like what I said today, you can support the channel by being a member, you can donate in the description, or you can subscribe to the channel. This is Brian from The King's Hand. If you want to learn more about context, I have a link at the top of the description where you can download a cheat sheet. It'll ask you all the questions you need to be asked and it'll force you to think about the context of every project.