The ongoing multi-media project Art Assignment enlists professional artists to create unique artistic “assignments” and then challenges everyday people to complete them. One of my favorite assignments came from Bang On A Can experimental musicians Mark Stewart and Julia Wolfe who invited viewers to use the sounds around them to create a song.
The Art Assignment channel just released highlights from the “Find Your Band” submissions, and it’s fascinating to see what people created with the broad prompt.
My two personal favorites are this piece by yearwithfear, which uses a metronome, window sill, coffee pot, and street noise. And this piece by Y2Ksnowglobe, who writes:
As someone with several Congenital Heart Defects, I often feel at odds with my own body. Like, I may want to sprint around the house in the rain, but that’s not really within my capacity. So for my band, I endeavored to try and bring together my body and my mind. So my band consists of my heart beat (tapped out on an inflatable ball), my breathing, my pill bottles (both the rattle of the medication and the click of the childproof caps), my medical bracelet, and my voice.