The Johnny Cash Collaborative Video Project

Though the Johnny Cash Project has been a darling of technology and visual artist types since being launched in full on Sept. 30th, 2010, it seems to be virtually unknown within the music world. The best way to describe it is a collaborate art project with the goal of creating a living, breathing, evolving video for the great Johnny Cash that we can all contribute to.

By providing an interface for people to create original still frame art, and then fitting that art into a storyline and allowing people to rate the frames, a video for Cash’s song “Ain’t No Grave” has been created that can evolve and change over time. You can also customize the video with different frames to change the video to your liking: to a more abstract video, or a more realistic video for example. So far over 250,000 people from over 172 countries have contributed frames, and the project keeps on going.

“So it’s kind of this virtual resurrection and memorial” to Cash, artist Aaron Koblin told CNN. Cash sings, “When I hear that trumpet sound, I’m going to rise right out of the ground. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down,” and the video fulfills that notion, demonstrating that Cash’s art can’t be buried either.

This explains it better:

 

Here is the current project:

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