Cover Songs for Mass Customization Services

Any newly formed rock band will inevitably “cover” songs by more established artists. It is a natural phase of artistic development allowing the musician to concentrate on developing their formal skills without the additional burden of composing a high quality original song. Cover songs also provide a clear benchmark against which musicians can evaluate their technical development. Cover songs work for three reasons:

Shared Experiences
Music defines generations, is experienced socially to a great extent, and permeates the culture that adopts it. It is easy for listeners to compare a novice performance to  a well known professional version and suggest improvements.

Emotional Resonance
Music makes a strong emotional impact on most people. Even if you are a poor musician people still appreciate the song.

Simple Structures
Rock music is famous for being “three chords and an attitude”. Learning a simple song creates building blocks upon which greater original works can be built.

Companies attempting to enable mass customization or personal fabrication should consider how they help their customers develop skills. Companies like Shapeways, Spreadshirt, Techshop, and Ponoko could provide offerings that help their customers grow as creators by utilizing the characteristics of cover songs.

In the Maker/physical hacking community you see this happening when artisans use a pop culture icon as the basis for their projects. The Pixar character WALL-E is a great embodiment of these principles. WALL-E was an extremely popular movie, with great emotional impact, and the central character is composed of geometric primitives: round eyes, a cube torso, and trianglar treads. A plethora of artists and designers have used WALL-E as a muse and based formal experiments on his iconic structure.

Companies offering customization services should think about providing “templates” that novice creators can use to:

Make “it” Perfect

A goal of many craftsman is to make something perfect, be it an Arts & Crafts style chair or an emotional trash compacting robot from the future. These WALL-E’s are embodiments of that goal meticulously created by artists with deep attachment to the medium. The culpture on the left was created by the editors of BrickJournal.com a leading lego fan publication and the model on the right was designed by Angus McLane, a Pixar animator who had worked on the film.

Help customers make a faithful representation

Make “it” Work

This artist was interested in how WALL-E was able to transform into a cube and sacrificed a perfect aesthetic match to make the mechanical elements work. The transformation is amazingly complex and it is remote controlled as well!

Help customers make something move/transform/react

Make “it” Big or Small

Often the goal of making a project based on a pop character has less to do with the character and more exploring the challenge of a new medium. A group of fabricators have formed a group dedicated to creating WALL-E sculptures at a large scale using plastic fabrication techniques.

A number of designers have used WALL-E as a jumping off point in minimalist design, simplifying the character to his essence and finding clever ways to represent the iconic character at a tiny scale.

Help customers introduce challenge by making things large or small

Photo credits: A1, A2, B1, B2

Make “it” out of odd materials, quickly

These food based WALL-E’s demonstrate that the creative impulse is not limited to long projects. These caloric creations reflect the spirit of the design while being prepared in minutes. A good benchmark for a well defined customization service would be the ability to create something out of stainless steel or hearty wheat.

Help customers introduce creating into their daily processes

Make “it” Fancy

Often makers will take something ephemeral like a scene from a film and use high end materials and processes to immortalize it in tangible form. This wooden WALL-E was a gift to Pixar creative leader John Lasseter. It is a great example of creating a novel utilizing exotic materials.

Help customers preserve a feeling in valuable form

This amazing steel sculpture is actually a fully functional PC made by a Russian WALL-E enthusiast. If you are at all interested in metal crafting check out the extraordinarily thorough “making of” blog post.

Turning Consumers Into Creators

Mass customization hasn’t had a home run company like Amazon or Zappos and a major reason why is that creating something new is hard. By providing a scaffold you enable individuals with taste and ideas to develop their skills and become creators as well as consumers.

Tagged as: art, John Lasseter, Lego, Pixar, Ponoko, Toy, WALL-E