Interview with Chunnel.TV Founder Matthew Berman

What Banksy, TED, and a global network of ad agencies have in common, or why the long tail is the shortest way to cultural revolution.

Today, we’re picking the brains behind Chunnel.TV — a revolutionary entertainment network for left-of-center creative content that acts as a global collaboration tool connecting underground artists and producers alike. A big idea, if we ever saw one.

Hey Matt, good to have you. Tell us a bit about yourself, your background and your brand of curiosity.

Thanks for this opportunity. I’d like to start by saying how impressed I am by your site, your dedication to Brain Pickings, and your general good-taste.

I’m Matthew Berman, co-founder and CMO of Chunnel.TV, an online distribution network for independent films, music, art, and other unique content. I first came about the Chunnel working as a freelance music producer composing tracks for various new media projects. That’s how I met Jake Septimus, whom I ended up interning for and then eventually starting Chunnel.TV with.

I’m originally from New York, but I moved to New Orleans to attend university. This past year, I’ve been to the Middle East, South America, Australia, and Asia.

I currently live in New Orleans, a city of dark whiskeys and dimly lit taverns, but our main office is in NYC. My passion is in music, guitar playing, composing, and recording.

What was the first inspiration behind Chunnel? Take us to that very first brainstorming session, the proverbial paper napkin on which you jotted down the original idea.

The Chunnel evolved as a series of informal discussions between Jake Septimus and myself. On one hand we were noticing the proliferation of digital media tools, a rise in the quality and quantity of independent content, and a soft-spoken backlash against mainstream content (i.e. reality shows, teen dramas, etc).

On the other hand we were witnessing a rising trend towards video on the internet. There was so much content available on the web that neither one of us really knew how to cut through the static.

The concept of “underground” is very murky these days. Even Banksy has a website. How do you define “underground” content in Chunnel terms?

We see “underground” media as being far on the fringe of mainstream, such that a majority of people wouldn’t know it exists — yet. The beauty of the internet, however, is that major communities can form around these seemingly niche concepts.

We’re big believers in the power of human-curated content here. How do you decide what makes “the Chunnel cut” and what doesn’t? Your editorial filtration system, if you will.

Basically, the content has to pass an internal test. We have a team of hip, creative and unique people, and if we all think a piece of content is hot, interesting, or Chunnel-worthy, then we’ll post it up.

What’s your relationship with WPP’s United Network? Does it predate Chunnel, or did they reach out to you once you were up and running?

WPP’s United Network gave us the money to start the site. Chunnel.TV was incubated from the NYC office of Berlin Cameron United, of United Network. Jake (Septimus) was working as Creative Director when I started doing intern/music work for him, so the relationship did exist prior to launch.

They don’t dictate what we put on the site, but they might have some pretty dope techie tools for us to experiment with in the future. We retain creative control and try to bring the user the best possible experience.

It’s tricky to talk about commercial work in the context of “underground” culture, but you have a Commercial channel. We love seeing that – it shows the complex relationship content consumers have come to have with creativity in all its forms. How do you think people’s perception of creative authenticity has evolved in terms of all the great work out there that still falls within the commercial realm?

Banksy himself said:

The thing I hate most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative, and ambitious young people leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

While I think most people find the majority of advertising to be nothing more than an annoyance, the stigma of ‘selling out’ has definitely dissipated within society. I also think creative authenticity depends on the product, budget, and client. People will give premium liquor or perfume ads more creative leeway than say Pine-sol, allowing the advertisers to do some really interesting work.

That being said, if an advertiser really gets pop culture they could create truly brilliant ads with nearly any brand.

What’s your long-term vision for Chunnel and its growth as a cultural agent? Any exciting developments in the works?

We’d like Chunnel.TV to fill the void MTV left when they went mainstream. We hope to capture the imagination of the culturally curious, and introduce people to art, music, film or other content they might not have otherwise seen.

We’re working with indie filmmakers to bring exclusive shows to The Chunnel. Our first batch of shows are Reel Review, Jamaica Originates, and Duncan and Eddie, and we expect to have more.

We’re also going to open up our platform to guest bloggers and our user base. People are going to have the ability to post articles up on Chunnel.TV, which will be put up on review before published. Also, we’d like to implement a lot more interactive features so us like-minded people could better communicate.

It’s going to be an exciting few months for Chunnel.TV.

If you could speak at TED, what would the title of your talk be? Will you get a Standing O?

Haha, I see you have a TED talk fetish as well. My favorite TED talk is Benjamin Zander on music and passion, so I’d like to perform in a similar vein. My talk would focus on leadership, the benefits and hardships of standing above the fray, and would end in a slow blues jam.

I think I’ll call it Electric Ladyland — unless that’s already been taken. As for the standing ovation, one can only hope.

Well, thanks for letting us pick your brains. Any last thoughts left unpicked?

Again thanks for your time, I really do love your site.

As for everyone else, please check us out at Chunnel.TV and follow us on Twitter or MySpace. I can also be contacted at matt[at]chunnel.tv.

Take care.

The New Orchestra: Symphonic Innovation Around the World

The world’s biggest concert, what Venezuela has that everyone needs, and why YouTube is the unsuspected shortcut to Carnegie Hall.

Today, we’re doing something different. Instead of the usual indie up-and-comer, we’re going back to the idea that the best of innovation comes from taking tradition and flipping it on its head. In music, it doesn’t get more traditional than orchestras. So, today, we’re looking at three groundbreaking ways of orchestrating orchestras.

HAMBURG PHILHARMONIC

Last Monday, the Hamburg Philahrmonic put on a grand show — in fact, it was the world’s biggest music performance.

Instead of their usual venue, the 100 musicians took to the city, dispensing across 50 locations, replicating the layout of a concert hall stage on a much larger scale.

Overlooking this grand stage from the top of St. Michaelis Church, Hamburg’s highest point, the conductor worked her magic.

The musicians themselves were connected with each other via live video feed, with flatscreens propped right next to their sheet music — a wonderful metaphor for the classical-two-point-ohness of the stunt.

Watch the teaser video to really grasp the brilliance of this endeavor and the scale of the performance. Genius.

via GOOD

GUSTAVO DUDAMEL AT TED

Gustavo Dudamel is known as one of the most exciting and animated conductors of our time. He is also one of the youngest.

At last month’s TED, he led a truly jaw-dropping performance that elicited a standing ovation like no other — he conducted The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, composed of the best high school musicians from Venezuela’s life-changing music program, El Sistema, of which Dudamel himself is a product.

The performance is nothing short of awe-inspiring. But, more importantly, it’s a testament to the need — the urgency — of preserving and advancing music education, of harnessing youth talent, of fostering the culture and the cult of musical genius.

GOOGLE COLLABORATIVE ORCHESTRA

We firmly believe collaboration is the future of every aspect of culture. And Google is taking the lead on the music front. Last week, they announced the winners of the world’s first online collaborative orchestra.

The contest called for professional and amateur musicians to “audition” for the 90 spots on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Entries came from over 30 countries on six continents, with musicians playing some 26 different instruments. The 90 international winners, who will travel to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall, were selected by the YouTube community and a panel of performers from the world’s most renowned orchestras.

You can see all the winning audition videos on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Channel. They are, needless to say, phenomenal.

The orchestra will participate in a collaborative summit for classical music in New York next month, wrapping up with their Carnegie Hall concert — which, by the way, will be conducted by none other than San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, also founder of New World Symphony  and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Here’s to making collaboration the new classic.

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Transform: The Journey to Creative Contentment

Why the only thing that matters is that it shouldn’t matter.

As creators, we all have moments of doubt. Sometimes momentary, sometimes situational, sometimes existential. But the “trick” about creative self-doubt seems to be in doing away with the pressures of measuring up, the perceived comparative value of our work, the destructive cravings for critical acclaim, and focusing on the creative truth of each moment, that “in-the-zoneness” that makes us truly happy.

Which is why we love Zack Arias’ short film Transform — an exploration of a photographer’s journey to creative contentment, past the trials and tribulations of doubt and the tortured obsessions over the work’s merit. And although Zack himself is a photographer, we think the grander message of the film will strike a chord with any creator.

So watch Transform, and don’t let the intentional satire of the first 93 seconds mislead you — it’s after this that the film’s true richness really begins.

Transform seems to echo the wisdom of our favorite TED talk — Elizabeth Gilbert on creative genius — and the idea that these pressures, be they external or internal, to measure up, to outdo, to be celebrated kill the very spring of creativity.

So with this sentiment, have an inspired weekend. And if you don’t, that’s okay.

The Secret Lives of Secret Places

What NYC rats have to do with Les Miserables, med school dropouts and photographic genius.

When Seoul-born artist Miru Kim moved to New York to attend college in 1999, she wasn’t officially an “artist” — she was a pre-med student interested in anatomy. But she grew increasingly fascinated by the city itself and began to look at it is a living organism, itching to dissect it and reveal its hidden layers. So she scrapped med school and decided to get an MFA instead.

In grad school, Kim became interested in the creatures that dwell on the fringes of society, in the hidden parts of the city. So she began photographing New York City rats. Eventually, she started going into the tunnels, discovering a whole new dimension to the city that most people don’t get to see. She connected with a subculture of like-minded urban explorers, adventurers and guerrilla historians, but somehow felt there was something missing from her photographs of these demolished underground spaces.

So she decided to create a fictional character that dwells in these places — the easiest way to do it was to model herself.

I decided against any clothing because I wanted the figure to be without any cultural implications or time-specific elements. I wanted a simple way to represent a living body inhabiting these decaying, derelict spaces.

This gave birth to a series titled Naked City Spleen, an allusion to Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen — Naked City is the nickname for New York, and spleen captures “the melancholy inertia that comes from being alienated in an urban environment.”

The project took Kim around the world in search of hidden places — from the catacombs of Paris to London’s River Tyburn to the 19th century homeless asylums of Berlin. Her work, however, is about more than just the mere documentation of decay.

I like doing more than just exploring these spaces and feel an obligation to animate and humanize [them] continually in order to preserve their memories in a creative way before they’re lost forever.

Kim eventually went on to shoot two films on 60mm black-and-white film — Blind Door and Blind Window — as she became more interested in capturing movement and texture.

Watch her inspired TED talk, for a deeper look at the artist’s process, her unique brand of inspiration, and the cultural resonance of her work.