Take Your Creativity Into the World

In this world of technological revolution, don't just be creative with the work you're focused on. Instead, expand those creative skills to look at the bigger picture of the world for what is possible.

My founding moment for the merging of creativity and technology was The Silos project, which I was Chief Producer on. It was a massive project: turn old industrial silos into something profound from a technology and creativity perspective. L&A Design / Bloom approached me to “bring the idea to life.” They wanted someone with high-end creative arts sensibilities who could help bring a vision to this venture.

Their idea was to make it an immersive art museum in Shenzhen, China. My concern was that these silos were in an industrial area, and I thought it'd be a tough sell to get people to make the trip and engage with it. What would get people excited in general?

I told them to make it an immersive art museum / nightclub, and that was when the idea blew up. I recommended this for several reasons.

1. There's a natural synergy between an immersive art museum and a nightclub.

For a modern, high-energy nightclub, you want visuals, things that look amazing, areas to hang out, and conversation points. We could have all those things. On the immersive art museum side, being a nightclub gives it more of an edge. It brings some life to it.

The industrial location could also become an advantage. I thought we'd have more room for music, light, and energy there than in a location surrounded by residential neighbors. Shenzhen's warm climate also meant we could think about using the outside for much of that experience.

2. It maximizes the economy of time.

My job as a producer is to think about economics all the time, but also the economics of reality. An immersive art museum usually isn't serving its audience late at night. On the flip side, a nightclub often sits empty during the day. That's a lot of time when the space isn't doing anything.

With this idea, we could use the location for BOTH. Think of an immersive art museum running from, say, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and then a nightclub from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. The exact hours could change, but we would be opening up more of the day for the space to earn money. We could think about its earning potential hour by hour.

3. People loved the new idea, and it gave the media something to cover.

With something this unusual, there's a great opportunity for natural earned media. The media loves to cover new experiences, and a place like this would give them tons of material to help get the word out.

4. It could do excellently on social media.

There's so much for people to share visually on Instagram, TikTok, WeChat, you name it. Visitors could essentially be advertising the experience around the clock through the things they were excited to post.

Also, immersive art museums and nightclubs can keep introducing new things weekly or monthly. That means more reasons for people to come back, more things to photograph, and more natural updates moving through social media networks.

With all those things in mind, I worked with the team to think about how holographic experiences, VR, AR, immersive art, NFT engagement (yep, that was huge then), and some metaverse integration could become part of the whole museum stack. We ended up putting a restaurant on top, and ultimately the whole place came together in seven months. This was even during China's COVID disruptions in 2022.

The Silos went on to receive China Cultural Tourism Pioneer recognition at the China Cultural Tourism New Marketing Summit in March 2023.

Speaking of technology, I used my agentic media creation setup to make the video accompanying this post. Check it out to see more of The Silos and what the project became.

We all have to be creative these days with this new technology in front of us. Take that creativity into your own domain and into the much larger world as well. Things are rapidly changing, and amazing opportunities are coming about. Think outside the box and you'll find exciting things ahead.

Stephen