Coachella and Creativity

Coachella, the much-publicized 3-day music festival in the desert near Palm Springs, was everything I hoped it would be and more. I hoped it would be a chance to see a number of current bands that I like all in one place, to hang out with friends, and to enjoy the incredible desert venue (the entire event takes place in a huge polo grounds) that I’d heard so much about. I’d also held out hope that the weather wouldn’t make it too hot to enjoy the above elements.

The “more” was the unexpected part – the creativity I saw not just in the festival organizers but the culture it encouraged in its participants. That’s what made it such a special time for me.

Its full and official name – the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival – does a much better job describing the scene, since everywhere you look, creativity and art are on display.

Take this contraption, for instance, which inspired numerous passers-by to ask the guy who built it where he had bought such a novel-looking tent/lounge.  I did the same, and he told me he had built it out of PVC pipe and unwanted fabrics he'd bought on the cheap -- very cool-looking creation!  He said he's considering making more and starting a business selling them...

At the “Coachella Art Studios,” there is a wide variety of free creative outlets for any attendee to enjoy. You can do a stranger portrait, where you sit across from a total stranger and draw them as they do the same to you.

You can paint a paper mushroom, or design and make a mask for yourself or your friend.

At this booth, professional hair and makeup people spent upwards of 20 minutes per person to outfit the group of wannabe punks to look like the real thing.

And that was just the arts and crafts area. The more official “Arts” part of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival lived inside the polo stadium grounds, where exhibits like this huge model of an origami crane, “Ascension” were flanked by “Golden Shack-Easy Time,” an alter made out of trash and repurposed materials.

One of the funniest artistic creations were the “landsharks,” which spent their festival chasing attendees around but never coming close enough to hit one (unfortunately, they moved too fast to get a solid photo of them). We couldn’t tell if they were remote-controlled or powered by some sort of sensor. But let me tell you – an encounter with one of them in the latter part of the evening was a site to behold, as much for peoples’ bewildered reactions to them as for the sharks themselves – a nod to the role of the participant in a work of interactive art…

Notice that I spent this whole post discussing art and creativity at the festival, not the music, which happened to be incredible – the sound, the performances, the crowds that would often lounge on the grass 40 feet from the stage even during big-name acts like Vampire Weekend and MGMT. And the fact that top temperatures remained a relatively mild 90 degrees made the incredibly well-designed and well-executed festival seem even more than that.