The Johnny Cash Project: Create a Crowdsourced Music Video

In the Johnny Cash Project, you can create a frame for a one-of-a-kind music video that changes every time you watch it.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on June 21 2010

Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, is one-of-a-kind. So it’s only fitting that the music video for his final studio recording “Ain’t No Grave” is, too.

The Johnny Cash Project is a global collaborative art project in which music-lovers and artists from all over the world work together to create individual frames for the music video of Cash’s song. The website has more than one thousand images of still photographs, and visitors are invited to select a frame and create their own personalized version of the image. Then, viewers can vote on their favorite versions of a particular frame, and the top-scoring ones become part of the default music video. You can also select frames by other criteria, including realistic frames, pointillism frames, and abstract frames, creating a different music video every time.

The project is a fascinating experiment in crowdsourced art, but beyond that, it’s a way for Johnny Cash fans to pay tribute to his art by creating a legacy of their own.

“The Johnny Cash Project is a visual testament to how the Man in Black lives on – not just through his vast musical legacy, but in the hearts and minds of all of us around the world he has touched with his talent, his passion, and his indomitable spirit,” says Chris Milk, the Project’s creator, on the website.

Check out the current version of the video, or help create a new one.

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