Plant this seed, Grow a Garden

Plant This Seed, Grow a Garden is the culmination of a three-year-long exploration of communal creativity through a particular collaborative model that examines the effect external influences can have on the creative process. External interventions into habitual modes of thinking can be disruptive but, when thought of the right way, they can also enhance creativity by revealing new pathways, encouraging us to find more inventive solutions to creative problems.

This way of thinking is evident in Eno and Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, and also in Edward de Bono’s concept of a ‘provocation operation’- an idea this model borrows as a mechanism with which to stimulate creative discourse. This is first explored in an individual context, as Eastwood investigates the influence of external provocations on his ‘normal’ creative process. These insights then inform Eastwood’s investigations of communal creativity, as the composer invites collaborators from a range of different backgrounds and disciplines to transform one of his pieces in their own way. Eastwood then responds to these collaborators in turn by creating new works in reaction to each of their contributions.

Plant This Seed, Grow a Garden is a playful call-and-response that generates a collaborative model offering each artist freedom in their own creative responses and processes, while also illustrating the way in which an idea evolves and mutates as it passes through the collective.

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First-Generation Works

Eastwood begins by considering the role provocation plays in his own creative process, writing a set of pieces in which his creative process is guided by outside forces. In this case, a provocation could be the influence of an unusual brief, compositional technique or a performer-collaborator. He calls these ‘first-generation works’ as a way of differentiating them from the next set of pieces.

To explore this project, click on a point in the constellation below and a window will pop up to show you that particular artwork.

Second-Generation Works

This set explores a much more dramatic and complex form of creative intervention by initiating a playful process of call-and-response between a group of collaborators. Eastwood takes one of the ‘first-generation works’, Triptych for Two (2017/18), and asks five collaborators from different disciplines and backgrounds to reimagine this piece in their own way, these were: filmmaker Sebastian Lowe, painter Oleksiy Koval, choreographer Justyna Janiszewska, taonga puoro musician Alistair Fraser and poet Roya Jabarouti.

In this way, Eastwood’s music became a kind of external provocation on the creative processes of these artists, who each responded in very different ways. Each collaborator transformed, reworked and–in essence–‘translated’ the original piece into something fitting their own creative goals and means. This process was then repeated when each collaborator sent their reinterpretations back to Eastwood for him to respond in turn, creating another set of new compositions. The result is a vast rhizomatic network of pieces, each of which can trace its origin back to the original ‘seed’ that was Triptych for Two.

[Re]surfacing (2019) was created when visual artist Lisa Munnelly invited Eastwood to collaborate with her on a piece for a travelling exhibition called Invisible. Starting with Lisa’s concept of drawing with a special kind of calligraphy paper, Eastwood then offered Triptych for Two as a provocation. A similar collaborative model was then followed as the piece emerged out of a sequence of interpretations and re-interpretations of one another’s work.

Each node in the network below represents a different artwork, clicking on one of these nodes will open a window to show you that particular artwork. To see more information on each of the collaborators involved in the project, click on that collaborator’s name in the lower left-hand corner.