Art and Creative – what’s the difference? Or is there a difference? Art is the expression of skill and imagination, like the disciplines of sculpture or painting in basic principle. Creative, in a modern sense (or at least for this blog post anyway), is the merging of a number of those individual disciplines; like graphic design and copywriting to create a billboard for example. In modern marketing, this leads to content; a physical showcase of the multi-disciplinary skill and imagination. The best marketing creatives come with many strings to their bows and can marry these to key message delivery in a million different ways. We must cherish and nurture these people; they are more valuable than we can imagine.

We recently came across a pair of French creatives whose work shows just how spectacular the multi-disciplinary approach can be when tied together under a given theme. Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne, known as AM-CB, constantly push push boundaries and merge various skills to create showstopping work. You might have seen some of their work already when their 2013 installation/performance “Hakanai” where a dancer performed inside a moving cube projection.

Each of their incredible projects brings elements of choreography, light, projection mapping, tech and art design to the table. The results are nothing short of jaw-dropping. Below is another of their projects aimed at showcasing the beauty in the movement of vapour and air. Taking elements of trapeze, performance, dance, light projections and a myriad of other skills, they created a piece of entertainment you cannot take your eyes off for a second.

The reason we’re writing about them now is because they’ve just started a Kick-starter to fund their next project, an AR book called Acqua Alta. The book opens like any other pop-up book but with a blank canvas and a box with stairs as the stage. Taking their learnings from doing previous large installations and figuring out a way to scale it so that fans of their work don’t need to catch an expensive flight to visit a museum or gallery they are displaying in, not only shows creativity but problem identification and solving at the same time.

While Adrien and Claire are quite obviously gifted, what impresses me most is their approach to various disciplines and refusing to be restricted by any boundaries. Taking elements from their own expertise, technology and innovation and constantly evolving or learning new processes sets all good creatives apart. There is comfort and reassurance from drawing on your own experience, but there is magic when you go looking beyond.

-          GC