The CT Collective was started by Michael Klobuchar using cassettes (remember them?) The group members contributed music by mailing a master tape which was distributed to the members as a CD. No one got paid for any of this! I found it a great creative stimulus, creating music to fit the theme and hearing how others interpreted it.
The project: Creating audio (musical / spoken word,combination, etc) using “spam” (or “unsolicited electronic mail”) email text as lyrical or thematic content.
What began as a simple administrative announcement on a Yahoo Group has become a CT-Collective Project. A person, virtual or real or both, by the name of “Teisha” started spamming the group with clearly “off-topic” posts. Users complained, and the moderator of the group took action. He sent an email to all stating that “Teisha is now banned.” Then someone suggested (I don’t know whether seriously or not) that “Teisha is now banned” sounded like a good name for a CT-Collective project. A few others, including myself, chimed in and after some exchanges, the project was created, and later formalized. The guidelines were simple: create a piece of audio using “spam” content as main thematic material.
My track is “Don’t Waste Your Wiener” – acoustic/electric guitar and spam phrases arranged and processed using Ableton Live.