The Source is a series of filmed conversations about creativity in the 21st century in which the artist Doug Aitken conducts short candid conversations with ground-breaking pioneers in different artistic disciplines.

A New Type of Online Artwork.

The Source is a website created by multi-media artist Doug Aitken that features interviews with various creative individuals about making art in the 21st century. True to its subject matter, The Source is not a traditional documentary. For all intents and purposes, however, that’s essentially what the site is. Each video consists of Aitken sitting down with an artistic individual or group and discussing the innovative processes of being creative using 21st century technology. Interviews were conducted with artists such as James Murphy, Richard Phillips, Alice Waters and a long list of others. All of the discussions are laid-back and casual but extremely interesting and informative.

Creative Discussions with Artists of All Types.

The way The Source is laid-out demonstrates Aitken’s impressive abilities to push the use of multi-media elements forward. It’s easy to quickly switch interviews, to view subtitle text overlaid on the videos, or to zoom in and out of the clips. There’s no true order to the way you should watch the videos, and part of the experience is finding random clips and skipping to various points of conversation. The most consistent element is that each of the interviews focus on five main points and are organized accordingly into the following categories: “Process,” “Patterns,” “Chaos,” “Motion,” and “Place.” Those themes, of course, are loosely defined, so the discussions that occur in each section vary from individual to individual. For any one interested in art and the methods in which popular artists are pushing things forward, these interviews are definitely worth viewing.