A few days ago someone on Twitter (I wish I could remember who) mentioned cellist, Zoe Keating. I was not at all familiar with her or her music, though I’m a great fan of the cello ever since a college friend asking to be the test audience for a piece she was working on for her recital. Sitting in a little tiny practice room, maybe 3 feet from her instrument, was an incredibly powerful, visceral experience, that left me with a great love of this instrument.

Zoe takes an extremely unusual approach to the cello, or rather to what can be done with the sounds that the cello makes. She creates her music by playing segments, and using electronics to record them and loop them so they play over and over again. By doing this, she creates amazing layers of sound, and creates an entire orchestra from her cello alone.

Listen to this:

Now here’s a short interview with Zoe where she talks about how she makes this amazing stuff:

If you like this music, check out her website at http://www.zoekeating.com.

So of course when I discovered how cool Zoe’s music is a naturally followed her on Twitter. She is @Zoecello.

Then today she tweeted about a new band that she just found out about called The Finches.

You’ve got to see this:

Pretty amazing, isn’t it. And by the way, if you’re thinking that this is faked, I’m quite confident that it isn’t.

This was done as a part of an art installation called “Rhythms of Life,” at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. It’s an installation piece done by the French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

I know these are far from the typical music most of us listen to on a daily basis (me included.) I’ll be interested to hear what you think of them.

I’ve decided to take on a new challenge in 2010. I am challenging myself to be creative in some way, each and every day.

I’m doing this in a way that is slightly formalized.  Recently, I found the blog of Leah Piken Kolidas  – Create Every Day. I found her through http://www.sankofasong.com/blog/ which is also cool.

For the past few years Leah has presented this challenge. It’s a very informal thing, if you want to participate, you sign-up on the Creative Every Day Challenge page on her blog, or not. She provides suggested monthly themes on which you can create, or not. She provides a variety of ways to participate with other folks who are taking the challenge, or not. I think the best thing is, that she makes it very clear that it’s up to each person to decide how they want to participate, to what extent, and how publicly.

Some people may choose to blog every day about their creativity, I am choosing not to. I will post about it from time to time, but certainly not everyday. I actually think that unless writing a blog is a primary creative outlet for you, that posting every day about this challenge doesn’t make a lot of sense. The idea of the challenge, the way Leah describes it, is to do something creative. That may be working on a painting, or piece of music, but it’s just as legitimately cooking dinner, finding a cool way to play with your cat, or anything else that involves creativity. As I think about it, I think I probably am creative every day in one way or another. I do lots of creative stuff.

My goal in participating in this challenge, is to notice my creativity more, to be more mindful, and grateful of what I create. See, I think for many of us, we’re already creative every day in many ways. One of the best ways I know to amplify creative output is to notice the creativity that I’m already engaged in. Once I’m in that headspace of creating, often ideas just flow about lots of things, some related to what I’m doing, others not. So I am choosing in 2010 to honor my creativity by paying more attention to it.