Photo by James Medcraft

The 2nd annual Creators Project took over Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood this weekend, sending its usually family-filled cobblestone streets into an artistic frenzy. While it was more serious than last year’s open-bar event, the sober crowd consistently raved about one installation in particular—Barney Clay’s reworked music video for David Bowie’s, Life on Mars. Shot by the legendary photographer, Mick Rock in 1973, the video shows Bowie in all his heyday glory—blue eyeshadow and matching wool crepe suit included. Now reworked by Clay—a well-known filmmaker and the husband of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O—the video has been turned into a digitized work of art. Bowie’s larger-than-life persona’s projected onto a two-story high cube, circling around an audience that gapes in awe from its center. This afternoon, we got a chance to chat with Clay about the piece…

ELLE: How did this whole thing come about?

BC: Mick and I were approached by The Creators Project to contribute something. I was quite overwhelmed with the idea because Mick has such a huge collection of work, so it was all about trying to restrain myself, the more I could simplify the idea, the better. I decided to concentrate on his work with Bowie, because he was Mick’s key collaborator, it just made sense

ELLE: So what drew you to the Life on Mars? video

BC: It’s tremendously bold and iconic, simple yet so strong.

ELLE: How have people reacted to the piece?

BC: Interestingly enough wherever it’s being shown [the reaction] is always pretty indicative of where the audience is from; in Paris people were scratching their chins in a very intellectual, French kind of way, in Brazil kids were hugging each other crying—it was very emotional, and in China there was complete shock, actually a lot of people didn’t know who David Bowie was—they loved it but were like, who is this crazy looking, amazing person?

ELLE: What does Bowie represent to you?

BC: He’s a pioneer first and foremost—from the very beginning of his career there was kind of an extreme plan of how he wanted to be and how he wanted to present himself. He’s by far one of the most influential musicians. That’s why we wanted to be sure we were pushing things forward, not just taking a great piece of work from the past and reworking it, but thinking into the future. Bowie was constantly reworking his look, his sounds, and his vision to be something new and different, so that was important to us.