Don’t Be Precious is about using the life you have while you have it.

After surviving cancer and later meningitis, Harry stopped waiting for perfect conditions. His work comes from real life: the people around him, the places he goes and the moments that stay with him.

But so much of that world never makes it beyond the moment it was captured. The unposted photos, footage between takes, friends in the room, travel and conversations that give the music its meaning.

We want to build a creative system that gives all of it somewhere to live, change and become something new. Not technology that generates art, but technology that helps Harry do more with the real material already around him.

A new way for technology to genuinely support artists, culture and the lives behind the work.

Harry Hudson is a recording artist, songwriter, cancer survivor and founder of Hey, I’m Here For You.

His work has always been connected to the people, places and experiences around him. Music, friendship, recovery, philanthropy and real life all naturally move through the same world.

Harry has built a life and audience around honesty. He brings people into the process, not just the finished product.

His world is full of musicians, artists, actors, designers, photographers and filmmakers. That gives the project a constant stream of real moments, relationships and different perspectives to build from.

Max Angles is Harry’s creative director and a Los Angeles-based artist working across music, merchandise, branding, live experiences and creative technology.

His work sits between culture and systems. He has built creative worlds for artists and platforms including 5 Seconds of Summer, Louis Tomlinson, Coachella, Stagecoach and Goldenvoice.

For Don’t Be Precious, Max is building the visual world alongside the album, directing what gets captured and creating custom systems that allow the same material to keep changing across artwork, film, social content and live visuals.

He codes and builds the tools behind the work, including custom Photoshop scripts, mobile apps and modular design systems that take real photography and video and place them into designed systems with thousands of possible outcomes.

The entire creative idea behind Don’t Be Precious is about catching the incredible moments in life as they happen.

We create the material, build the visual rules and leave enough space for something unexpected to happen. The system generates outcomes instead of defining them — coded scripts place images, reshuffle layouts, change scale and position, and layer diary entries and written material into compositions.

We have already built working tools that rescale, sequence, layer, repeat and randomize existing photography, video and artwork.

We control the source material, the visual direction and the rules of the system.

The technology lets those decisions play out in ways we could never fully plan ahead of time.

We begin with one song and one working creative engine.

We build the visual rules, capture the first body of material and prove that the system can turn real photography and video into a music video that continues changing.

That gives us a complete first example before we bring more people, locations and live events into it.

Every song can have its own material, visual rules and behavior. One song might grow from the honky tonk. Another might come from Paris Fashion Week, Stagecoach, Harry’s friends, his travels or footage collected directly from fans.

Together they become one visual world that keeps moving alongside the album.

The system can eventually become the Don’t Be Precious app.

An Android app that opens up the same creative tools we have been building for Harry. People can bring in their own photography, video, writing and sound, then use the system to find new ways through material they already made.

The app works with their real life, their taste and their point of view. It gives more people access to the kind of custom creative systems usually built behind closed doors for major artists and campaigns.

Harry’s album becomes the first complete example of what it can do before the system opens up to the world.

Google already has the pieces that make this possible.

Pixel captures the material. Google Drive brings every perspective into one place. Google’s technology and engineering can help us build the system that turns it into something alive.

Don’t Be Precious gives Google a real cultural use case for creative technology where every photograph, performance and decision still comes from the artist and the people around them.