Mr Funn

Write a reflection on your collaboration with your team throughout the semester. Address questions such as:

* What did you learn from observing or crossing over into your collaborators' disciplinary practices? 

I learned the most about listening to others and how to balance wants, needs and desires to fit into the composition. To listen I found where I could fit in my skill sets to offer a dialogue from the palate of which i had to offer

* What was surprising about the collaborative process? 

For us it was how close our ideas over lapped of wanting to use our work to speak to social awareness of the things that are currently facing out world and communities. 

* Identify any hurdles you overcame that might have been created by disciplinary expectations or norms.

 I think time management was key to us pulling off our project. We all had busy schedule being grad students. We had a chance to really figure out what the other persons thought process was not even being in the studio. We were able to check out other arts that helped tease out ideas for ourselves.

* What insights did you take away that might inform future interdisciplinary collaborations?

I think to remain open to ideas and not to get to attached to anything in the process. We can set things aside for a version 2-3 or 4. Another take away is that there is no thing such as perfection in some of these processes. It is about making work that fits that circumstance and space.  I think that is a great way to manage expectations. This also gives room for others to explore past their norms.

BPM YO

               This semester I learned that collaborations are extremely important and allow you to create things that you probably never would have made before. I also learned that I am not the best communicator and that I need to be more assertive. 

               Our creative process was quite slow. I feel as though we knew our goal: electronic dance music and flute. Unfortunately, that gave us a wide variety of options, and without a clear leader in the group we were quite stagnant in ideas. I feel as though the amount of options we had combined with our group lack of experience in dance music made all of us nervous about what exactly we should work towards within the classroom. For a while, Paige and I were mostly worried about how to make “dance music and flute” a cool and exciting project while keeping it challenging enough to give us a good grade in the classroom.

               I felt the pressure of making sure our project was “PAT” enough, and I feel like Paige thought that too; half the time I was wondering how to throw MAX at our project without really any creative experience in MAX at all. To be frank, I looked at all the other groups with a Kiran, a Sam, a Peter and so on and was concerned about how our group would be graded if we didn’t make our finished project complicated enough in comparison what the heck others did.

               In hindsight, Paige and I love to compose. Meryl is a great improviser. We should have jammed out. Our minds took ourselves out of our own strengths and tried to force us into a technician space that we aren’t that strong in.

               With all of that happening, I eventually freaked out about making sure we made progress and started to bulldoze the group. The first track we had was basically me making a bunch of decisions without asking for too much input. We threw Purplopia together and that felt good, but then I got worried about the tech of it all again and most of the work we did was focused on Listen to The Rhythm.

               Our progression was terrible, and eventually we had two weeks to learn to perform well two unfinished songs live and somehow make the sound travel around in a circle in a room and I took over because I was stressed out about failure. I stopped asking for input and just started doing. I could feel Paige feeling frustrated with our process. There were so many tech problems combined with our time limit and I lost trust in any hands that weren’t mine.

               The tracks turned out great in my opinion, but I feel like we could have done better working as a unit. I think we could have done a lot more if we got another shot at it. All in all, I learned so much about Ableton and the challenges of performing live.

BPM 4EVA

The end!

What an incredible ride this course and semester has been! I have to say, I feel extremely fortunate to have been in a group with AJ and Carlos. Not only am I happy about the work we achieved together, but I am so grateful that the three of us created bonds together throughout this process. 

There were many experiences throughout that assisted in uncovering more about my artistic practice and my attitudes in collaboration. One of the greatest parts of this collaboration was re-learning how to let go and embrace every moment. During my music degree, this was something that was really hard to uncover- especially during practice sessions or performing. I've definitely gotten better throughout the years, however, being around other individuals who practice this (like my team) reaffirms this approach. 

I think just the general notion of being/staying CHILL no matter what technological mishaps during collaborations can be a bit tricky  - especially as a techy PAT major - who has to make sure that everything is working and developing with the larger technological framework.. this was definitely challenging during "the Dante sessions". Shout out to Leith for all his help on this :) 

Another aspect of our performance that I am really happy about is how we utilized this space. I remember when I first went to the Davis studio, I was looking around the beams and speakers, and was brainstorming about the performance possibilities of the space. It was really cool designing the staging with my teammates - this is something that I think we could expand on. Installations always feel so rewarding because of the transformation of the physical space and how it informs a performance and/or social interactions. It was really cool to see AJ and the dancers do just that during the performance. It was also really rewarding learning how to build the projector mounts and screens. 

It was such a unique opportunity to take a brand new collaborative course, and I would definitely suggest everyone to take a course like this at some point during their degree, because you get to experiment and play with incredible resources including the space and other talented individuals. 

Go Team Pineal Gland!

On Collaboration

What an interesting experience.  Looking back, this couldn't have gone more differently than I imagined.  The process that Sydney, Spencer and I developed was very fruitful for our personal practice and the project we were developing.  I gained a lot for what I do individually in many of my projects, and I also grew into a better understanding of how to be a better collaborator in a personal sense, and in a practical sense.

The outcome of our final performance was very fulfilling mostly because of this unique practice.  I do not believe our intention was to end up with a product that we would have found such confirmation and fulfillment from like one might feel after composing a very detailed work, our intention was to create something that was informed from our practice that felt natural, honest, and authentic.  I am pleased to say that I do love our piece, and I find great satisfaction in what it became.  To me, that is an incredible bonus because we didn't want spend much energy on "making a piece", as opposed to making a collaboration.

I learned a lot about structure.  We spent a lot of time trying different forms of improvisation.  Using simple prompts and constraints informed me in new ways about how and what form and structure can exist in a improvised work.  We didn't dance as much as I would have assumed in the beginning, but many of these ideas about form and structure came from Sydney and my time in a performance improvisation class we were taking this semester.  In that class, we spent our time moving and dancing, but the concepts were universal to whatever we chose to apply them to.

In any future collaboration I think I have realized the value in talking about perspective.  For example, talking about how an idea looks and feels to different audiences really matters.   Something I am familiar with may look and feel different to someone that isn't familiar with it like I am.  This concept might seem obvious, but this was a hurdle we had to overcome together and I learned a lot from it.

I am so glad to have taken this course.  I loved the opportunity to take a collaborative class with my brother and Sydney.  I know we will continue to make more projects together in the future and this class was what brought us together.

THIS CLASS MADE ME THINK ON A PSYCHOLOGICAL LEVEL ABOUT SO MANY IMPORTANT THINGS AND I LOVE STUDENT PARTNERSHIPS

This semester was unpredictable and made me realize many positives and negatives faced while collaborating. 

I realized what little time it takes for Merryl to come up with something genius. Guess that's what happens when you play your primary instruments for hours upon hours every day. Computers take much longer to figure out. Problems happen. Things crash. Flutes don't crash unless you drop them. Often times Merryl would be very unoccupied while Ben and I trouble-shooted. 

Toward the end of the semester, Ben and I started having separate meeting times to do trouble-shooting. This does not mean Merryl did not help us with “tech.” Merryl helped compose our track Purplopia in the MTL with Ben. She also learned how to set up and strike a lot of our gear. She also wrote every flute part.

I was surprised by how SUCCESSFUL all three of us were. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure if our music would be “academic” enough, “fun” enough, “technical” enough, or “creative” enough. You would think that after taking ECM I would be way over that hurdle, but academia is terrifying.

MANY unfortunate situations occurred throughout our collaborative process. My interface broke on the same day Ben’s keys broke. I erased a day’s worth of work in Ableton. Nights were spent in Davis until 2AM. Even during the show itself, things somehow got unmapped, and Ben had to map in Ableton during the show. But it all came together in the end. It always does.

I took this class to better myself in collaborative situations. I do fine as a solo worker, but I struggle to voice ideas and opinions if others are involved. Unfortunately, thoughts such as their ideas are better than mine constantly flood my head. I have been told this fact about myself by many others. They have criticized me for letting people unintentionally step all over me in creative settings. This semester I continued to struggle with this problem. Even when I didn’t like something we were doing, I assumed I was wrong to think so. 

Toward the end of the semester, I felt comfortable pointing out what I didn’t think was working, but I still struggled to voice new ideas. What I did feel comfortable doing was experimenting with Max patches / Ableton plugins, designing cool sounds, and commenting on the mix. What?! The mix?! Also known as subjects I'm NOT good at! But what I specialize in, composing and performing, felt super scary to talk about with my group. This class now has me thinking. Am I scared that if people shoot down my ideas regarding composition, that means I'm a bad composer? Because if people shoot down my ideas regarding mixing, I won't care. I don't want to be a mixer for a living. (Does anyone?) The mind is really weird. 

I view myself as a composer and a performer, but I feel like because of this weird mind concept, I didn't do much of either of those. I updated the blog, set up equipment, provided software, designed plugins, booked rooms, scheduled things, recorded things, wrote lyrics, held onto all of the files, etc etc etc. I didn't do much composition.

Because of the type of collaborative work my group was doing, most of the action was happening on one computer. Ben ended up programming the sends because both of us couldn’t do it at the same time. I ended up sitting in the middle of Davis listening to the mix and throwing out suggestions every once in a while. This made me feel extremely guilty and useless. I felt like Ben was doing all of the work, but there was nothing I could do to help him. I would resort to updating our blog or setting up equipment / striking what we didn’t need anymore. 

Ben is fantastic at drums and bass. I am not. Because of this, Ben would work at home and complete portions of our songs. Sometimes he would continue to write even more on top of that. I constantly felt guilty throughout this process. At the same time, I was battling that dumb thought: their ideas are better than mine. Ben did not ask for my input, so I didn't want to bother him with my ideas. His were "better." It was not Ben's job to ask for my input. It was my job to shout out my ideas the way Ben did.

All right, I contributed compositional ideas sometimes, but they were always ideas that I was 100% confident about. They were ideas that I knew everyone would like. Any risky ideas I conjured up, I kept inside of my head. And if someone else ever had another idea in relationship to mine, I automatically assumed their idea was better and did not consider if I even liked it or not. (I'm sure I did though. Our group is crazy talented. I mean was talented. So sad!)

If I took a class already knowing how to do everything I was going to learn while taking it, then what was the point of taking it? I wasn't supposed to know how to collaborate with others before this class started. While in college, we're allowed to fail. That's not going to happen outside of this safe space. We can stay cooped up in our rooms for weeks, trying our  working on one school project, trying our hardest, and end up not doing the best but OUR BEST, and still learn SO much. Can I get a round of applause, PAT451? 

Thanks everyone. Student Partnerships rules. I hope to see this class continue for many more years.

Closing thoughts

What an incredible experience.  In the beginning of the semester, I was excited to work with Performing Arts Technologists because I felt free to come up with wild ideas and they kept telling me "sure, that can be done."  They did magic and all I could see was the illusion.  I was lucky to be in my group as Sam, Spencer and I all agreed from the beginning that we would allow ourselves to throw all of our wild ideas into the pot, let them cook for a bit, and then pick out just the pieces we wanted to use to express something poetic.  We spent a lot of time paring away accoutrements and delving deeply into a meditative practice together, allowing rehearsals to be spaces for inquiry, being and discovery.  As we neared the last few weeks of class, we looked back over the work we had done to identify what we cared about, ultimately discovering the work was about our identities and memories as artists.  

In my attempt to step outside my comfort zone, I found myself stepping outside of dance for much of the process.  Our big breakthrough rehearsal happened when we set up our gear in a dance studio and tasked ourselves with creating a dance using the same rules that govern the Ableton launchpad: introduce a movement and choose to repeat it, cut it short, pause it, or make a new one, thus building a personal set of movement samples.  But truly bridging the the three disciplines took a contact microphone and a piece of plywood.  By amplifying and sampling the sounds I made naturally as I walked, slid and spun across the board, my body literally became an instrument whose output could be looped just like Spencer's French Horn.  I wouldn't have thought of this in the beginning of the semester as it took an understanding of the technology and signal processing pathways that were available in order to get there as well as to make conscious choices about the way I moved and why.  In the end, the technology we used was there precisely because it was needed to express our ideas, no more and no less.

I'm very happy with how the piece turned out.  It is a perfect repertory piece as it is completely portable, even down to the lighting and cuing.  We could easily expand it into an evening length work if we wished, as the piece itself was structured to keep moving on a strict 2-3 minute per section schedule, just giving the audience a taste of what we discovered, however I don't believe we need to.  We are already working on new projects and I look forward to seeing where we grow from here.

Spencer.... Out.

Yoooo team!

First off, great job to everyone. It seems like a recurring theme for all; but it is truly amazing to see how different each project was from each other as well as how much they've changed for each group throughout the semester. You all were very inspiring to me.

  While reflecting over this semester I am realizing how scary yet beautiful this opportunity was. Speaking for myself, it was kinda of a huge risk to walk into a project with hardly ever collaborating or even knowing your group but by the end of the semester both were accomplished.

The word trust; is a huge thought for me. This semester challenged me to trust myself, my group, and the process. I am still being challenged but this class was definitely a giant stepping stone closer to the river. I came in not trusting myself as an artist, and i've realized so much about my potential. As long as you trust that your idea is valid you will succeed.

One thing that was surprising about our collaborative process was that we didn't have a "set" piece until the last few weeks. I wouldn't have asked for it any other way. For a majority of the semester we were experimenting and chasing ideas. It was amazing. I really enjoyed this compared to orchestra world where its set rehearsals, set schedule, etc.

Some goals or hurdles I over came, where learning how to express ideas and concepts to others in a collaborative setting, as well as breaking out from just being a French Horn player. Although I would still consider Horn player as a title I possess, I made it a goal to get away from that in this class. I also realized in this process how valuable and unique me being a Horn player really is.

Thank you again, to all of you. It was an awesome semester. I am open and look forward to any future collaborations we may have together.

Much love,
Spence

BPM 4EVA

I learned so much from this collaboration! I'm very lucky to have gotten to work with Ben and Paige.
They put a lot of work into our two tracks. My favorite session was the one in class where the three of us sat down and wrote Purplopia together. It really felt like each of us had a voice in the music that we came up with.

I learned the language of collaborating and finding ways to talk about sections in the music that we could all understand. I also learned that it takes a lot of inspiration/work/frustration/figuring things out to create a track using Ableton. Most of which Ben and Paige, as the PAT majors took on. I do feel a lot more ready, now at the end of the course, to give somewhat meaningful input on the production side of things and wish I could have been more helpful in that way. BUT now I know more about the process, and the collaboration has definitely  given me the understanding I need to continue along this path.

What was surprising about the process was that in the beginning, although I confidently put out there that I want to do flute + EDM,  I wasn't sure that I could pull off playing flute over a beat and still be able to feel ok about myself as a musician. And I absolutely can! And I feel that this is something I definitely want to pursue further. Thanks to this course I will now follow a more daring path than I might have were this idea still only just an idea.

Hurdles I overcame.... same as above I guess, the fear of being a joke as a musician by not doing serious classical music. That fear is gone now.

The insights that I am taking away are that a collaboration is an AMAZING, wonderful thing, and while sometimes it's not easy to articulate to your team mates what you're envisioning, as the process goes and you each get the chance to show each other what you can bring to the project, the mutual excitement about the end result grows. You can feel really proud as a team knowing that what you've accomplished together is way cooler than what you ever could have done alone.

Last dance... I mean post.

I am really grateful for my collaboration with Jeff and Daphna throughout this semester. I think we worked well together in a casual yet productive way. It left space for trying things but also a focus on where we wanted to be heading. I got to see how Daphna and Jeff built off of one another musically while they improvised, it reminded me of what I go through when I'm working with another dancer. They could hear and sense things that I couldn't and it reminded me that I may see and sense things physically that others are less attuned to.

All of my teaching and sensibilities toward individual movement (as opposed to trying to make everyone look alike) I think were useful. The surprising thing was that we ended up making a dance! I didn't know what we were going to make. I didn't even know if they were enjoying the improvisation I led them through the day they put down their instruments until it ended and they reacted so positivity. I was nervous! And also I noticed by the end I started to feel a little more agency to offer thoughts about the musical end of what we were creating. Not a lot, as Daphna and Jeff figured stuff out really quickly. But when questions came up about overall trajectory, or is this working or not, I felt I could input my thoughts more - or that I actually had some thoughts to share. I think this process made me a better listener.

One thing I'm happy we did early on what choose a path. I can spend a lot of time in the "discovery" phase, and working with Daphna and Jeff pushed me to move forward with a plan more quickly than I think I normally would. I think this was good. Sometimes the words "make something!" resonate in my head, as meaning and understanding about what you are creating can be expanded on in further iterations. I also liked that we went back to improvising as a useful tool later in the process for creating material when we got to our final section. I am looking forward to working more with Jeff and Daphna on my thesis performance and am happy that our collaboration was grounded in honest communication and a solid work ethic. 

Facebook event link for the final showing:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1069213663187695/