what makes a good collaboration?

[eXhale]

what do you think are the key ingredients of a successful and synergetic collaboration (between VJs or with other art forms), where 1+1 makes more than 2? :love2:

personnaly i feel most of it comes down to an acknowledgement, respect and honoring of each person's needs, feelings and desires, or in short (and hoping not to offend the materialists) of each spirit involved. i've seen too many collaborations fail because people were just doing their thing and using everyone else, like things, not living beings. it's an ego thing, and from my observations it guarantees no one will be satisfied with the results. a sad waste of creative energies.

[unjulation]

interesting number this one and something very close to my hart, what with being involved within A.V.I.T. and all that, i would agree with you about the basic priciple of every man for them selves will weeken and possabily destroy a group dynamics, and like you X i have seen/worked with lots of groups that have imploded/exploded due to that atitude - fundermentaly we are social animalls that live in small groups hence the inate desire for colaberative work with outhers

one thing that i saw was that technoilagy was doing was createing a space that our inate sense of self had dificulty dealing with was the "one world" situation which was actualy runing counter to our small social awarness hardwireing - which found the amount of info avalibal to the indervidual at any given time to much to cope with - it's only been a few years since we as peeps have had the ability to switch on the tv/internet etc and gather info about the situation from the outher side of the world (even thou this info is not neseserily acurate or it is propaganda - which in tern creates its own problems) but actualy whats happend as i can see is that we still work within that small social hardwiring its just that the people that we are social with are not neseserialy those on your physicall doorstep as it used to be - link this with the clasic perception of the city dweller liveing on there own etc you can see a direct coalation between internet groups - read social space - and socail wellbeing

interesting to note that it has been technolagy that created the socail set up we know, espesialy in the city space of self rarther then comunity and in tern the folowing tech of things like interweb that then alowes us to feel part of things again socaily speeking - bit of a circular experiance if you ask me

anyway this was not the first thing that poped to mind haveing read the inital question - which was even though i agree that to much self can destroy a colabrative project i would also say that to much "happy clappy social togetherness" can and does destroy the colaberative work as well

because it is through indervidual desire and dreams that push us forward to come up with something unique - it is then, surely, when the desires of the indervidual are then recognised by outhers as there own that true colaberation can work (dont know if this is strictly true only just come accross it as a thought)

the outher thing is because we are inderviduals and we are seperate beings, leaving aside the whole concept that there is no space between anything, then any colaberative product needs to take the deires/needs of said indervidual on bord, that means every indervidual within the whole and give them space to grow and develope at there own pace because each indervidual will come to a colaberation at there own level on numerios diferant aspects of the colaberation

so basicly what im saying is that group work is hardwired within us but it is also hardwired in us to be who we are as an indervidual so therfore the colaberative work needs to reflect both aspects

[labmeta]

i`ve worked on collaborations that have both gone wrong and worked wonderfully. But generally i think your right that its about respect and professionalislm

its also making it very clear what each of you expects from the project and how much of a committent its really going to be. i have found this mis-matching expectation and time committement issue to be the biggest collaboration killer.

-sometimes it can be best to work with someone who simply has differnt skills than you, so essentially you dont step on each other toes so much.

-i`ve found with some artists that when two of you have the exact same skillset, one artist can start to feel ownership over certain ideas, try and take control in what should have been a exchange. taken to an extreme i`ve seen people claim collaborative work to be there own and split.

-theres a whole lot of trust wiggling around in there somewhere too

[julez]

respect is one of the biggest things. Whether you are collaberating with an audio person or another visual person having respect for the other persons ideas and their abilities is the cornerstone to good collaboration. Some people hate having their visuals remixed live by another vj because they feel they are having their artistic integrity violated.

-i`ve found with some artists that when two of you have the exact same skillset, one artist can start to feel ownership over certain ideas, try and take control in what should have been a exchange. taken to an extreme i`ve seen people claim collaborative work to be there own and split.

Yeah this can happen and to stop it one has to make sure that in any collaboration, both parties input ideas so that the end result is truly no-ones.

[3YE]

I think it's a bit like frodo in LoTR

you've got a mission and you just have to trust everyone else is going to do thier bit. if they don't, you just gotta work around it.

I spent a weekend at the Nine Ladies protest site recently and saw an interesting phenomenon. there were all these hippy types having site meetings and making rules and organising stuff and saying what they were going to do.

and then there were the real protestors, who just get some wood, some polypropylene sheet, nails and rope, and build a tree house. no bullshit, no meetings, no politicking.

There must be a hundred tree houses out there built by about 10 people. no-one held a meeting and tried to organise a hundred tree houses. they just did it with the tools they had at hand. the same goes for the tunnels, concrete lined holes that go down 150 feet into the ground. this makes sense really, as there's no room for a political compromise when safety is the critical issue.

the last news report i read (today), it'll cost ?20million to get the protestors off site.

Now that's what i call a successful collaboration

actions speak louder than words. The better tunes a DJ/band supplies, the better visuals i seem to pull out of the bag. I do the best I can with the kit I've got access to. If someones not doing thier bit, I just work around it and know better next time.

This is all getting a bit negative. What I'm trying to say is if someones confident with thier stuff and I/we get asked back, If i get a good positive vibe, if the crowd cheers (main room) then it's a successful collaboration. I don't need to see the output tape back. I don't generally listen too hard to feedback from the punters, because they're usually too mashed, and the word of five party casualties out of five hundred isn't really a representative cross section (though it's still nice to get praise).

Someone who can trust you to do your thing without criticising, and build on it in a positive way, is a good collaborator IMHO.

And that's all i have to say about that.

[many2]

For me it is all about learning and pleasure.

Learning / teaching
I agree than most of the time it is better to team up with people having a different set of skills. This not only allows you to concentrate on what's your doing the best but it also gives you the opportunity to learn from other peoples experiences and abilities. Learning even on subject you don't actually plan to practice one day (like everything I learn about music) helps you talk with your collaborators : I don't plan to DJ or to play harp anytime soon but now I am much better at explaining to musicians how my work can be linked to the music and I can also understand more what musicians are talking about. Learn from Lighting designers, from dancers, from screenwriters, from everyone you work with. Sometime you are also in a situation where you can give back what you have learned, where you can teach, and this is even more meaningful for me than learning. When you teach something you actually have to synthetize your ideas and your knowledge to be able to give it to others, and there is a lot to learn from that process too.

Pleasure
Sometime it's not possible to learn anything from others on a project because you dont want to. You have to have pleasure with the people you are working with. If it's a political game, if someone is misbehaving on the team, anything that might shift your focus from the pleasure of doing your work to the displeasure of sharing it with others, then you know that no matter what nothing is ever going to grow from your collaboration. There are lots of nice persons out there you can get along with, don't lose time with unpleasant people !

Many-2

[eXhale]

thanks for the insightful comments :)

i definitely agree that "happy clappy social togetherness" is not the way to go, it's not about trying to constrict everyone to a framework to make sure there is no discord. rather it's about letting EVERYONE (including ourselves) fully express what they have to express. i guess this can only be done if people are on the same wavelenght somehow, but we're all different and we can't expect that everyone wants exactly the same thing, even if it appears so at the beginning of the collaboration.

and yes it also applies to larger collaborations, like AVIT or VJC