on collaborations

.forum – week four.

Collaboration is the way people connect for common goals. Without the collaboration of minds and ideas, we would not benefit from the great(er) understanding of the universe we have today. All areas of modern science – physics, geography, chemistry – have progressed through the collaboration of thousands of exceptional ideas. Names like Newton, Halley and Einstein spring to mind, but ultimately it took the support of thousands to investigate and propagate the theories that have brought us to where we are today.

Music, like science, has grown in a similar fashion of evolution. Again the names like Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven may quickly spring to mind. However, their composition methods were inspired by the work of other people. Hundreds of them. Like Einstein’s celebrated Theory of Relativity, compositions like Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata stand as beacons, inspiring eras of inquiry for their respective fields.

It is of little surprise that in the modern day, a liberal age of innumerable musical 'approaches,' collaborations are more and more common. Not to argue that these are all 'successful' (or perhaps 'artistic'), as I am sure forum presenter Sanad would agree. Sanad made mention of Britney Spear’s tracks that include “Arabian melodies”. I personally do not blame Britney, I am sure she has little to do with the creation of her music. Moving on…

Much of the exceptional and significant art of the twentieth century is a blend. For Dave, one such blend was the Symphony & Metallica collaboration of 1999. Trilok Gurtu, presented by Vinny, was shown to comprise most of his artistic output in one form of collaboration or another. Will appropriately pointed out that to make a modern video game, cooperation’s require extremely extensive, organised and collaborative working models.

Over the coming weeks we will continue to look at collaboration. Hopefully it's something that we can do together and get some practice with, rather than simply theorise about.

This next one may come a little from left-field. Needless to say, globalisation- it's happening:

"Look at a globe and what you are seeing really is a snapshot of the continents as they have been for just one-tenth of 1 per cent of the Earth's history." (Bryson 2004, pg. 231)

.sources.

Byson, Bill 2004, "A Short History of Nearly Everything", Great Britain, Black Swan.

Whittington, Stephen 22.03.07, “Collaborations,” Forum presented at EMU space, 5th floor, Schultz building, University of Adelaide.