Designing Specific Projects Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration
- 1. JaredD. Tailfeathers Designing Projects Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration
- 2. JaredD. Tailfeathers As it goes, people have been collaborating on specific projects, designing and using the talents of the many to help a specific goal or concept become a reality for a very long while. Countless times in the history of the arts have the collective imagination of a group of artists, making work that has stood above the idea of one practice or a single discipline. That in many cases these ideas help inform the way that the people involved with these projects live their lives. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy claimed that the goal of art is to form a “unified manifestation… a balance of the social, intellectual, and emotional experience; a synthesis of attitudes and opinions, fears and hopes.”1 This is a perfect explanation for the idea of the group collaborative designed art project. The combination and communication of the concept that all art forms are connected, that there is a link between them all and they can exist in the same space and time together, instead of them all being separated into clusters as genre and art form in medium. Specifically that visual art forms similar to the different areas of study like Painting, Drawing, sculpture, design etc. as well as the art forms that are often separate from the strictly visual media such as, sound, music, theatre, performance and dance. Simply put, if it comes from the imagination of a person, it is art, that instead of the segregation of medium based practice, that everything can be used in a wider mastery of various communicable formats, together in a single place. Throughout the recorded existence of the arts people have been combining different ideas to communicate a specific idea. The simple concept idea usually starts with one art form and builds step by step to gather other art forms based on the same root concept. There are examples of this throughout every culture on the earth. In the Blackfoot and Kainai tribes of Alberta/Montana (of which is my heritage on my dad’s side), there are stories and ideas about the everyday life and customs of the people that are taught directly to the tribes as stories, characters, songs, dances and directly work into the way that they dress, their language, religion, their relationships with themselves, the people in their tribe and the natural world around them. These customs build into combining all these elements into communicating to other tribes and people as powwows, the Sundance, and other ceremonies. Also specific locations and structures are used to show the culture and the specific places also hold meaning and importance to the
- 3. JaredD. Tailfeathers meaning of the specific ceremony. You can actually see a bastardised version of this at the Calgary Stampede every year, at the Indian village or the actual rodeo show at the end of every night. But even looking at this watered down colonialized way of looking at this culture is adding to the collaboration, the talents and elements of the culture are adding to the concept of the entire Stampede production. We redesign these old ideas to form new concepts that can reach a wider audience. Another example of this collaboration of arts for a final vision or concept, is opera. Opera which is originally from Italy and started popping up in the 1600’s, is a “single” art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining a scripted text and a written musical score. Opera literally means work, an all-encompassing word that simply is explaining; “look at all the artistic elements together, as an effective unit”. Operas unite theatre; acting, scenery and costumes and often includes dance. Operas, like the ceremonies of the Kainai, combine the cultural elements and the various arts to communicate an idea. Not only are the individual productions a designed art form in and of itself, it also is displayed in a building or venue specific to watching these productions like the opera house. In ever part of the world there are examples of group shows and collaboration for the entire history of the human race. Many of these different shows work in a touring format, where the troop of artists go showing their specific practice as either their solo work or as a wider concept like; Traveling minstrels from parts of Europe and into the Americas, traveling collectives, members of a carnival, band and /or circus. These are all examples of the collaboration of disciplines that help the larger concept. But as these are another example, the difference lies in that these aren’t stationary shows, they are nomadic in nature and the concept has much more ongoing characters, shows and artists. These different representations also can include cultural festivals throughout any village, town, city, state, province or country. These specifically designed interdisciplinary projects might as well be called the culture of a certain group of people. A more up to date example of the collaborative conceptual project could be pretty much any project by the band Pink Floyd, but the best example of this is probably the project called The Wall, A double album written in 1979, with its 2D art like the album cover and posters, the tour which is an opera type stage production, including stage theatrics, costumes, actors, characters, stage lights, 2D and 3D elements written afterwards in 1980-81, and the
- 4. JaredD. Tailfeathers subsequent movie of 1982 a combination of the songs from the album, parts of the elements of the stage show theatrics, as well as actors and animation. The Wall traces the life of the fictional protagonist, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in post-World-War-II England to his self- imposed isolation as a world-renowned rock star, leading to a climax that is as liberating as it is caustic. A group interdisciplinary project that became one of the largest successes in the last century, and that still has a cultural and artistic impact. The band called Gwar also a collective of artists called Slave Pit Inc works along the same lines as the showing of the wall, except that the members of the group play characters on stage every show dressed in distinct grotesque costumes, with elements that help let the viewer become a part of the show, like neon blood and guts that spray out onto the audience staining the clothes and dying them to make an individual art piece that the person can keep for however long they want it. These elements help the concept narrative forward, which usually revolves around elaborate science fiction-themed mythology, which portrays these characters as interplanetary warriors, a concept narrative that is the bass of everything the group does, albums, artwork, videos, live shows and various other media. Art Collectives are the embodiment of the idea of forming projects in ways that the group of multidisciplinary artists can use each other’s individual ideas, talents and practice to bring stability to a chaotic single-minded way of showing art. The goals and aims of an artist collective can include an assortment of factors that help the artist, and ranges from purchasing shared bulk materials, sharing equipment, space or materials, through to living and following shared beliefs, visual and political views or living together and continually working together to the point of the collective being a community itself. Sharing of ownership, risk, benefits, and status is implied, as opposed to other, more common business structures with an explicit hierarchy of ownership such as an association or a company. The thought that the individual can succeed on their own, to communicate a fully formed and important concept in a fully cohesive way is flawed. The segregation of the individual artists, genre, media and practice is a hard way to fully envelope the viewer, an individuals’ strengths and talents come across more strongly when played off of another artist or many artists own strengths and talents. Singling out one as the soul person to give credit to is absurd and
- 5. JaredD. Tailfeathers unfitting, in almost every case of a person doing well in their work, it is because of their collaboration with a partner or group and using others input and ideas, that the generation of the concept is truly worked out and resolved. The single ego is never as right or as strong as the collective ego of the group, Superman though great by himself is still nothing compared to his work with Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and all the rest of them. Group led multidisciplinary projects are one of the most stable and communicable ways that we can interact with the audience and viewers of our work, whether it is in a single group show to a large festival art program. These are perfect ways to be part of the arts and culture of any and all areas of the world, a great way to stay invested in your own practice and a great way to gather more information, research and contacts for future ideas and endeavors.
- 6. JaredD. Tailfeathers Bibliography: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947), 28 The Wall; By Pink Floyd Urick, Bret. Pink Floyd The Wall Complete analysis. Ed. Nicholas Tosoni. N.p., 2014. Web. 3 Feb. 2015. <http://www.thewallanalysis.com/>. Design and Order in Everyday Life Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Design Issues Vol. 8, No. 1 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 26-34 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511451 Page Count: 9