Forum week 5

This weeks forum topic was "collaborations Part 2." Luke Digance was the first student to present. He discussed the collaboration between a choreographer (Cunningham) and two bands, Radiohead and Sigur-ros (not sure of this spelling). One of the interesting points made about this collaboration was the addition of chance in the performance, eg. a coin would be tossed at the beginning of the performance to determine which bands music would start the show. This collaboration was more like two separate collaborations that combined to make one product, the link being Cunningham (choreographer).[1]

Next up was Daniel Murtagh, who's presentation outlined some of the many collaborations that Mike Pattern (Faith No More) has made. Patterns collaborations range from reasonably mild musical material to some material that was pretty heavy[2]. After hearing some examples of these extremes in style and genre I was left wondering just what was Mike Pattern's real style, I wonder if he even knows?

Darren Slynn presented next. His emphasis was on the reason for the collaboration, be it ego necessity, the chance to work with a particular person, etc. He used Frank Zappa as an example of somebody who collaborates out of necessity. Zappa, while being brilliant lacked certain skills for the projects he worked on. One example of this was when he got into making his own movies, Zappa needed to collaborate with someone so that his ideas could make it to the screen[3].

The last presentation, by Alfred Essmyr, discussed collaborations between composers/artists and DJ's. He suggested this is a way for artists to get their music out there and heard by the public. In this sort of collaboration both parties he suggested benefited even though each collaborator is doing his/her own thing[4].



[1]Digance, L. "Collaborations Part 2", Forum Workshop, University of Adelaide, 29/03/07
[2]Murtagh, D."Collaborations Part 2", Forum Workshop, University of Adelaide, 29/03/07
[3]Slynn, D. "Collaborations Part 2", Forum Workshop, University of Adelaide, 29/03/07
[4]Essmyr, A. "Collaborations Part 2", Forum Workshop, University of Adelaide, 29/03/07