My current exploration starts last year with my final project for Major Studio II. Pitched as a mini-thesis, it became an initial approach to the current concerns of my thesis. I started that project reading my Statement of Purpose that I wrote to apply to the MFADT program. One of the main goals explained there, was to develop projects integrating education, music and animation, responding to my different interests and professional background: I worked as a film director in a production company for several years developing motion-graphic-based projects, I had been teaching design at various universities, and as a hobby, I’ve been playing music for more than fifteen years. It made sense to me that these interests that have been part of my life needed to come together in a common project, that would at the same time, satisfy my own artistic curiosity and become something meaningful for others.
With that goal in mind, I developed a project called Trinidad, a collaborative sound and visual interface, that allows people with no previous musical training to experience musical expression as a group. The limited time for developing the project completely influenced on the way I approached it. Since the subject was novel to me, I operated mostly by intuition.
This was extremely positive, it allowed me to explore a virgin territory without prejudice, with complete openness and sometimes, positive ingenuity. But despite this intuitive approach, I did some interesting research, and I found out that there is a large body of research around the field of collaboration and cooperative performance in sound environments. One of the most revealing materials is an article from the Journal of New Music Research (2003) by Tina Blaine and Sidney Fels. Collaborative Musical Experiences for Novices [1] outlines the main aspects, concerns and outcomes for developing collaborative sound systems for non-musicians. It became some kind of bible for me, and up to the present day I feel it is one of the most valuable documents for my research. Equally relevant is the book Flow: The Psychology of optimal Performance by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [2] where he coins the term Flow, a mental state of complete energized focus in a certain activity. In a TED talk, Csikszentmihalyi cites a music composer he interviewed regarding the state of flow around music:
You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.[3]
I have experienced this myself when I used to perform music with other people. Most of musicians know about the unique state that is reached in the music sessions: you are not focused on yourself, you are focused on the collective action, on the others, on the music. Your self-consciousness is reduced and the perception of the synergy generated as a group is enhanced. There’s a pleasurable rewarding feeling about the idea of creating something together, becoming then some kind of group ritual that–using Victor Turner’s terms–enhances the sense of communitas.[4]
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[1] Blaine, Tina, and Fels, Sidney. 2003. Collaborative musical experiences for novices. Journal of New Music Research 32 (4) (12): 411-28.
[2] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.
[3] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow | Video on TED.com”, n.d., http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html.
[4] Turner, Victor. The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995.