Process

The process of creating our piece has been different in many ways for me from other collaborations I have participated in. It was really cool to agree on wanting to incorporate improvisation into our piece, but then recording our improvs and picking out parts we thought stood out and using those moments as a framework for future improv. The inclusion of this aspect of the piece as a whole directed our process and helped us focus on other parts of the piece. This really helped streamline thoughts by narrowing down how we were going to play, but still allowing room for improvisation.

Definitely a big difference in process strategy for me within this group is our generation of ideas. Usually I like to brainstorm for quite some time and maybe come up with many ideas, only a few of which I might think are strong, and stick with one idea and really develop what that single idea has to offer. Our group has done that in a very broad sense, but we really have tended to say "yes" to many many ideas and continue to add things to our performance. I wouldn't say this has been challenging, but it definitely is not the style I usually gravitate towards and it is a little refreshing to just get all of our ideas out there and execute them. I would definitely say this has made me better at saying yes to ideas, even though it is something I am still working on.

I do not think that the fact that our group is interdisciplinary has been a challenge at all, but I have felt slightly isolated within my tech world and actual process of making what I bring to the table. Again, this has not been a problem, but if I am struggling with creating something or making things work for our piece, it can be hard to translate things to my group members, which I think has affected my process and our process as a group.