f - week 5 - collaborations 2

This week another 4 presentations on the theme of collaborations [1].

1st up given by Luke Digance on the collaboration between choreographer Merce Cunningham and pop bands Sigur Rós & Radiohead.

Lots of nice slides.

Having composed a number of dance pieces I found this slightly interesting - the best part was that the dancers wore different coloured costumes for the seperate sections. I did some extra reading on this, and apparently there was a fair amount of chance in the actual performance, which piece went where, which band performed with which dancers.


2nd, Daniel Murtagh gave a brief on Mike Patton and his innumerable collaborations.

Having enjoyed the first Mr Bungle LP (mainly for the John Zorn aspect), this had some historical interest for me.

Apparently once a work is completed, Mr Patton shelves it and never listens to it again. Makes me wonder if that's why a lot of his work sounds the same.


3rd, Darren Slynn, was an ongoing exploration of collaborators, and there perhaps reason for being such was necessity - how else can you be band without getting someone else to join ?

What first piqued my interest was the sound effects guy from "Hey Hey its Saturday" (Murray ?). Mainly of interest because I have fond memories of Winky Dink - probably before Murray was involved.

Going through Frank Zappa, the Weather Report and I think ending up with Steely Dan. The whirlwind tour may have made some more stops on the way but these were the ones I remembered.


4th up was given by Alfred Essemyr, similiar theme to the 3rd with the idea of collaborations through necessity, but in this case not necessarily known or planned.

The DJ as a collaborator with a musical artist. One records the music, one plays the music. This reminds me of a Sesame Street skit [1]on co-operation highlightling the potentials in sharing efforts.

So once a track is released, anyone can collaborate with the initial artist. I myself have "collaborated" unofficially with John Farnham, Craig David, Milli Vanilli, Slayer, JS Bach, Richard Wagner, Bela Bartok.......oh, and John Cage :)




[1] Collaborations 2, Music Technology Forum. University of Adelaide, 29 March 2007.

[2] Two muppets, one with short arms, one with long unbendy arms.
One fruit tree. The fruit is too high for the short one, and once the other plucks the fruit it can't get them to its mouth.
Co-operation. The long armed muppet picks the fruit, the short armed feeds them both :)

A childhood memory from Sesame Street, Childrens Television Workshop.