According to the title above, the question that might appear is whether collaboration art could be more creative than individualistic art? Keith Sawyer argues, that “the psychology of the individual mind couldn’t explain group genius.” That is why he uses a research tool called interaction analysis which allows scientists to chart the minute-to-minute interactions that make collaboration so powerful. As Aleks Jakulin and Gregor Leban (2003) explain, the term interaction combines both co-operation and co-dependency, and can only be explained as a whole. That means, although collaborative artists can been independent in one sense, on the other hand their final common work cannot be explain individually but through interactions between all of the artists (or their works). Sawyer applies this method to improvisational theatre dialogues, and shows the unexpected insights that emerge from the group. He argues that collaboration drives innovation. Most radical breakthroughs like television, airplane, e-mail, and even board game Monopoly emerged from a collaborative web (Sawyer 2007). But there is one condition for collaboration to work in the real world, that Sawyer mentions is important – improvisations need to be guided and planned, “but in a way that doesn’t kill the power of improvisation to generate unexpected insights” (Sawyer 2007).
This leads us to a fact that the person who leads and guides people through a collaboration project might play an important role (or even the most important) in what the final result is going to be. Still, I would agree that the success lies upon artists who collaborate. »With the right mix of several minds and talents working on the same project, a true collaboration can beget the possibility of making a greater statement than perhaps one individual could make alone« (Raaf and Youngs 2000: 1).
References:
Jakulin, Aleks and Gregor Leban (2003): Interaktivna interakcijska analiza. Proceedings A of the 6th Information Society Conference (IS 2003), Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 13–17. Downloaded 17.10.2009 from http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~jakulin/Int/Jakulin_Leban_Interakcijska_analiza.pdf
Raaf, Sabrina and Amy Youngs (2000): Contemporary Collaboratives. Artists using science and technology. Ylem Newsletter, Number 12, Volume 20, Nov/Dec 2000. Downloaded 15.10.2009 from: http://www.ylem.org/Journal/2000NovDec.pdf
Sawyer, Keith (2007): Group Genius. The Creative Power of Collaboration. Downloaded 15.10.2009 from: http://ascc.artsci.wustl.edu/~ksawyer/groupgenius/excerpt.html
