Week 11: It’s A Wrap!!!- but the argument just started? Also Thinking backwards
Date: 27th May, 2025
Time: 4-5pm
Venue: TB11
Submission Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZPKSrgs3RwnUH7U1LsFHm1J-kBdNFJ4l?usp=drive_link
It’s a Wrap! The project that Genie and I have been working on has reached its end. In this blog, I am going to present the final context of our project and a reflection on the collaboration as a whole.
Finalise content of Coalesce-Remembering and Rethinking Brigit Nilsson at her 20th Anniversary of Death:
(1) Lavender Engulf
Lavender Engulf is a track that derived from an improvisation that Genie and I did in Week 3. The improvisation is initially based on the final 3 notes in Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and during that improvisation, we started to explore different textures through singing styles and techniques. In the track, we intended to preserve the live improvisational performance qualities hence the melodies that we sang at the section were untouched. Electronics is used to elevate the sonic qualities of the recording, therefore electronic vocal treatments used in the track were merely reverb, delay, pitch-shifting, and editing that conjoint the two voices. The name of the track is a collective contribution. Genie suggested the sonic experience is like immersing into a dream with the lavender scent. However, as these 3 notes are located a critical point of the opera, Isolde’s Death and Transfiguration, dream seems to be rather too positive in this context. Therefore, after my quick search, I suggested the word engulf which is suggests that the track provides a sense of submergence in this flood of unwakening lavender scent.
(2) Elektunransode
Unlike the previous track, Elektunransode is a radical composition through recorded materials. We have extracted arias and related sonic referencing from 3 of Nilsson’s famous roles: Turandot, Isolde, and Elektra to be the foundation of the track and we used the plot arcs and the persona of the character as the structure of the track. These recorded arias excerpts have closely referenced Nilsson’s performance recording and attempted to mimic and highlight the quality of Nilsson’s voice (a round and rich sounding) , distinct features on her delivery (articulation of the texts, the quiet top notes and use of portamentos) and her interpretation on these works. Sonic fragments were added to portraying the feature of the characters. Dogs and cats sound that were contributed by both of us respectively served as the reference of Elektra’s Libretto, Elektra was referred as a wild cat, treated lowly by the maid and fed her as if the dogs. Gong samples that was intergrated and processed, provided a drone to the track, it delivered a exotic sound that Turandot equips and icy sound int eh track is the reference to one of the riddle of the opera which ice is the metaphor of Turandot. (“What is like ice but burns, and if it accepts you as a slave, makes you a king?”- The Metropolitan Opera). More fragments in Liebestod is added to track as a representation of Isolde’s image. These elements with the addition of Dramaturgical voice like crying, screaming, was further electronically manipulated with complex and abrasive vocal treatments, such as distortion, looping, pitch-shifting and warping to so as to testify the boundaries of these materials despite within the fusion of the characters’ persona. The name of track is my contribution a word that I made suggested the integration of the 3 characters, they are so-exist the track with their different qualities yet tightly intertwined together into a new product.
Some Cat sounds that I recorded in finishing off this track this week are be found here
(3) Coalesce
Coalesce is the an artwork created through tearing and reassembling 9 acrylic improvisatory paintings with similar amount of time spent. The progress of destroying and conjoining the broken pieces served as the metaphor of our experimental creative process and the narrative arc and blend of characters’ persona that is portrayed in our radical composition. These paintings incorporate the colour of black and white/ Dark and light which resonates with elements in the three operas. Black and White respectively represents the delusions and mingling in the night (Black) and individualism and restrictions during Day (White) in Tristan und Isolde; the cruelty and immobility (Black), and the innocence and insecurity of Turandot (White); and, Elektra’s gloominess, the grief (Black) and the victory of vengeance (White).
Presentation
Our Module leader of the module, Prof. Tom Armstrong arranged a section for us to share our projects in front our class. Genie and I prepared initially scheduled a meeting in preparing , however, due to Genie’s compacted work schedule, we decide to work through a phone call meeting and google shared document so that we can work spontaneously and it also save some commuting time that can be used on her other projects.
At the presentation, we managed to explain the notion of our work underscored with the audio tracks of the portfolio and a brief conceptual talk through of our painting. Unfortunately, due to the time being and technical issues, we do not have sufficient time to present everything we intended. Attached is the document that Genie and I worked on through our phone meeting.
Presentation Preparation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bhpnev4TfTrX-ye0La0AXFghvJ9pjJ1OUBljIsbnUIA/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.rud2qh5ducpo
Honestly… I Don’t Think We Need A Title?! Is ‘the portfolio’ Good enough for our Project?
When I am writing this piece of blog at the section about the finalised portfolio with the amazing titles that we have set for our tracks, I realised Genie and I never come up with the main title of our portfolio. Therefore, I texted Genie to address the issue with the suggestion of naming our project- ‘Remembering and Rethinking Brigit Nilsson- Celebrating Nilsson’s 20th Anniversary of Death’. My initial thought is that this title is crystal clear in depicting the notion of our project. However, different from the reply that I think I would have received, Genie suggested that her disagreement of having a title to the project and she expressed this title lean too much of Brigit Nilsson despite she is the centre of the project. She thinks the title hinted a sense of classical music rethinking, yet what we delivered in our tracks was very much a fusion of practice. I would say I complete agreed Genie’s comment on the title but I understand this might be too scholarly for a project like that. I further elaborated my thoughts to Genie. The use of ‘Remembering’ suggests bring fragment into one piece, whilst ‘Rethinking’ suggested the idea of pushing the restriction of it default form, hence in this context, pushing the conventional norm or the stereotyped sonic experience of opera to something further, which I think perfectly explain the methodology that we adopted in the project. After acknowledging the reason behind this, Genie agreed to on having a title to project however she think that should be a ‘Subtitle’ -a description of the title. She suggested we adopt our painting title ‘Coalesce’ to be main title instead. I agreed to that as I think the word Coalesce is a more neat and straightforward to deliver the notion of fusing our practice, especially the module is talks a lot on the the collaboration. The focus should lies on the itergration of our practice despite Nilsson’s opera career being the main theme of it.
If you really looking for a fight between me and Genie. Unforunately, we have to disappoint you again! That scene that you are looking for with us tearing each other’s hair off is not going to happen. We are too civilised for that!
Reflection on the project
Looking back, the collaborative project has been rather successful despite the changes that we have made due to personal circumstances and the limitation of time. In this reflection, I intended to review the entirety of the creative process. Firstly, we are going to explore the modes of collaboration approach that Genie and I took during the course of the project, how and why our mode of collaboration changed due to the course of our project, and how our roles in the project supports one another. Then, we will look into what I found alluring about our collaboration during our project. Of course, there are always two sides to a coin, therefore we will then move on to things that could have been done during the collaboration process. Finally, I will conclude my reflection by expressing my thoughts on whether the project obtained ‘GenieMichelle+’.
Interesting phenomenon in our project- Integrative to complementary collaborations
There is something interesting that I found through reviewing the entirety of the project. As the project progresses; the more our materials collide, the more remote our collaboration is. At the start, Genie and I worked really close together, we met each other every single week working collaboratively and talking about our thoughts on the project. At the same time, I do quite a lot of individual researches on the contextual aspect of the project. However, our mode of collaboration gradually shifted from, what Vera John-Steiner suggested, integrative collaborations to complementary collaborations. (Vera John-Steiner, 2000, 70). There are 2 main factors causing the change:
(1) The limited time and the change of format of the project
Due to the lack of time that we have amidst our hectic performance schedules, and coursework that are jam-packed together, Genie and I found it hard to match our schedules that we enble us to work closely together. This type of collaboration (Integrative Collaboration) is not time-efficient enough for us to achieve what we intended. If you have already forget about, this project was initially intended to be a performance-based rather than a portfolio. This is a decision that we made collectively after our evaluation on the feasibility on delivery our an effective performance with the time that we take. We started to build up chemistry through our improvisations attempts, yet to actually excel in the initial format of the project requires hours of practice. Therefore, we have decided to change the format of our project to a portfolio. The change hence opened to opportunity for complementary collaborations.
(2) Chemistry that builds up during the project
Genie and I have known each other for years but we have never worked this closely until this project. Throughout the course of the project, we gradually built up a very good chemistry. I always like to say we are both crazy in different ways, so it is not really hard for us to get in sync. This chemistry has gradually gotten to the stage where we can tell what each other wants without too much explanation. This reminds me of Sawyer’s notion of the group flow. He suggested that group flow is likely to be induced when the players understand the performance style. The understanding of the performers increases productivity and decision-making. (Sawyer, 2007, 51) Genie and I basically shared one mind and we developed a form of tacit unspoken understanding during the middle and late stages of the project. The approach of division of work is more efficient as each of us can take care of different aspects of the work simultaneously. Working too close together on every single step almost feels unnecessary.
Role in Bringing Creativity to the projects
Genie and I performed different roles in the project. I think it is fair to say that I served the role as a labour provider that gives the foundation of the project whilst Genie is the technologically intelligent refiner. During the course of the project, I supplied a lot of foundational materials and researched the domain and the field to obtain knowledge that shaped the foundation of the project (Csikszentmihalyi, 1966, 33-34) and gradually filtered materials that were suitable for the purpose. I studied Brigit Nilsson’s background, located some of the major roles of her career, watched the operas in pinpointing arias, motives, and descriptions of the characters in the libretto, in hopes for finding useful resources to the sonic experience. On top of what I did, Genie continued the filtering task. She cast her magic on the electronics to my track, adding her extended singing techniques as the icing on the cake and pushing our materials to the impossible.
The Beauty of Our Collaboration:
The Blending of Egos and Respect of Each Other Practice
Sawyer wrote in his book that musician lacks the ability to dissolve their ego into a group mind. However, in order to enhance the group flow, one balances their own voice with deep listening and builds ideas on those contributed by their teammates. (Sawyer, 2007, 50) I am really blessed that both Genie and I are not stubborn people with big egos. Despite the differences between our practices, we showed respect for others’ practices and embraced things in other’s practice that were very different from ours. There is never a time that we devalue each other’s practice, saying no to each other. Instead, we always listen closely to each other’s opinions, take actions collectively on problems , and negotiate when we have disagreements (although this dispute didn’t take place). This collaboration welcomed creativity from both of us as we can just head up everything that comes to our heads. Hence, why have all these amazing ideas throughout.
Decision-making
In the stage of our complementary collaboration, both Genie and I took turns in making decisions on the aspect that we were responsible for respectively. For example, at the start of constructing the radical composition, I sourced materials from scores, watched the opera and related programmes to get the insight of operas that we intended to incorporate, and then recorded all the materials that I initially thought would be worthy to include in our track. Genie and I then worked closely together at the start of the construction of the track and I will give suggestions to Genie on materials that might be effective to incorporate. But gradually, we realised that there was more to be done in finishing off the project. Therefore, Genie is later more involved in selecting materials from the sound library that I gave her and constructing the tracks, whilst I have moved on sorted on sorting our plans for the visuals and preparing materials for that. I gave indications to Genie on the prominent recordings/ fragments that needed to make its appearance in presenting the persona of the opera character. But the decision of the electronic manipulation is mostly from Genie. At the same time, when I was preparing materials for the visuals, I made the decision to use acrylic as it is a medium that I am fond of. I got everything Both of us enjoyed the chance to make decisions on aspects that were responsible for, even sometimes without the consent of others. We respected each other decisions but if don’t agree with what the other person did, we would head up and make negotiations. And here we go, everyone is happy :)
Crazy People Create Crazy Stuff
There are a lot of times in this project that we just take the ‘Go Crazy’ approach. I am a believer in the notion ‘ You’ll never know if you don’t try’, hence when there is a new idea that springs to our minds, our responses are always very positive and we try all the feasible stuff that we can come up with. This active pursuit of accidents made our projects very fruitful as I learnt new stuff through exploring, like what Csikszentmihalyi mentioned in his book, some creativity took place in an accident. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, 52-3) Who would ever know that a gong would create such an amazing wobbly sound and harmonics if we didn’t bring that out from the instrumental stores, and record it by hitting it with a random brush that we find at pats. Who will ever know that the 9 paintings which are beautiful in themselves already would turn into a works of excellence through destruction and reconciliation? These wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t proactively ‘go Crazy’ and all these ‘yes’ that we have said in the course of the project. I think we have that if anything goes wrong. It is meant to be happen. Therefore, instead of being scared of failure, we should take failure as default and take corrective actions if needed.
Growth of Collaboration throughout the Project
These products portray the journey that Genie and I experienced and the milestones that we achieved in bringing our collaboration to maturity. From the improvisation that we did in Week 3, when we started to be quite comfortable in singing and interacting with each other through improvisation and developing that tacit communication and understanding among ourselves. (Sawyer, 2007, 51). Then, in the radical composition, we embark on the stage where we work complementarily to conjoin our practice together. That tacit communication has gradually we grown to the extent that we know each other’s thoughts even without verbal communication. Finally, the painting comes into sight at the final 2 weeks. It seemed to me that there is an tacit automation there.
Things that could have been done better
Meeting Preparation and Face-to-face Meetings
At the start of the project, Genie and I were rather organised. We worked on a target every single week and planned at the end of the meeting on things that we had to work on before meeting each other the next week. However, as time goes by with more deadlines approaching and work jam-packed together. We missed out on the planning aspect of it quite a lot. The final few weeks are basically improvisational sections, we come into Pats with not many aims before the meeting and figured out what do we need to on the spot. The meeting at the later stage focused mainly on the collective side of the project, like the paintings that we drew together and the tearing and resembling of the painting the week after. We did some reflections on the project on Week 10 to check on the state of the work and to check if there’s any further action required but verbal conversations between reduced. It is almost like if we can sort things individually we would save some time by not lingering too much on talking. Although we still managed to get a lot of work done during the meeting and we also prepared materials for the meeting, more planning and organisation could have been done.
Less the talking, more the listening and questioning!-Things could be done in future projects
Genie and I really made a dream team. However, there are 2 things that I think I can do in future collaborations: More active listening and asking more questions. As mentioned in previous blogs, I felt like sometimes I talk too much. It is mainly because I know that opera is not a genre that Genie is familiar with, I want to provide Genie the full context of the opera so that she can learn the grand picture of the information that I encountered. But on the other hand, I might have not left too much room for Genie to talk about her electronic side of stuff. Therefore, acknowledging the problem, I later decided to tune down my speaking a little bit and let Genie speak more and be aware and observant of what she is doing. Another alternative for making our conversation more balanced might be for me to ask more questions. Although Genie is a talkative person, she is quite reserved in words when it comes to explaining how she doing her stuff. Sometimes she showed a sneak peek of beautiful tracks that she magically made between meetings, I was very impressed and amazed by that but I never asked her how she did that and like her thought behind it, which is where the problem lies.
Is this project ‘GenieMichelle+’?
If you have already forgetten, ‘GenieMichelle+’ is a term that I used in describing the product that Genie and I create through the fusion of our creative practice. This is also a goal that we intended to achieve during the course of the project so as to produce a work that shares qualities from both of our practices but in a mingled form that completely perfectly blends our practices together as a new product. I think the project is undoubtedly GenieMichelle+, and indeed a very successful one. The tracks presented demonstrated the distinctiveness of practice: the operatic singing and the electronics and extended singing techniques but these components coexist in the same hierarchy and complement each other. These two elements transgress from their original form that does not fall in the conventions of both practices. The artwork is certainly GenieMichelle+. We projected our distinctiveness onto the paintings and violently destroyed them and resembled them together into a new product. This does not only project the methodology that we adopted in the project, but also the notion of GenieMichelle+.
To conclude, the above has presented my deep reflection on the collaboration between Genie and I during the ‘Coalesce-Remembering and Rethinking Brigit Nilsson at her 20th Anniversary of Death’ project. Despite changes being made due to different circumstances, we managed to create an outstanding portfolio of work that probably no one would have thought of doing. During the process of collaboration, Genie and me made it easy for each other it achieve the task that we needed to achieve, and treat each other with respect. The welcoming environment facilitates the induction of our creativity and brings our project to the state of ‘GenieMichelle+’. Of course, no one can be perfect, there is always room for improvement, the reflection of the practice has prepared me to be a better collaborator in the future.
Reference List
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. Available at: https://inspiredbyislam.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/creativity-flow-and-the-psychology-of-discovery-and-invention-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-z-lib.org_.pdf (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
The Metropolitan Opera (n.d.), Synopsis: Turandot. Available at: https://www.metopera.org/discover/synopses/turandot/ (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
Sawyer, K. (2007) Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. New York: Basic Books
Vera John-Steiner (2000), Creative Collaboration. New York: Oxford University Press
