Studio based composers in collaboration: a socioculturally framed study

This paper presents research from an ongoing study analyzing the co-creative practice of two undergraduate studio based music composers working with two peers from dance and video production. Whilst empirical research has explored joint creativity and group working processes within and across performing arts disciplines (including music), situations that bring undergraduate studio based composers into interdisciplinary collaborative creating have not previously been studied. Framed by a sociocultural theory of human activity, this research is looking at how creative achievement and the local social context for creative work is constituted through interaction. This paper explains the sociocultural methods used to build a sequential analysis of joint activity, presenting an extracted analysis before concluding with a summary of some early observations of the issues music technology students can face when creating new work collaboratively.