I would like to mention some additional points. We will have three deadlines in this phase, which means you will select one general idea in the first deadline and elaborate it more by working on the details in the next 2 deadlines. So we will follow an arrow from general to more concrete, but all of this should stay in an abstract level. In simple words, you will not compose anything in this phase. This requires some academic thinking and writing skills and as you are all doctoral students, this should not be a problem.

About the instrumentation: I have already asked the musicians of ensemble Schalfeld to collaborate with us for the concert in May and they have expressed interest in participating. I have asked for the combination: violin, cello, double bass and percussion. Until the end of this week I will get a definite answer from them. If some musicians cannot participate in the project, I believe it would be possible to find substitute musicians and be able to have these instruments.

I think that it would be a good idea to think of abstract concepts that do not include instrumentation for the first deadline. In the next week we will know for sure, so you will appropriate the selected concept to the eventual instrumentation. In the third week, you will have the opportunity to enhance the selected concept with even more details.

Please share you questions and thoughts! It is very helpful to post premature ideas and get feedback from your peers before we reach the deadline.

Dear Kosmas, dear all,

Thanks for the information! I have some questions. Sorry if you already told me that, but will be the conception, composing and voting anonym like last time? Or will it be anonym only the composing and voting steps? or only voting? If the conception phase is also anonym, where should we upload the proposals? In case it is not anonym should we post them here in the forum? Thanks!
Best!

Hi Lula,

thank you very much for your questions. All the evaluation processes will be anonymous including the conception phase. The purpose of this is that when you assess the contributions of your fellow composers, you will not be distracted by information regarding authority. The online discussion in this phase is meant to establish a supportive and cooperative environment which will contribute to the formation of a group identity. Of course when you discuss your ideas here, you will know whose proposal is which, but if we eliminate the competitive and individualistic aspect, you will be in position to act for the benefit of the group.

Tomorrow I will post a webpage where you will be able to upload your concepts (max. 1 page in pdf format).

Thanks Kosmas, that sounds great!

Hello everyone,

here (link) you can upload your concept idea. Deadline for submission is on Sunday 17.11.2019 at 23:59 in your local time-zone.

Hello everyone, I would like just to clarify that the concept we are looking for should be about the composition itself and not about the collaborative process. The concept shouldn't be any different from an idea you usually have in your individual artistic practices. A good idea could be to propose a concept that stems from your personal compositional activity but you should try to formulate it in a way that looks attractive and persuasive for your fellow composers. As I wrote before, the collaborative framework as a meta-structure is something predetermined and our goal for this phase is to find a concept that will guide you sonically and dramaturgically while being able to be supported by the collaborative framework.

Dear composers,

thank you very much for your first concepts. It is great to see how this project has stimulated your imagination in such colorful ways. I am afraid though, that I didn't explained to you adequately the function of this phase in the collaborative framework. The concept is meant to be a practical guide for exploring sonic territories of micro- and macro structures. It should be about the composition you are going to compose and not about the collaborative process. Of course a concept can reflect on those two levels but most of your concepts lack the practical aspect. Probably my mistake was to write you that this first concept should be abstract without explaining which level of abstraction is desired.

I believe that some concepts are suitable for this phase and some are not. I decided to let you review all of them and assign grades, in order to acquire a familiarity with the regular evaluation processes we will go through during the development phase. In this webpage (link) you can review and assess the concepts. If a concept that is not acceptable for this phase receives the highest preference score, this period will be repeated in order to find a suitable one.

I believe also that this misunderstanding could be prevented if you were more active in the forum, by asking questions and posting any premature ideas you might had. The forum is our main collaboration tool that facilitates our discussion. A main goal of this project is to create a group identity and this can only be accomplished through information exchange. I know that you are all busy composers working for multiple commissions in parallel, but I believe that a daily check of the forum is feasible, as you do that with other social media.

Let me know what do you think!

Thanks Kosmas for the info and thanks all for the concepts!

I have another question about the evaluation. I think a range from 10 to 1 would give some misleading results. As Kosmas pointed out, some contributions are nicely written and provide an interesting insight into the collaboration process but still, they do not provide a concept. Some of us attending to that would rate all proposals from 1 to 5 while another composer would rate all from 5 to 10. Still another one rates from 1 to 10. I think it would be lead to some unexpected results in the final decision. In addition, it adds a rating element that maybe is not the goal of the project.

I would like to propose a different rating, one based on preferences from 5 to 1 (5 max, 1 min), 0 for each own concept. Sorry for messing with the rating. If we all agree I think it will more positive and accurate to evaluate like that. If it is not possible to change that now, I would suggest rating this round from 10 to 5, 10 max, 5 min and own concept 0. 

Hi Lula, thank you for your suggestion. The evaluation with the grade range 1-10 would work exactly as you suggested, each composer scale his/her grades at this range by giving 10 to his/her best favorite and 1 to his/her less favorite. The difference of the 10-1 and 5-1 range is that the difference between first and last is greater in the 10-1 range, which gives an advantage in the first preferences. Also the 10-1 range have less probability of ties, since there are more different points to be summed up.

The 5-1 range will be more convenient for you to use and complies also with the Austrian/German grading system! So I will give it a chance, and see how it goes, I hope there will not be many ties!

OK, 

now I have a problem. The openness of this conception phase in terms of the writing style, font, size, inclusion (or not) of graphical elements, etc. makes it really obvious to me who wrote which proposal. One could thus hypothetically or through one's unconscious bias, rate each proposal favorizing a composer to whose aesthetics (s)he feels the closest to, instead of actually grading the quality of the proposal. Another problem that emerges is that, due to a sheer visual beauty I might be compelled to award the proposal with nices font, layout, picture, etc. disregarding the actual content. I sort of thought that the proposals should be visually very crude, expressing an idea with a few musical hints as to what materials we might work with. Now that I see everynody else's proposal is really carefully crafted, as if for some composition competition  - and by all means, I don't care if I get rated 1 from everybody else - but it does influence even my own personal judgment on the actual concept. So… is there a way that in future, you copy the text and put it all in the same format, in order to avoid having such a disparity between the way in which proposals are presented? 

Another issue that might subconsciously bias my grading as well is that fact that, since you already mentioned that some projects lack the practical aspect, I - and maybe others - might be tempted to vote on how well a proposal fulfilled (or failed to fulfill) your expectation.

Looking forward to hearing back from you Kosmas 😉

Hi Davor, thank you for your questions and remarks. Of course all these elements you mentioned play a role, as they play in your personal artistic practice. Because we are working as a group, the communicability of the ideas play a major role and should play such role in my opinion. You can have the best idea but if you have expressed it badly and your peers "didn't get it", then it is not of much value for the group. A multimedia content can facilitate the understanding of an idea, that's why I have encouraged you to use such material. In the subsequent phases you will need to provide comments on your contributions, so, good description and argumentation are important factors that will enhance the creativity of the group.

In this project we have to be pragmatic and efficient. The task of collaborative composition is a very complex one and this framework provides a structure, one possible of the many other that may exist, that makes possible the accomplishment of that task. I have explained to each one of you how this is going to work, but if you still have questions please share them in the forum.

I would like to ask you to grade the proposals on how effective they may be in guiding you for composing  micro- and macro structures. I think you can extract the "helpfulness" factor from the proposals, without being distracted by the elements you mentioned.

Also, I would like to ask you (all of you) to slowly start thinking less individually and more as a collective. This will take some time and will improve as you interact more with each other.  A major research question in this project is, if our group can function as a self-organizing network which entails a higher degree of compositional intelligence. I believe that this could be achieved if we intensify our interactions by following scrupulously the collaborative framework.

Another important aspect to comprehend is that there is not such a thing as a bad contribution. All of you commit some creative content which has the same high value, regardless of having achieved a high or a low grading score. Every contribution will be evaluated and graded on its applicability on the specific task it was assigned for. All of you share the same responsibility of providing diverse creative content which then will be digested by the super-entity of the group, which is consisted also by you. I guess this is a novel role you have to play as composers for most of you. I am working for quite some time now in this field and I can promise you that this can be an unique, enjoyable and enriching experience!

Just another issue with the grading:  you can assign as much points you want on each concept but you should rate at least one concept with 5 (most favorite) and at least one with 1 (least favorite). You don't have necessarily to use all the possible grade points [1,2,3,4,5]. For example you can give the following grade set [1,0,1,1,5] if you think that 3 concepts havethe lowest "helpfulness" factor in the actual task (0 is for the concept of yours). Or you can give the grade set [3,0,1,5,5] if you find that two concepts have the same highest "helpfulness" factor.

GREAT - thanks for explaining, it really helped. Say - a completely unrelated note - how do I set my profile picture?? 🤠 

Nice to hear that I helped! For changing the profile picture you go to My profile -> Account ->Avatar. There you can click on "upload an avatar" and upload your picture.