To work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor

Collaboration. In class last week, I spoke a lot about how important collaboration is to me, but how it also affects the concepts of ownership and authorship. A personal example that I can give is this: in Time Studio last year, I had to create a collaborative project in which each member of my class would have to contribute something to the final product. I decided that I would give the class five minutes to write down their thoughts/feelings on a selection of topics I had chosen for them. The questions included: what does the color red/blue/yellow feel like; what does sadness/fear/happiness/anger smell like; what does abstract sound like. The link below is a short Powerpoint which shows each page of the book (example shown below).

Collaborative book

The fact that I had the idea to create the collaboration and that I put the book together may lead one to believe that the project was entirely my own, but what about the actual responses? Without the people, you have no responses. Without the responses, you have no book. This provides quite a strong argument that a product of a collaborative project is just that, a collaborative product! Everyone who participted in the process is a partial "owner", if you will.

On a similar note, I spoke about the website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com and how I really enjoy it's collaborative aspects. In case you were wondering, LTLYM is an interactive website and a series of non-web presentations that allow viewers to participate in creative assignments created by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher.


In dealing with a project like this, who owns the rights to anything hosted on the website? I would, in this case, believe that the creator of the solution would be the owner, as is assumed under current copyright law. In a co-op like this, ownership isn't really that much of a problem, but if the Orphan Works Act is passed, the days of implied copyright will be over. To learn more about the Orphan Works Act I would suggest listening to this interview with Brad Holland of the IPA (Illustrator's Partnership of America) or taking a quick peek at a summary of how the legislation will affect artists. I am not implying that collaboration is in any way bad for the artistic community because I believe the complete opposite (and have shown that collaboration is quite important to me), what I do believe is that the ability to use another person's creative work for monetary gain without permission and compensation is ridiculous. In this technological world there are positives and negatives, but the internet could prove to be very harmful in many areas of our lives including those which govern our morals. Is it okay to cheat, steal and lie? The consensus is no, in most cases, but passing an act such as the Orphan Works legislation will condone and allow just that. Right now, we need to collaborate, to make sure that an incredible injustice, passed off as something that will help grandma find old pictures and use them for her own devices, is not made into a reality.

Oh yeah, here are some of the assignments I have completed:

#70: Say Goodbye.
#63: Make an Encouraging banner.
#52: Write the phone call you wish you could have.
#11: Photograph a scar and write about it.

Everyone should do some of the assignments, or even just look over the solutions that other people have come up with. It really is amazing to look at how many different points of view come from one starting point.