Peta Kicks Off Discussion About The Next Collaboration

This...from Peta, begins our 'conversation' about the next collaboration:

What a wonderful weekend!!!

It’s hard to believe that this time last weekend we were dancing up a storm at Ferns!!!

The weekend was a most fantastical time! The books were.....amazing and awe inspiring......our Chinese Whispers game did not disappoint us....the visual game was just as interesting as any verbal Chinese whispers that I’ve ever played!! The time could have only been improved by the presence of our three missing artists!!

My heartfelt thankyou goes to each and every one of you, present or not, for being such wonderful, inspiring, creative, amazing people!! I have enjoyed every minute of the creative ride that we have shared together, albeit it in a shroud of secrecy, over the past 20 or so months....wow it was a long collaboration wasn’t it?

It was worth the wait though wasn’t it? to see those books being unveiled and to learn the originating artist’s themes. To actually be able to see how and when each whisperer recounted the ‘story’ complete with our own slant and interpretation was indeed insightful!

Once again thank you for all you each did towards making the weekend a wonderful culmination to our Whispers collaboration!!

Now for the next collaboration........

Of course we needed a lot more time to be able to throw around ideas and nut out a new idea....however in our usual enthusiastic manner we did manage to make a healthy start! I will try to capture our thinking around the next adventure, this way we can continue throwing ideas around......Olley, JacQ and Lindesay I hope this helps you all to come up to speed and to also contribute to the discussion.....

The ideas we came up with were:

v To not have a secret theme! We all agreed that what we love about collaborating is the ‘conversations’, the sharing of ideas, thoughts, techniques etc We value the relationships we have with each other through the discussions, questions, comments that we can make either face to face, email, through the blog, snail mail etc (more about this below)

· We all like the rounds being one month, it seems to help us to stay focused, as well as gives us enough time to complete the work without getting too stressed! It helps those artists who need a deadline! On this point some artists were aware that they fell behind sometimes...we all agreed that there are times that this can occur, (with any of us), and that these delays were unavoidable....here’s the idea we came up with in order to keep all the books flowing if delays occur:

“If an artist is unable to complete their double page spread in the designated time frame then they will be expected to record the theme of that book, the size of the double page spread and any other information they feel is necessary for them to complete the pages without the book in their possession (eg photocopy of their chosen double page spread if it contains images/text that they wish to incorporate into their work, photocopy of the sign in page etc). After completing the above the artist posts the book to whomever they usually post to at the usual time at the end of the round, minus their work. It is then the responsibility of the artist to complete the pages and post them to the OA for attachment into the book as soon as is practically possible. This guideline is in place to assist with keeping all the books flowing around. “

v The blog is a great idea! It wasn’t used as much with the Chinese Whispers collaboration, probably because of the ‘secrecy’. However we all felt that it was well used with the Altered Book Collaboration and would be well used again for the next collaboration.

v We also all liked the freedom of being able to create our own individual book format, whether it was already bound at the start or remained unbound until the completion was completely acceptable, in fact the surprise of seeing how each artist decided to bind their book was another lovely aspect of this collaboration!

v Once we defined the above aspects we moved onto discussion ideas for a concept to give the collaboration some common ground...the idea of ‘communication’ was tossed around, (we all agreed that communication is a most important aspect for a collaboration), we brainstormed a number of ways in which we communicate; one on one – verbal, body language, emotions, sign language, touch, facial expressions etc...we discussed the idea that whatever we each came up with for our individual theme we would need to tie it back to the concept of ‘communication’.........we left our discussion here as we realised our time was growing short for the packing up process.......

Later on.........a few of us resumed the conversation back at Toad Hall, it seems we had each been thinking and talking further during our drive, we had each come up with further ways of communication, eg letters, telegrams, emails...then we hit on it...or at least we think it was IT.....the concept is communication, the overall title of the collaboration could be:

“Two tin cans and a piece of string”

Which I see as the ‘intention to communicate’, with whatever method is chosen!! We have all tried the ‘two tin cans and a piece of string’ method and of course it works so long as the two people involved are in close enough proximity to each other!!!! but the ‘intent’ is there........

so what do you all think???????????? Comments, further discussion, other ideas please!!!!!

love Peta xxxx