First post on the What is Collaboration? Discussion Board

In this project we have been introduced to several tools that allow us to contemplate collaboration within exciting new contexts. The live streaming video equipment allows us to consider 'real time collaboration'. I think of these real time collaborations as being like a sport. People collaborate in activity as they would if they existed on the same sports pitch. This is because they feed off the immediate actions of those around them. Timing their possible actions, like a footballer running into a space and anticipating a pass. Today (02/02/06) we learnt about Blogs and the potential for collaboration that they offer. A blog can essentially offer a forum for communication. It can build up a community of people who check into a blog to discover what other people have published. They may also be part of the team that post to the blog and so may add work to it. In this sense the blog becomes the focus for an online community collaborating on the blog. A blog may simply document individuals work posted on the site, but by simply collating the information is it possible that the blog becomes a collaborative project in itself? Like a virtual exhibition that offers its ideas up to anyone and everyone. Is a group exhibition a collaborative project? I believe work that is tied to a theoretical theme and exhibited in a managed space, does represent a collaboration between the individuals involved, simply because the outcomes are viewed within the same defined context. In the same way that a Movie is constructed from the work of various professionals but viewed as one within an encompassing context. However, maybe I am wrong and it is only when a group of artists who are united by an exhibition start to produce work that 'represents responses to the work of the other artists' (within the community that they are exhibiting with) that one can call it a collaboration. What do you think? Possibly, in order to call it a collaboration, the people who are linked by an online community will have to begin a unique and different project as a group before you would class it as a collaboration? I would actually be really interested in peoples opinions on this because this is a direction I am seriously considering for my collaborative project.