Digital London Bridges

My first online Collaboration was in 2002 on acidplanet.com, I downloaded a friend's electronic track who lived in London and added some of my vocals to his track. I fell instantly in love with the process of both building a creatively intimate connection with someone I had never met, and more importantly the collaborative bridges that were now possible for musicians to build together despite their location.

During this time I was a mom of a one year old little boy, working at the recording studio, plus I was a part time student, going for my Bachelor's in Film production, Graphic arts design and Music. So I was busy. Luckily my boss and professor's let me bring my son along for the ride!


Anyways the point of all this life-history is that I had no real time to make music with others, no time for a band, or even jamming with others. I had little personal time to myself. But with online music collaboration I was able to record at 3am, or during the rare times my son napped. I was able to connect and create with musicians around the world, and record on my own time frame... and what would have mattered just 5 years earlier, living in a remote area with little music scene, didn't seem to matter anymore at all.

So what I find so beautiful about online collaboration is the potential...

Yes Potential in it's endless forms...



I see the vast potential for greater collaborative projects than just me (Loopsydaisy), DJ Fuk in London, his tracks, my voice and a computer at 3am.

What about getting children around the world to all write a song together?

What about making a song and video collaboratively with one person from each country in the world?

What kind of musical contrasts, collisions, and compositions would we hear?

What could this do to our sense of community? humanity?


As I ask these questions, I know that these things are already happening right now, my thoughts are not new... So today I went out into the digital playground, and found some of the leading edge examples of online/technology based music and art collaborative (humanitarian) projects.


I first came across this video:



I went ahead and checked out the website Playing For Change. "A multimedia movement created to inspire, connect and bring peace to the world through music" If I could join this group of musicians, engineers, producers and filmmakers, I think I would be on my way to enlightenment!! On their blog they discuss their future projects, and the movie they are in the process of making.

"PLAYING FOR CHANGE is a musical exploration that glides across four continents, revealing a relentless insight of humanity that strives for global unification. It is a story of hope, struggle, perseverance, joy, and celebration. It is a story of human ambition to overcome prejudices, separation, natural hardships, and evil existing in our world today. It’s passion, it’s path, and at times, it’s weapon, is music."

Although this is not exactly online collaboration, it definitely fit the description of building bridges and connections with the use of technology!

Thomas Dolby interview on his new project involving the use of renewable energy to record his newest collaborative project on e-sessions. I had recently thought of how cool it would be to record a children's music CD using only solar power... call it "Super Sunshine-Girl" or "Super Green Playground" ;)
anyways... back to Dolby!

"Among the musicians involved with online collaboration is synth-pop and music-technology icon Thomas Dolby. This fall Dolby is touring the U.S. and U.K., after which he'll embark on a new album project, recorded totally off the grid — that is, using only renewable energy sources. On it, he plans to use eSession to record remotely with a host of musicians in various locales. Dolby spoke to EM in late August from England, where he'd just finished recording on an eSession project.

for the rest of the article click here!

Peter Gabriel, has been involved with collaborative projects involving both music and film making. Gabriel has made numerous collaborative albums with musicians around the world, and has worked as a humanitarian for years as well. There is nothing like mixing the creative world with the humanitarian world, there is such immense power in these two together!

Gabriel's Witness Project is a powerful example of placing the use of technology in everyday people's hands. The witness project provides free video cameras to people around the world to record their experiences, and then share them to inform and educate. The Mission statement makes this perfectly clear... "video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations."


I looked into Thomas Dolby's use of esessions, and Peter Gabriel suggests the use of Indaba music, and added a few more I have used to get you started if you are interested in collaborating tonight at 3am!!

Indaba Music
eJamming AUDiio
Acidplanet
esessions

This trend is definitely going in a fast creative direction, with new collaborative sites and groups popping up daily!! It will definitely be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years, months and even days with these new projects. I know there are probably a million projects already out there, but I cannot go into all of them today... I really have to eat soon.
:)

random cute food site, just so drool friendly I had to share it, click on sleepy kitty to see more!!

I feel as long as we don't lose site of the bigger picture, and use these technological advances and creative options as a way to inspire, improve or contribute to the building of bridges and the making of new creative connections globally, we are headed in the most magnificent direction!!
;)