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This paper is focused on collaborative creation, as an exponent of emerging creative practices considered as a promise for the creative industries, trying to find innovative ways to create or distribute contents in a digital landscape driven by uncertainty. This is particularly relevant in the case of the music industry, considered as the first and foremost victim of user-driven practices like file sharing. Beyond well-known discourses on piracy, the music industry -and musicians- are engaged in a continuous process of re-invention, trying to reinstate the ties with consumers long lost through a system based on scarcity and successive booms of sales (and re-sales) of physical support recordings. Drawing from our previous research on playful practices and negotiation and conflict (Ardèvol et al, 2011, Roig et al, 2013), our aim is to explore and analyze how rules are constituted in creative practices that are oriented to foster playful appropriation, enactment and/or co-creation of cultural objects in music. We will present an early analysis of Beck Hansen’s co-creation project Song Reader and specific remix experiences through a comparative research focused in music creation/ appropriation.
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Antoni Roig, Gemma San CornelioUniversitat Oberta de Catalunya
DCC ECREA Workshop – Bonn, 3-4 of October, 2013
1. Research background2. Connection to previous research: music and participatory practices3. Participatory music practices: an initial taxonomy proposal4. Objectives and research questions5. Case study: Beck’s Song Reader6. Further research
The recording industry under a continuous pressure to re-invent itself (Sterne, 2006; Bull, 2007; Jacobson, 2010; Magaudda, 2011)
– First cultural industry where specific technocultural changes are experienced: file sharing, mobility, remixing practices, streaming services, etc.
– Changes in the materiality of music : need to introduce added value and adapt to emerging practices of consumption.
Like in other domains of cultural production, shift towards establishing closer ties between artists and fans, with lesser mediation from traditional cultural industries.
Need to attend to
Complex nature of engagement
Contradictory discourses on participation (co-option)
Connection with our previous research in creative practices and participation in new media:
– CREATIVE research project, funded by MICINN (HAR2010-18982)
– Modding practices and co-creative communities.– Fanworks.– Participatory filmmaking– DIY video production
• Creative communities and conditions for co-creation: labour and informal markets, conceptualization of the different approaches to co-creation (Banks and Potts, 2010, Bauwens, 2009, Banks and Deuze, 2009, Hesmondalgh, 2010 )
• Attention to conflict, negotiation and change in participatory creative processes, motivations, rewards (Roig et al, forthcoming; San Cornelio et al, 2013) with an ethnographic approach to creative communities based on practice theory (Schatzki, 1996, Couldry, 2004)
• Reappropiation of cultural objects and processes (remixes, spoofs, mashups…) and fanworks as collective creation (creative canon, affective ties towards source texts and communities, collective gatekeeping)
• Industrial interest in the ‘crowds’ and DIY production (crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, co-option) (Roig, Sánchez-Navarro, Leivobitz, 2012)
• Social networking (myspace, facebook…)• Collective financing• Open licences and remix• Personalization of music experience• Multimedia/Transmedia/Interaction/Apps• Calls to collaboration (Co-creation) in processes:
– Lyrics– Crowdsourced Music videos– Album personalization– Fan Contests (versions)– Social experiences in music listening (i.e. Soundcloud)– Contributing as a performer or a composer in a collective endeavour– Arrange and perform versions of yet unreleased tracks
We want to focus on some specific kind of musical projects which present themselves as participatory, observe emerging practices and analyze them in terms of cultural production, creative communities, labour and transformative potential. Our main research questions are stated as follows:
–How are the rules for collaboration established and in which ways they account for participatory practices?–How the relationship between the different cultural agents in participatory musical projects is shaped?–What’s the role of expertise in participatory musical projects? –How canon is produced in the case of open reinterpretation of non-recorded music?
• Song Reader by Beck
‘Official’ timeline: how canon is built
Project announced
Book released
London live premiere
Sonos studio exhibition at LA
Beck perform some songs live
Song Reader Concert (Beck with guests)
August 2012 December 2012 February 2013 May 2013 July 20133 18
Fan timeline
Project announced
Book released
NYC Live premiere
London live premiere
Sonos studio exhibition at LA
Beck perform some songs live
Song Reader Concert (Beck with guests)
August 2012 December 2012 February 2013 May 2013 July 20133 18
First tracks/ albums released
• Appropriation of unrecorded songs by a renowned artist, like in the Song Reader case boosts relevant participatory cultural practices.
• However, this participatory endeavour is conditioned by industrial practices and creative freedom potentially limited by canon.
• Transformative potential is yet to be seen.
FURTHER RESEARCH• In depth analysis/ timeline of fan releases• Attention to visual aesthetics and materiality• In-depth interviews with cultural agents.• Attention to distribution, self-promotion and commercialization.
