OCA collaboration project 2019

Are you interested in the potential for creative disciplines to come together in exciting new ways?  Have you ever considered using sound or music in your work, or perhaps created visual pieces that resonate with music in some way? Or perhaps you are a composer, who has thought about how your compositions might be informed and extended through other approaches.
In an exciting new venture, OCA’s New Music Collective (NMC) is launching a cross-curricular collaboration project that is open to any OCA student with an interest in sharing and experimenting collaboratively with other disciplines. The project has developed from the NMC’s pilot collaboration project last year, and students are are now invited to apply for the 2019 project. You will work together in pairs or small groups to create a new music- or sound-based work and present it to the those participating.  Students from any OCA course are invited to take part in this extra-curricular project, but it will be most closely aligned with Music, Fine Art and Moving Image disciplines. Cross-curricular collaboration is encouraged, but the final work must feature music or sound art in addition to any visual elements.
The OCA’s New Music Collective is an extra-curricular group which focuses on opportunities to explore live aspects of music-making and collaboration. Membership of the New Music Collective is open to any OCA student with an interest in exploring contemporary classical music, and activities so far have included study days with a focus on improvisation, collaboration and performing student works. This project extends the scope of the NMC by inviting students from other disciplines.
Programme Leaders Carla Rees (music) and Caroline Wright (fine art) welcome students from across the disciplines on a project that focuses on opportunities to explore live aspects of music-making and visual exploration thorough collaborations that investigate connections, integration, merging, responding and relating forms.
Each participant must be involved in both the creation of the work and final presentation in some capacity – this could mean that each member of the team creates work for another to perform, or that the team takes a combined approach. The scope of what is defined by ‘performing’ and ‘creating’ is open to interpretation. The process of creating may or may not involve scoring in the traditional sense, and those working in immersive sound design, or sound/music for performance might be interested take part. Students are encouraged to take into account the practicalities of the final presentation of the work (which maybe a live performance or a recording) while creating the work.
This will be a long term project supported through Google Meetings supervised by OCA tutors, spanning over a 7-month duration from January to July 2019. This time frame will enable students to develop a meaningful collaboration and also allows time for students to join according to their individual commitments; it is not essential that all the collaborations begin at the start of the project.
The collaboration teams will be allocated on a first come, first served basis, and each team will include students from at least two different disciplines. Students may also join with pre-formed collaborative groupings, providing they fit within the brief.
The work will be supported by Google Meet sessions supervised by OCA tutors to discuss work in progress, and it is hoped that many of the participants will also be able to take part in a face to face study visit for the final live performance (details tbc). We hope that recordings of the final works will be made available on the OCA student website.
Students wishing to take part should contact carlarees@oca.ac.uk or carolinewright@oca.ac.uk with a brief summary of previous experience. Students may join the project at any time, as long as suitable collaborators are available and there is sufficient time for meaningful work to take place. Online workshops will commence in February/March, with second stage workshops in April/May 2019. Final live performances will take place at a venue likely to be London, Birmingham or Manchester.
Photo: On the Wing by Caroline Wright
Photo credit: Tony Millings