The DIWO Rehearsal Studio project is a collaboration between Drake Music and Furtherfield with consultation support from SPC.
The DIWO Rehearsal Studio project set out to explore infrastructures and processes to facilitate Internet based experimentation and collaboration between musicians with a variety of access needs.
This report offers a case study and guidelines for musicians interested in using the Internet to create online spaces for rehearsal and live music making. It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of some tools with a focus on accessibility.
The project brought together five musicians and sound artists to set up and test a low cost, accessible rehearsal studio. They worked across four different locations, jamming, rehearsing and composing music, using free (wherever possible) and accessible technologies.
The DIWO (Do It With Others) approach from Furtherfield, moves on from the punk DIY approach (in which you grab a guitar, learn two chords (3 chords is jazz) and form a band) to culture with a focus on collaboration across networks.
It’s DIWO if it…
- Enlarges artistic freedoms.
- Uses the metaphors, tools, cultures and processes of digital & physical networks.
- Is led by experimental artistic processes rather than utilitarian or theoretical concerns.
- Disrupts traditional hierarchies and concepts of ownership working with decentralized peer 2 peer practices.
- Involves diverse participants (unwitting and active collaborators), ideas and social ecologies.
- Generates unruly and provocative relationships between symbolic meanings and material effects.
- Co-creates a new, freer, art context for more and more diverse people.
The report sets out the research process, findings, the experience of the musicians, and describes the tools and set ups that they used.
Download the report PDF (5.4 MB) | Docx (7.2 MB)
Listen to the DIWO jamming sessions on Soundcloud
The Team
Project Devised by:
Gawain Hewitt (Drake Music) and Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield)
DIWO Rehearsal Studio Project Producer:
Tadeo Sendon – an artist and independent arts producer involved in a wide range of cross disciplinary collaboration, interactive and group-working projects. Using different mediums and formats to realise conceptual ideas connected through common narratives, his work examines new technologies, sound and explores into the future and the non-empirical realities.
Participating Musicians:
- Alana Blackburn (500km north Sydney) is a recorder player specialising in early music and contemporary music, performing as a soloist and ensemble musician throughout Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
- Gary Day (London) is Drake Music’s Associate Musician and Trainer. Gary has been working in the field of accessible and inclusive music making and education since 2001. He joined the Drake Music team in London as an Associate Musician and Trainer in January 2008 and is a ‘Sounds of Intent’ enthusiast.
- John Kelly (Wimbledon) is a musician, writer, actor and active campaigner for disability rights. He currently is working with Drake Music on Research & Development, and co-leads monthly Hack Events in London.
- Roger Mills (Sydney) is a classically trained musician, academic, media sound artist, and self taught improviser who has worked as a composer and sound designer for both stage and screen. His work explores networked music performance, improvisation, sound and music design and experimental radio. Between 2006 and 2011 he was editor of Furthernoise online platform for experimental networked sound.
- Max Runham (Kent) is a one armed singer-songwriter from Kent. With a strong passion for songwriting developing over the past couple of years, Max combines a unique guitar sound with vocals.
Continue reading – download the report PDF (5.4 MB) | Docx (7MB).
This article was originally published by Furtherfield.
