Group Work

I'll start this post with a confession: I often hate group projects, particularly when working with people who I don't know. I often find them a frustrating exercise in compromise and delegation that leaves no one feeling particularly proud of their work and maybe wishing they could have just done it themselves.

However, my group for our term project in my technology class seemed to gel instantly. We all contributed ideas, layering on top of each other until we came up with an interesting an manageable topic. How thrilling!

Because we have a mix of music educators and dance educators, we decided to explore something that the two art forms often share in common: expression. Using technology, we intend to manipulate songs and dances to explore the different meanings that are created with different effects such as volume, speed, etc.

I think we can use many different forms of technology to manipulate the music and dance pieces. We can edit the dance clip in imovie, edit the music in audacity, and present the entire presentation in powerpoint. We can also include interactive activities to bring our whole presentation to life.

Interestingly, our project not only explores the ways that music and dance can create different meanings and emotional effects, but also the way that technology can add a layer of manipulation to a human activity. As Amanda pointed out, our actions bring to mind questions of authenticity that carries over once technology comes into the picture. Is a piece of music the same as the same piece sped up? Is a dance the same when set to two different soundtracks? Are we creating a new piece just by pushing some buttons on our computer?