I wasn’t able to attend the project planning session in person, but I went through the slides posted to Moodle and found them useful to sit with independently. This post is my attempt to work through the questions on decision making, conflict, and how to think about my own preferences as a collaborator in relation to the project as it actually stands.
The slides asked some direct questions about communication and planning preferences that I think are worth being honest about. I don’t naturally gravitate toward structured planning documents or formal timelines — my instinct is to start making something and let the process generate its own logic. This is something which Mani mentioned to me that she resonates with, she prefers her process to be more emergent than planned, I think that approach works well in solo work where I’m the only person who needs to track where things are, but in a collaborative context it can be risky I think, the other people in the project can’t see into your process, and silence can easily be interpreted as disinterest.
In terms of communication, I’m often more comfortable in writing than in scheduled calls or meetings, messages give me time to think and reflect before I respond and they create a record of what’s been agreed, I find that in person social anxiety can cause me to freeze up and my mind can go a bit blank, and I fall into people pleasing tendencies. For this project messaging worked reasonably well, Mani and I have stayed in contact primarily over Instagram and Whatsapp message, which suits both of us. The informal nature of that channel also fits the way the project started.
The slides raised a question about conflict and control that I found useful to sit with and reflect on; ‘how much control are you comfortable handing over, and in which areas?’ For this project, the answer has been fairly clear in practice if not in theory, I’ve handed over the conceptual and visual direction almost entirely, while retaining autonomy over the sound production itself (although continually communicating with the group, sharing draft sketches and asking for feedback). The group were pretty keen to give me creative freedom over the sound, which I was happy with as it gave me freedom to explore and interpret the themes of the project through my own lens. In our first meeting I had shared some artists that I liked as inspirational material for the group, such as HR Giger and Tsutomu Nihei, and it was cool to see these influences incorporated into the visual elements of the project.
The slides also asked directly about conflict, whether you find it useful or uncomfortable, and whether you’re able to raise difficult issues with collaborators. To be honest I’m a very conflict-avoidant person, and this had some impact on my ability to communicate my concerns with particular elements of the video. As the project developed, it became clear that the video would heavily use generative AI imagery, something I have personal moral objections to using artistically. Although I felt that tension, I didn’t raise it as a concern with the group. Part of that was practical (the decision felt already made by the time I became aware of it), but part of it was simply that I didn’t want to create friction in a collaboration that was otherwise working well. I prioritised keeping a positive relationship with the group over my own reservations.
The slides’ framing is useful to distinguish between ethical, political, conceptual and aesthetic disagreements, and suggest that knowing which category a concern falls into helps you decide how firmly to hold it. My objection to AI imagery in art is more of an ethical concern than just aesthetic, I’m not in support of the ‘slopification’ of media at the hands of AI, I don’t like how it can replace critical thinking, and I don’t like how it nonconsensually recycles the hard work of real artists. That concern probably warranted being voiced. The fact that I didn’t is something I’m sitting with as a genuine limitation of how I approached this collaboration, and something I’d want to handle differently in future.
Draft Timeline:
| Milestone | Target Date |
|---|---|
| Initial meeting / ideas exchange (Miro board session) | 19th April |
| Exchange of references and influences | Late April |
| First stripped-back demo delivered to group | Early May |
| Discussion and creative pivot (toward rave direction) | Mid May |
| Revised track / second demo | Late May |
| Final sound delivered | Early June |
| Submission deadline | 4th June 2026 |
Contingency planning
The slides emphasised building contingencies into timelines, and the main risk I can identify here is the asynchronous nature of the collaboration. The CSM students have their own assessment deadlines and their own pressures, and there’s no guarantee their video edit will be locked by the time I need to finalise the audio. My contingency is to make a track that works independently as a piece of music, as as a group we agreed that diegetic sound would not be necessary.
The other potential difficulty flagged in the slides was differences in commitment levels between group members. I’ve been aware that I’m working somewhat at the margins of this collaboration in terms of my clas attendance and structured input, which puts more pressure on the quality and responsiveness of the work itself to demonstrate engagement. I think that’s a reasonable trade-off, but it’s worth naming.
Mini-goal: Deliver a first work-in-progress sound asset to the group and invite explicit feedback on direction before developing the track further.
Leave a Reply