After that first visit to the studio, I just could not stay away as I found the process to be quite curious. Tzveta and I continued to meet every now and then, and I made every effort not to miss a rehearsal session. During that period, we were quite quick to create a common language to be able to communicate with each other.
Looking back now, I realize that we both were truly curious about, and willing to work with, the other. But we also had quite a few things in common, which I think helped us along the way. In our training and interests, we both had exposure to both engineering and the arts. Tzveta was trained as a gymnast but became a physicist. After she got an M.S. in meteorology, she got her M.F.A. in dance. She was an artist with a background in science. I, on the other hand, was trained as a classical pianist but became an industrial engineer. After I got my Ph.D. in industrial engineering, I started taking workshops in visual arts. I was an engineer with a background in the arts and had an active art practice. We both had a deep knowledge of, and passion to advance, our own field of practice, but we each also had a deep respect for and curiosity of the other field. Consequently, creating a common language turned out to be somewhat easy, but creating a common understanding took a bit longer…
Representation vs. Abstraction
As an engineer, in all of my past collaborations, as the work was being carried out or once it was completed, it would be quite clear as to what my contribution had been. I could easily tell that I had this idea or developed that model or suggested this modification to that algorithm. I was used to seeing my influence in a produced work whether it was a research proposal or a conference presentation or a publication.
I do not know now what I was thinking in the beginning, but to me, seeing dancers move around the stage like search agents looking for the optimal solution on the solution space looked like a very novel idea at the time, which I tried to sell to Tzveta tirelessly. At one point, I even suggested placing a chair on the stage to represent “the optimal solution” that “agents” could stumble upon or move towards during their “search.” And, dear Tzveta, to her credit, did explore this idea but dropped it quickly for reasons that are now obvious to me. During my untiring sales pitches of this idea and countless others, she would smile sweetly, nod patiently and listen curiously. She would take sparse and abstract notes in her notebook acceptingly. I know for a fact that her notes were quite scant, because I would shamelessly peek at what she drew or wrote down to see how much of what I was telling her she was sensibly choosing to retain and how much of it she was silently releasing to the universe.
After each one of our meetings, I could not wait to go to the next studio rehearsal to see how much of those notes I would see on the stage. The time would fly by for me during the rehearsals as I would totally be absorbed by my mission to identify my influence or the elements of my work in the piece under development. When I recognized something, I felt so accomplished: I, the engineer, was collaborating with a dancer!
During the rehearsals, each iteration of the piece appeared to be an intriguing dance work to me. As I would be getting ready to jump with joy thinking we were done, Tzveta would shrug her shoulders dismissively and say that it was not good enough. My heart would sink. The more I wanted to hold on to what I saw in the piece as being representational or interpretive of my work, the more Tzveta wanted to move away from it. There were quite a few moments when I felt quite lost, and I am sure there were moments that Tzveta thought that I was not getting it…
As rehearsals continued, however, something shifted in my understanding of the process and what Tzveta doing and what we were doing together. I could tell that there was a subtle influence of some of our conversations and my description of my engineering work in the piece. But the dance work had become something else, an abstraction. Then, it dawned on me: I was approaching our collaboration as a representation of my work in her work, whereas she was approaching it as an abstraction of my work in her work. I also realized, with her help and many many patient explanations on Tzveta’s part, how uninspiring and straightforward a representation could be and how intriguing and complex an abstraction could be.
This is not to say that abstraction has no place in engineering and representation cannot be beautiful and intriguing in the arts. Engineering and the arts both use abstraction and representation as processes and forms for inquiry and as work. We, Tzveta and I, both had an understanding of and an appreciation for representation and abstraction. But we had different points of view as to the process and form of our collaboration.
Product vs. process focus
Another difference between Tzveta and I in our approach to our own work and our collaborative work that became apparent to me after a long time was about an artist’s focus on process and an engineer’s focus on product.
As an engineer, I do not start typing up prose with the hopes that it will become a part of a proposal or a paper or writing code with the possibility that I might come up with a new model or a novel algorithm. I start with the end product (a model, an algorithm, a paper or a proposal) in mind. There is room for trial and error perhaps, but there is not much room for play. I plan the outcome. I focus on the product.
As an artist, however, Tzveta starts moving, exploring patterns and developing phrases just to play. There is a possibility that the phrase or a variant of it may show up in a class during warm-up or exploration, in one of the pieces that she choreographs or she herself performs, but that is not the planned outcome. She starts with the process (of moving, exploring, or experimenting) in mind. There is room for trial and error, and a lot of room for play. She does not plan the outcome. She focuses on the process.
After many many visits to the studio, after many many many iterations of the piece, I finally began to understand how Tzveta had no plans or preconceived ideas about the final piece. She was just letting the process guide her and was allowing me to give her bits and pieces to explore and experiment with. In fact, this realization informed my visual art practice deeply as well. From carefully planned narratives and immaculately engineered works, I moved to loosely developed abstractions to messily constructed works. And, I must admit, this realization informed my teaching and research activities in engineering as well. From carefully curated class plans and well thought-out and tightly-controlled research plans, I moved to playfully crafted classes to fluid and open research plans.
In an interdisciplinary collaboration, there are two distinct points of view. There are differences in ways of thinking and differences in ways doing. For the collaboration to work, both parties have to make an effort at creating a common language so that you can understand each other. Without a common language to communicate and a shared understanding to appreciate, it may not be possible to truly collaborate where you can join your forces to explore something new, together.
And, when you are there trying to create a common language and develop an understanding, look for similarities for understanding but value the differences for growth. The similarities will help you to create a common language so that you can communicate, but the differences will help you to understand each other so that you can work together, experiment together, and, most importantly, create together.
