Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts: A Psychological Perspective on the Production Process

Brigitte Steinheider and George Legrady

Interdisciplinary teamwork has become increas-ingly common in industrial and knowledge development, mostrecently in the field of digital media art practice, where thecomplexity of technology has caused a shift from individualto team-based production. The complexity of most projectsdemands diverse forms of expertise acquired over timethrough experience. To realize a project, it is therefore nec-essary that the needed knowledge be provided by many spe-cialists, whose efforts are integrated through a collaborativeprocess. It is also hoped that bringing together expert knowl-edge from diverse domains may result in synergetic effectswhereby the whole becomes something different from the sumof its parts. The integration of the specialists’ diversified ap-proaches, methods and strategies ideally enables a multifac-eted view of a given problem and therefore enhances thecreative potentials of the team members [1,2]. This multifac-eted view is possible only if there is a shared understanding ofthe problem and the various approaches to solving it.

Research on interdisciplinary teams shows that this commonground is often missing, which causes team members to com-plain of inefficient work [3]. Differing technical languages, dif-ferent approaches to problem-solving and a lack of familiaritywith other members’ disciplines often leads to problems in suchteams [4]. In addition to communication and coordination,interdisciplinary teams must also develop consensus about theproject’s goals, have a clear understanding of team members’diverse professional areas of expertise and acquire a meta-knowledge connecting the different areas of needed expertiseas they relate to the project that has brought them together.This process is called knowledge-sharing.

To validate this hypothesis, researchers at the FraunhoferInstitute for Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany,constructed a questionnaire based on interviews with mem-bers of interdisciplinary research and development teams [5].Openness, personal trust and willingness to compromise, com-mon interests and sympathy, spatial proximity and technical

communication capabilities wereconsidered positive factors for communication by these teammembers. Factors influencing co-ordination consisted of systematicproject management, time man-agement and stability of team com-position. The categories associatedwith knowledge-sharing included ashared understanding of objectives and problems, shared ter-minology, experience with interdisciplinarity and motivationto work in interdisciplinary teams.

Steinheider’s previous investigations of research and de-velopment teams [6] in corporate organizations and scientificinstitutions found coordination and knowledge-sharing to bemore problematic within teams than communication. As re-ported in this previous study, there were few complaints thatteam members lacked competence or were uninterested in in-terdisciplinary collaboration. Steinheider concluded that co-operation problems are not automatically avoided by thecareful formation of a team. Instead, she argues that the pro-cess of knowledge-sharing is critical and that strategies andmethods to support this process therefore need to be devel-

© 2004 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 315–321, 2004 315

A B S T R A C T

The complexity of digital mediatechnologies requires artists toform teams of specializedexperts integrating their contri-butions. Studies on interdiscipli-nary collaborations inorganizational and scientificresearch-and-developmentteams have revealed that threeprocesses—communication,coordination and knowledge-sharing—significantly influencetheir efficiency and effective-ness. This model was applied toan international and interdiscipli-nary digital media art productionteam to analyze the effects ofteam members’ geographicaldispersion, differing nationalitiesand heterogeneity of disciplines.The results are in accordancewith previous studies of teamsin corporate and scientificsettings but also reveal differ-ences between artistic andindustrial product developmentprocesses.

Brigitte Steinheider (psychologist), Department of Psychology, University of Oklahoma,Tulsa Graduate College, 4502 East 41st Street, Tulsa, OK 74135, U.S.A. E-mail: <bsteinheider@ou.edu>.

George Legrady (media artist), Media Arts & Technology Graduate Program, University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A. E-mail: <legrady@arts.ucsb.edu>.

Based on a paper presented at ISEA 2002, 11th International Symposium on ElectronicArt, Nagoya, Japan, 2–31 October 2002.

Fig. 1. Pockets Full of Memories installation layout, 2001. (Photo © George Legrady)

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 315

oped. Her studies have also shown thatthese cooperation problems are associ-ated with longer product developmenttime, increased product developmentcosts and decreased product quality. Onthe subjective level, team members com-plained about stress and reported lowerjob satisfaction compared with teammembers who reported less difficulty in collaboration. Problems were morefrequent in teams with numerous mem-bers and/or external partners. Collabo-ration in teams was enhanced by priorteam-based experience, knowledgeabout product development processesand high commitment among teammembers.

CASE STUDY: POCKETS FULLOF MEMORIESThe aim of the following case study wasto apply the collaboration model to aninternational and interdisciplinary teamcreating a digital media art project. Theanalysis addressed the production and as-sociated problems of a digital on-line artinstallation produced by a multinationalteam of specialists. The work had its in-augural exhibition from April to Sep-tember 2001 at the Centre PompidouMuseum of Modern Art in Paris. PocketsFull of Memories (PFOM) consists of a vi-sual archive of digitally scanned personalobjects contributed by the audience (seeFigs 1 and 2).

The objects in the archive were organized by a neural-net–based, self-organizing map algorithm according to

attributes defined by the contributors ina questionnaire (see Fig. 3). Visitors de-scribed their objects with keywords andevaluated them with a semantic differ-ential between two poles, e.g. old/new,useful/useless. The archive was simulta-neously projected on a large scale in themuseum and posted on the Internet at<www.pocketsfullofmemories.com>. Vis-itors and Internet users could view theobjects and add comments via terminals.The goal of the installation was to activelyintegrate visitors in the creation of the

archive and to enhance interaction be-tween the audience and the data struc-ture.

This project was realized by a spatiallydispersed international team in Helsinki,Budapest, Stuttgart, Paris and Santa Bar-bara, California [7]—specialists with het-erogeneous backgrounds in art, graphicdesign, engineering, cognitive scienceand computer science. Because of thespatial dispersion of the team, commu-nication was done mainly via e-mail ortelephone in English, but also in French(between the artist and the Paris-basedteam members) and Hungarian (be-tween the artist and the Budapest-basedengineering team) as well as in Finnishand German. Due to its innovative natureand its integration of science and art con-cepts, the complexity of this project wasrather high.

DEVELOPMENT PROCESSArtist George Legrady met TimoHonkela at CIRCUS, an arts-science con-ference funded by the European Union(EU), in October 1998 and was then in-troduced by Honkela to self-organizingmaps. Honkela had completed his dis-sertation under the cognitive scientistTeuvo Kohonen on applying Kohonen’sself-organizing map (SOM) on semanticdata clustering. These SOM algorithmsare used to aggregate biostatistical datain order to find sub-groups with similarcharacteristics. As Legrady was interestedin constructing archives, he was lookingfor complex algorithms with which to

316 Steinheider and Legrady, Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts

Fig. 2. Pockets Full of Memories opening night, 2001. (Photo © George Legrady)

Fig. 3. Pockets Full of Memories questionnaire, 1024 � 768 pixels, 2001. (© George Legrady)

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 316

sort his data. He and Honkela met againat the next CIRCUS meeting in An-goulême, France, and brainstormed ondifferent project ideas. At this time,Legrady was contacted by Boris Tissot, anexhibition organizer working for theCentre Pompidou, to discuss an exhibi-tion proposal, and an initial version ofthe PFOM project came into being. Pro-duction began in the early summer of2000, with a spring 2001 deadline.

The PFOM project demanded partici-pation of an interdisciplinary team ofspecialists to resolve specific research so-lutions such as design for a scanning sta-tion, development of a questionnaire,data management, storage optimization,network systems, data visualization, In-ternet interaction and visual identity.

Legrady contacted the following part-ners:

• Timo Honkela and his team, re-sponsible for the implementation ofthe SOM algorithm

• C3, a Hungarian engineering/artistteam based in Budapest, with whomhe had previously worked, who wereto develop the hardware/software forthe scanning stations

• The Projekttriangle design team inStuttgart, who would be responsiblefor the visual identity and interfacedesign of the installation

• Brigitte Steinheider, a German psy-chologist, who helped with the con-struction of a questionnaire for dataassessment.

Work began in mid-July at a retreat inthe Finnish forest country with Legradyand Honkela’s team; here the initial de-velopment and testing of the SOM algo-rithm took place. A kickoff meeting tookplace a week later in the south of France,attended by the Finnish team, Legradyand Steinheider. The team collected ev-eryday objects such as candies, pens andjewelry, which were scanned and evalu-ated using the questionnaire; these ob-jects were used to test the SOM. Ten dayslater, the French curator and the Germandesign team joined the group to furtherdiscuss project development. Membersof C3 were not able to come to this meet-ing; another meeting was thereforescheduled in Budapest, in September2000, with Legrady, the curator, the C3Budapest engineering team, the Finnishteam and the German design team. TimoKoskeniemmi, who was part of theHonkela team and responsible for theSOM software implementation, went toBudapest in October 2000 to collaboratedirectly with the Hungarian engineeringteam. The main production work tookplace in Budapest, where the scanning

station was fabricated, image scanningand touchscreen interaction were devel-oped and the questionnaire assembledin accordance with the design developedin Stuttgart. The first prototype wasshown and beta-tested 2 months later atthe ISEA conference in Paris, 6–11 De-cember 2000. A few weeks later, Legradyconcluded his 5-year stay in Germany andmoved back to California. The web im-plementation was realized in March 2001by Andreas Engberg in the CREATE Re-search Lab at the University of Califor-nia, Santa Barbara. The final completedversion of the installation was assembledfor the first time at the Pompidou inau-gural exhibition. The systems integrationof the scanning station with the data-han-dling computers and redesign of the datavisualization were realized on site in themuseum gallery space days prior to theopening. Two Parisian engineers werecontracted at that time to supervise theassembly and assure the proper func-tioning of the technology for the dura-tion of the exhibition. Pockets Full ofMemories opened on 18 April 2001 on themain floor of the Centre Pompidou inParis and was shown without interruptionuntil 4 September 2001. During this pe-riod, it received over 20,000 visitors, whocontributed over 3,400 objects to thedatabase archive [8].

In the following section, the develop-ment of the art installation will be de-scribed from Steinheider’s perspective asan industrial and organizational psy-chologist. Her assessment is based on ob-

servations at the project kickoff in thesouth of France and on her discussionswith Legrady and with other team mem-bers. In addition, team members weremailed questionnaires following the com-pletion of the project in which they wereasked to describe their motivation to par-ticipate and their experiences. Partici-pants also rated 72 statements assessingcommunication, coordination andknowledge-sharing within the team.Some participants—for instance, theParisian engineers—could not be con-tacted. Seven team members answeredthe questionnaire: the curator, theFinnish team leader, the Hungarian en-gineer, all three team members of theGerman design team and the Swedish en-gineer in Santa Barbara, California, whoset up the web site. Besides Legrady,those listed above were the most involvedin the development of the installation,and the following evaluation is based ontheir answers.

TEAM STRUCTUREOverall, 14 geographically dispersed per-sons were involved in the developmentof the installation, a team size that madedirect communication between all mem-bers difficult. The team size, scattered lo-cations and diversity of languages andprofessions all resulted in the develop-ment of subteams. This situation was fur-ther complicated by membershipfluctuations and an unstable group struc-ture. For instance, the leader of the

Steinheider and Legrady, Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts 317

Fig. 4. Prototype of questionnaire screen design, 1024 � 768 pixels, 2001. (© GeorgeLegrady)

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 317

Finnish team initiated the work processat the kickoff but then assigned his qual-ified student, Timo Koskeniemmi, to im-plement the task. Furthermore, webdevelopment also shifted to Santa Bar-bara 4 months prior to the exhibitionopening. Finally, the two Parisian engi-neers were contracted to join the teamduring the last weeks of the productionphase to set up the installation in Paris.

Many of the team members had pre-viously participated in interdisciplinarycollaborations and product develop-ment processes but stated that this proj-ect was far more complex than what theywere used to. The curator and the Hun-garian engineer had the most experi-ence with team-based collaborations inproduct development processes. Bothenjoyed interdisciplinary teamwork; theystated that it allowed them to learn fromother disciplines. A few others reported,however, that one of the disadvantagesof such collaborations is that discussionsof technical details must remain at a su-perficial level, which requires additionalinteraction to further clarify expecta-tions and requirements. All team mem-bers who answered the questionnairewere aware of the interdependencies ofthe specialized contributions and theconsequences when one task falls behindschedule.

Team members differed in their moti-vation to participate: Three were moti-vated by the opportunity to work on anart project to be exhibited at the inter-nationally prestigious Centre Pompidou;they also wanted to work with an artistand to gain insight into an interdiscipli-nary work that integrated artistic, scien-tific and technological components andperspectives. One respondent liked thechallenge involved in realizing such acomplex project. Travel to the various

countries was mentioned as a benefit, aswas the challenge of meeting and work-ing with an international and interestinggroup of people of diverse backgrounds.Reinforcing moments were experiencedwhen progress became obvious throughthe achievement of milestones. Pleasurewas also experienced in seeing the com-pleted installation itself, watching the vis-itors interact with the questionnaire andseeing their delight when they saw theirobjects projected on the museum wall.Team members felt rewarded by the re-sult of the project even though the bud-get allotted them wages below theprofessional standard. Individual workpackages were not clarified at the start,and some of the subteams realized thattheir workload was heavier than they hadinitially planned. As a consequence, allparticipants agreed that project roles andindividual responsibilities in such ven-tures should be more precisely clarifiedat the start of the project, with preciseand binding specifications.

The subteams differed widely in theirperception of problems associated withthe product development process. Theengineering teams pointed out the ne-cessity for technical specifications and de-tailed work packages, and the designteam complained about the lack of cen-tralized project management, whereasthe curator and the Finnish scientist con-centrated mainly on communicationproblems that arose due to differences inmentality and language. This diversity inperception was also reflected in the eval-uation of communication, coordinationand knowledge-sharing processes. Over-all, team members had the most com-plaints about coordination problems,followed by knowledge-sharing, whereascommunication problems were per-ceived as less frequent.

COMMUNICATIONCommunication is enhanced by open-ness, personal trust and willingness tocompromise, common interests and sym-pathy and spatial proximity. Dispersedteams have more difficulties in develop-ing trust, because communication is re-duced to written messages, and thus allforms of nonverbal cues for signaling un-derstanding and sympathy are excluded.The majority of team members pointedout that team meetings would have beenmore frequent if the geographical dis-tance had not been so great. The curatoremphasized that personal communica-tion helps to improve understanding be-tween team members because of theexchange of non-work-related informa-tion and nonverbal signs of understand-ing. He telephoned team membersregularly to ascertain by the sound oftheir voice whether they agreed on some-thing or not.

In addition, the cultural mentalities ofand chemistry between team membershave to be taken into account. Scandi-navian people, for example, are relativelyless hierarchically minded, leading toless-differentiated project roles. TheFinnish team leader tried to motivate andeducate his students by letting them par-ticipate in this project without first dis-cussing their inclusion with Legrady.Some conflicts surfaced when the par-ticipating Finnish design student realizedthat a professional design team had al-ready been selected for the project’s visual identity design. Because of sched-uling conflicts, there was no commonproject kickoff including all team mem-bers. Instead, kickoffs took place indi-vidually within each subteam. Thisdelayed the establishment of preciserules and norms of communication andthe development of a team spirit, mak-ing it difficult to build trust between teammembers. Even though team membersspoke different languages, had diversecultural backgrounds and differed in age(ranging between 25 and 51 years) andprofessional expertise (from student toseasoned professional), these differenceswere not perceived to hinder teamwork.However, team members differed con-siderably in their perception of team-work: Competition, resentment andopenness were the issues that producedthe greatest variance in their responses.

COORDINATIONFactors influencing coordination in-cluded systematic project management,time management, and stability and com-petence of team composition. The time

318 Steinheider and Legrady, Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts

Fig. 5. Pockets Fullof Memories,DEAF03 opening,2003. (© GeorgeLegrady)

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 318

schedule of PFOM’s development wasvery tight, and there was time pressurefrom the beginning: teamwork started inJuly 2000, and the prototype was pre-sented at a conference in December2000. The tight schedule was cited by oneteam member as the factor most detri-mental to the work process. Meeting thedeadlines was further complicated be-cause some team members had previ-ously committed to other projects, notrealizing the complexity of the synchro-nization process needed for integrationof the tasks. The final production phasebegan when Legrady moved back to Cal-ifornia 4 months prior to the opening,and some team members felt discon-nected by the absence of Legrady duringhis relocation.

The project development was an evolv-ing process. Legrady did not want to pre-judge the individual contributions, as hewanted to learn from the various disci-plines and their results. This approachenhanced team members’ options forproblem-solving and realization of theirindividual ideas but did not specify whatwas expected from them and thus cre-ated uncertainties and increased subjec-tive stress. At various stages, Legradyresponded to results by modifying com-ponents. Specifications changed as a con-sequence, so that significant parts had tobe redesigned and re-implemented.Some delays resulted, and specificationswere interpreted by some team membersas non-mandatory decisions. The designteam, for example, was very disappointedwhen the initial design concept they hadworked on for three months had to beset aside.

The engineers were reminded of thenecessity for a detailed project plan withdetailed technical specifications prior tostarting work on a complex project likePFOM. They had the sense that the prod-uct development process could have beenimproved by a preliminary technicaloverview, where the whole project’s de-tails would have been mapped out aheadof time. Such a precise plan would havemade the engineers’ work easier, butwould have greatly impeded innovationand experimentation, reducing the de-grees of freedom for the artistic designprocess. Legrady wanted to have multipleoptions at each step of the way, but teammembers perceived this approach as alack of systematic project management.

The evolving production developmentprocess caused conflicts for the curator,who was confronted at one end by his di-rector’s nervousness about the risks ofpresenting a highly technological anduntested new exhibition for the first time

and, on the other, by the unresolvedproblems he witnessed during technicallychallenging production phases. Thelegal situation was unclear, as the projectbegan without binding contracts betweenteam members defining concrete workpackages and responsibilities. The cura-tor saw the need to define responsibili-ties through written agreements andcontracts and was the most adamant inrequesting these. In the end, contractswere signed between the museum andthe two major participants but only afterthe end of the production.

Subteams nonetheless proceeded withproduction work as they did not doubtthe technical competence and integrityof the other subteams. Subteam mem-bers were well aware of the interdepen-dencies between the tasks, but as some ofthe components took longer to completethan expected, subsequent tasks were de-layed as a result. Further problems aroseout of team members’ divergent objec-tives. All the disciplines overemphasizedtheir part in relation to others. Teammeetings might have resolved the prob-lem, but due to the spatial distance, thesewere rare. The complexity of the projectalso made it difficult to prepare teammeetings thoroughly. There was hardlyany time for documentation of the re-spective results, as project solutionsemerged out of the ongoing production.

KNOWLEDGE-SHARINGThe categories associated with knowledge-sharing are a shared understanding of

objectives and problems, shared termi-nology, adopting the other’s perspective,experience with interdisciplinarity andmotivation to work in interdisciplinaryteams. Due to the range of differentknowledge domains represented, someteam members found it difficult to de-velop a shared understanding of the proj-ect at the outset. The Finnish team leaderstated that the project should have begunwith a workshop attended by all, at whichthe objectives, tasks, terminologies andtimetables of the project would havebeen defined. This would have enhancedtrust and mutual understanding, as theways of thinking and methodological ap-proaches of the various other disciplineswere largely unknown to the subteammembers. That members spoke differentnative languages also resulted in certainmisunderstandings. The curator’s de-scription of a playful interface design wasmisinterpreted and led the design teamto create a game aesthetic (see Fig. 4).They had interpreted the term literally,developing a very colorful and three-dimensional design for the question-naire, whereas Legrady and the curatormeant it more in an associative way andpreferred a more minimal design. Thelate delivery of the final redesign im-peded the Budapest production team,who had to work around the clock tomeet the beta-testing deadline.

Team composition stability was af-fected when new persons were broughtinto the project. Following the beta test-ing in December 2000, web interface pro-duction shifted from Budapest to Santa

Steinheider and Legrady, Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts 319

Fig. 6. Pockets Full of Memories, DEAF03 objects and their movements, 2048 � 768 pixels,2003. (© George Legrady)

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 319

Barbara. For the duration of the Pompi-dou exhibition, the curator contractedtwo Parisian engineering students to su-pervise system maintenance throughoutthe exhibition. With each new memberof the team, a common ground had to bedeveloped anew. Due to proximity factorsand close working relationships, theSanta Barbara team was much more in-tegrated into the spirit of the project,whereas the Parisian engineers saw it pri-marily as a summer job.

EFFORT AND RESULTSTeam members stated in the question-naire that they were highly motivated toparticipate in this project and felt entirelycompetent to fulfill their contributions.Even though they miscalculated projecttime and costs, they gave the best theycould. Asked to evaluate the contribu-tions of other participants, team membersperceived them as equally competent, butless motivated compared to themselves.Respondents were not convinced that theother team members gave their best andblamed them for failures in keeping thetime schedule, which led to delays of theirown work. The positive self-evaluationscompared with the less positive evaluationof other team members are an indicatorthat participants functioned as a groupbut did not become a solidified virtualteam. In hindsight, most of the respon-dents stated that they would have madesignificant changes to their contributions,not so much on the conceptual level as inthe realization of their part of the instal-lation.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTSAND OUTLOOKPockets Full of Memories was shown at theDEAF 03 Dutch Electronic Art Festival inRotterdam, the Netherlands, from 25February to 9 March 2003 (see ColorPlate A No. 2 and Fig. 5). During thistime, 600 data sets were scanned (see Fig. 6). The installation was redesignedby a team of eight persons who worked si-multaneously on site [9]. Legrady had be-come dubious about dispersed teams as aresult of the first production phase. In-stalling the exhibition a second time re-quired the continued participation of theHungarian engineer and the German de-sign team. Three new members werebrought in for this production, two hav-ing previously worked with Legrady andthe third being the in-house engineer.

Six months later, PFOM was shown atArs Electronica in Linz, Austria, 9–21September 2003. During that time, 800

data sets were collected. The productionteam this time consisted of four persons[10], as the installation had become stan-dardized at DEAF. PFOM was exhibited amonth later in the Aura Exhibition in Bu-dapest, Hungary (30 October–30 No-vember 2003), organized by C3. With thestandardization of the installation, theproduction team became increasinglysmaller. In Budapest, it was realized solelyby the Hungarian engineer, Marton Fer-nezelyi, with the design team workingfrom a distance.

WORKING WITHCREATIVE PEOPLECreativity can only occur when a task in-volves complex and ill-defined problemsthat require the development of noveland useful solutions. Structuring theproblem is a key component of the cre-ative process. It involves defining theproblem and gathering information,which allows the formulation of conceptsthat permit an understanding of theproblem. The acquired information en-ables recombinatory possibilities in newconfigurations, thus allowing the gener-ation, development and implementationof new ideas.

In an effort to successfully realize a cre-ative installation, all team members in-volved have to define problems, gatherinformation and then progressively re-fine and extend initial ideas toward suc-cessful implementation. Since all of theseactivities are difficult, creative work is ademanding and time-consuming process[11]. Furthermore, it is uncertain in itsoutcome, as multiple solutions are possi-ble, risky because the outcome cannot bepredicted or assured in advance, andstressful because of its iterative character.In order to cope with these conditions,creative people have high levels of moti-vation and identify personally with theirwork. They also demand an equivalentlyhigh commitment from others, makingcollaboration with them very intense.One questionnaire respondent statedthat he would have reconsidered thePFOM collaboration if he had known thathe would have to sacrifice his personallife throughout the exhibition’s produc-tion phase.

In contrast to relying on standardizedsolutions, creative people approach prob-lems in an exploratory mode, examiningpossibilities, searching for informationand developing a conceptual model. Fol-lowing this exploration, however, creativeworkers seem to adopt a highly analyticaland evaluative position, identifying flawsas a basis for further elaboration and re-

fining of these ideas. As a consequence,their harsh evaluation of their own workor that of others might sometimes seemlike an emotional expression, as the de-sign team stated after their initial conceptwas rejected. Research has shown thatclose supervision and highly detailedwork plans tend to inhibit the perfor-mance of creative people [12]. As a con-sequence, even though it might bedesirable, especially in light of tightschedules, to have exact plans, this is notvery likely to result in the most innova-tive and creative solution.

CONCLUSIONThis installation exemplifies how cre-ativity and innovation result from theconfrontation with and integration of dif-ferent perspectives, in this case the inte-gration of the SOM algorithm into thecontext of an art project. Overall, the de-velopment process was judged by mostteam members to be “very intense,” butthey found it worth their effort. Despitethe budgetary and time constraints, aninnovative installation was realized andwas very well received. Coordination andknowledge-sharing were the most prob-lematic processes. In order to optimizethe innovative potentials of interdiscipli-nary teams and to reduce team memberstress, artist team leaders can apply thefollowing lessons from this project:

• Team building should not be donewith only individuals’ expertise inmind. Instead, individual and cul-tural differences, as well as geo-graphical distance between teammembers, must be considered. Be-cause teams with more than 10 mem-bers tend to form subteams, smallerteams are preferable. Team memberfamiliarity and spatial and temporalproximity improve collaborations.

• A single kickoff with all team mem-bers present helps in developing amutual understanding of the project.All terminology should be standard-ized and key concepts of the individ-ual disciplines must be defined. It isalso necessary to invest time in clari-fying the task and defining individ-ual subtasks. In-person meetings areimportant to develop trust andshould be more frequent at the be-ginning.

• Regular review of prototypes is criti-cal to assure mutual understanding.

• Knowledge about product develop-ment processes helps team membersto shift their focus from the subtasksto the overall task. Reminding teammembers of their part in the overall

320 Steinheider and Legrady, Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 320

process and the interdependenciesbetween the tasks might increase ad-herence to the time schedule and re-duce delays.

• Team members should accept thestress and initial uncertainty of theresult as part of the product devel-opment process. Team leadersshould trust their team members andtheir expertise, motivate them andtry to reduce their stress.

Generating innovative work is a veryintense and demanding task—but alsovery rewarding!

References

1. H.G. Denton, ”Multidisciplinary Team-Based Proj-ect Work: Planning Factors,” Design Studies 18 (1997)pp. 155–170.

2. C.D. Schunn et al., “The Growth of Multidiscipli-narity in the Cognitive Science Society,” Cognitive Sci-ence 22, No. 1, 107–130 (1998).

3. W. Janssen and P. Goldsworthy, “MultidisciplinaryResearch for Natural Resource Management: Con-ceptual and Practical Implications,” Agricultural Sys-tems 51 (1996) pp. 259–279.

4. R. Bromme, “Beyond One’s Own Perspective: ThePsychology of Cognitive Interdisciplinarity,” in P.Weingart and N. Stehr, eds., Practicing Interdiscipli-narity (Toronto: Toronto Univ. Press, 2000) pp.115–133.

5. B. Steinheider and E. Burger, “Kooperation in in-terdisziplinären Entwicklungsteams,” in Komplexe Ar-beitssysteme—Herausforderung für Analyse undGestaltung (Dortmund, Germany: GfA-Press, 2000)pp. 553–556.

6. B. Steinheider, “Supporting the Co-Operation ofR&D-Teams in the Product Development Process,”Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Engineering Designand Automation, 5–8 August 2001, Las Vegas, NV,U.S.A.

7. The team included Timo Honkela (Kohonen self-organizing neural-net algorithm), Helsinki; MartonFernezelyi (scanning station production, software in-tegration), Center for Culture and Communication(C3), Budapest; Projekttriangle Design, Stuttgart;Boris Tissot, exhibition organizer, Centre Pompidou;and Andreas Engberg, web component, Create Lab,UC Santa Barbara.

8. G. Legrady and T. Honkela, “Pockets Full of Mem-ories: An Interactive Museum Installation,” in VisualCommunication 1, No. 2, 163-–169 (2002).

9. This team consisted of Stephan Drescher (DEAFengineer); Marton Fernezelyi (C3, Budapest); EthanKaplan (UCSB); Martin Grothmaak, Juergen Spaethand Daniela Djokic (Projekttriangle, Stuttgart);Legrady; and Andreas Schlegel, who did the visuali-zation from Santa Barbara.

10. The team members were: Marton Fernezelyi (C3,Budapest), Peter Huetmannsberger from the exhi-bition space (local Linux expert), Andreas Schlegeland Legrady.

11. M.D. Mumford et al., “Leading Creative People:Orchestrating Expertise and Relationships,” Leader-ship Quarterly 13, No. 6, 705–750 (2002).

12. J.T. Barnowe, “Leadership and PerformanceOutcomes in Research Organizations,” Organiza-tional Behavior and Human Performance 14, (1975) pp. 264–280.

Brigitte Steinheider is Assistant Professor inthe Department of Psychology at the Univer-sity of Oklahoma, Tulsa Graduate College. Shereceived her MBA in 1992 from the Univer-sity of Düsseldorf and her Ph.D. from the Tech-nical University Dresden, Germany, in 1996.Her research focuses on interdisciplinary col-laborations and knowledge-sharing processesin organizations and research institutions.

George Legrady is Professor of InteractiveMedia at the University of California, SantaBarbara, with a joint appointment in theMedia Arts & Technology graduate programand the Department of Art Studio. His inter-active installations have been exhibited inter-nationally, most recently at the KiasmaMuseum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, theCentre Georges Pompidou, Ars Electronica,DEAF03 and the San Francisco Museum ofModern Art. He has received awards from Cre-ative Capital Foundation, the Daniel Lan-glois Foundation for the Arts, Science, andTechnology, the Canada Council and the Na-tional Endowment for the Arts.

Steinheider and Legrady, Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts 321

I 2S 0E 0A 2

Leonardo_37-4_265- 7/21/04 9:46 AM Page 321