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

The complexity of digital media technologies requires artists to form teams of specialized experts integrating their contributions. Studies on interdisciplinary collaborations in organizational and scientific research-and-development teams have revealed that three processes Ñ communication, coordination and knowledgesharing - significantly influence their efficiency and effectiveness. This model was applied to an international and interdisciplinary digital media art production team to analyze the effects of team membersÕ geographical dispersion, differing nationalities and heterogeneity of disciplines. The results are in accordance with previous studies of teams in corporate and scientific settings but also reveal differences between artistic and industrial product development processes.