| The aim of this study is to bring more awareness to the interdisciplinary processes of multimedia artists and their collaborative works within the sociocultural context of the 1960s in New York City. By portraying this historical period of total theatre and the emergence of multimedia, artists and educators can tap into this well of recollections, reflections, and ideas on interdisciplinary approaches to art-making from the perspectives of artists who have integrated music, dance, film, visual art, and/or theatre into their creative work.;In this study, four renowned multimedia artists of the 1960s who represent a "total theatre" discipline were interviewed: Judith Malina for theatre directing and writing; Rolando Pena for dance, visual and performance art; Meredith Monk for musical performance, composition, dance, and filmmaking; and Jonas Mekas for filmmaking and writing. Collaborative and interdisciplinary creative processes are explored which may inform contemporary art-making, explain how interdisciplinary arts are perceived and understood, and suggest how they can be integrated into education today.;An extensive literature review is included to demonstrate how the historical emergence of total theatre from the time of Wagner up until the 1960s has influenced multimedia and avant-garde art as collectives such as The Living Theatre, the Fluxus groups, Andy Warhol's Factory, and others.;This qualitative study has used methods such as oral history and interviews to compose mini case studies of four artists who have played pivotal roles in pioneering avant-garde performance, film, and/or mixed media art. The research examines how their artistic backgrounds, philosophies, and creative practices have inspired new art forms and how their approaches have affected art-making. Howard Gruber's evolving systems approach (Gruber & Wallace, 1989) and Vlad Petre Gl?veanu's (2014) theory of distributed creativity have provided this study with a framework for analyzing the lives and practices of these artists within their networks of enterprise and sociocultural contexts.;The collaborative and individual creative processes of these multimedia artists which developed as a result of the zeitgeist and ortgeist of the 1960s suggest a model to inspire, revamp, and reinvent new methods for teaching, integrating arts into curriculum, and practicing art. |
