Simplifying complexity: modeling the process of collaboration between artists and scientists

This paper presents a modal model to describe and facilitate communication design in collaborative settings. This model was conceived of as a tool for understanding the nature of collaboration between artists and scientists in an interdisciplinary case study, but can be used cross-disciplinarily and ultimately prescriptively. The model may reveal shifting patterns of interaction between collaborators over time and through multiple processes. Patterns may be revealed in setting and attaining benchmark goals as well as in general group communication. Different collaborative modes (ontological relationships between collaborators) and modes of being (phenomenological relationship between collaborators) form the basis for sixty collaborative possibilities with two or more collaborators.