Interdisciplinary Artworks

Interdisciplinary artworks have grown recently in popularity in the artworld. The more one collaborates with other artists the more attention they seem to be given, and this seems right after all, one has much more of a chance of drawing an audience if they are using both dance and the visual arts, as opposed to just one or the other. Attention is not the only impetus though and many artists just like working with other artists in the creation process. The question though here is: Is just simply working with another medium a sufficient condition for a work to be interdisciplinary? The prima facie (on the face of it) answer to this is "Yes." However, there seems to be a problem with this assertion as some of the performing arts will many times include this as part of their art form. The two common instances of this are dance and theater. Each of these, will most of the time include collaboration with different artists. Most dances are set to music, most theater is accompanied by a set designs or costume designs. All of these instances incorporate different artforms or different artists, and it doesn't seem like we want to call them interdisciplinary. Otherwise, every time a choreographer creates to music, they are creating an interdisciplinary work. This seems to me to be a mistake, as people don't generally refer to such works as interdisciplinary works. A possible answer to this is to say that there has to be two artists of different mediums involved in the creation of the work. The problem with this line of argument rests in that even though multiple artists are involved in the creation of an artwork, it still can end up with the same problem as the previous one, in that the other mediums are only there for the purpose of supporting the main medium. In the case of dance, visuals and music can be there to just simply support the dance. Even though different artists may collaborate, the results often end up with one artform being the main medium and the others being supporting or subservient to the main. I have often heard the phrase, "Be careful the projections don't distract from the enjoyment of the dance." This statement underlies my concern. In that, how can an artwork be interdisciplinary if all the disciplines are not as important or close to important to be enjoyed? The importance of multiple disciplines seems to me to be the sufficient condition for an artwork to be considered interdisciplinary. Now, I feel it is time to say what makes a good interdisciplinary artwork as opposed to a bad one. To be clear, I am not talking about the artwork being good. I am talking about how does one determine the goodness or badness of the interdisciplinary aspect of a work of art. So there are two aspects of evaluation I am distinguishing here. I can evaluate a work of art on it being a good work or a bad work. This I can evaluate for any work of art. What I want to focus on here, is how do I determine if the artist(s) who created the work, worked with the different disciplines of art well? This, I think, lies in the idea of emergent properties. So good interdisciplinarianism lies in how the different mediums being used mix and match so that they create something new. The good interdisciplinary artist(s) are ones which create the new work which is not reducible to its individual parts. They complement each other well without either being subservient to the other, and create something new in the process. This is, what I think, makes a good interdisciplinarianism, the ability create a new work of art which is irreducible to the individual mediums. Why is it necessary here to not have one simply subservient to the other medium? After all, it seems like there is more that is added when a dancework has music as opposed to not having music (at least most of the time) so it doesn't appear to be reducible to its individual parts, movement and sound. The reason is simply that it still is dance in this instance. Since the parts are all subservient to the dance, we do not get something that is interdisciplinary, just simply a dance. So the parts, the music and the dance need to work together to create something new. The two forms need to meld and create something anew. That is what makes for good interdisciplinarianism.