Getting into the Vibe: Affective Temporality and Collaborative Creativity in Recording Studios

Although the relationship between time and creativity has fascinated scholars for centuries, little attention has been paid to the temporality of creative work, particularly in collaborative settings. In this paper, we turn to the recording studio as a particularly useful context to understand different feelings of time shape collaborative creativity. We mobilize the concept of affective temporality to account for how different affectively charged temporal durations influence creative fluency and output in collaborative creativity. Our empirical study shows how collaborative creativity in the recording studio is patterned around four affective temporalities: immersive time, performance time, waiting time and play time. We elaborate how an attuned navigation of these affective temporalities in temporal work enables both creative fluency and output in collaborative creative work and produces emotional energy which enhances the collaborative process. In the discussion, we unfold the implication of our findings for our understanding of time in creative work and in relation to how temporal work tinkers with temporal experiences.