Background by Design: Listening in the Age of Streaming (original) (raw)
Classical music futures: Practices of innovation , 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced audiences to new ways of engaging with artistic performance in an online environment (Rendell, 2020, terms this ‘pandemic media’). Multiple performers and organisations transferred live performances into a recorded or livestreamed format. However, at present, there is little research to support decisions that organisations may make in terms of how they do this, and what they deem to be important in how they record and / or stream. There is evidence to support the value of ‘liveness’ in music performance (Tsangaris, 2020), but what is this, and can it be replicated in online environment? This chapter will outline existing research regarding concepts such as liveness in music performance. The study discussed in the chapter will also discuss research regarding the live music experience as a social one, and the vital role that sharing musical spaces plays in social bonding and group coherence. This study examines questions including what listeners perceive to be the main differences between live and livestreamed attendance at music performance, and what constitutes ‘liveness’ in such performances. Data analysis suggests that audiences may have different motivations to attend live versus livestreamed performances, with the former being associated with having fun and a good night out, and shared experience, and the latter often about using time in a meaningful way and the sound quality available in livestreamed attendance at an event. ‘Liveness’ involves not only such factors as the opportunity to share an experience and interact with other audience members and performers, but also the sense of atmosphere, immersion, sensory experiences, and being physically present. When asked about the advantages and disadvantages of attending a livestreamed performance, audience members cite factors common to both live and online experiences such as the logistics, and whether they are with other people or not. However, a thematic analysis also reveals differences in what people see as the advantages and disadvantages of attending online, such as the emotional response to a live performance, and considerations around accessibility and the impact on the environment for online experiences. There is an urgent need in the music industry to better understand what the essential elements of a live performance are, and whether these aspects need to be, and indeed can be replicated in a livestreamed event, for example in terms of level of sound quality and emotional response.
Ears as Portals: Alternative Realities of Musical Infrastructures. A CTM Festival 2023 Review
Dancecult, 2023
This review engages with this year's edition of CTM's avantgarde clubbing and electronic music festival in Berlin. Using an essay form and toying with the concept of the portal, which titled the 2023 edition, the piece analyses the aim of the event and matches it with various participating acts, asking whether CTM is managing to attain a "reorganization in the field of knowledge" for club music.
Representing Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century
This article examines how ideas about music and music listening are articulated and what listening practices are constructed when symphony orchestras provide concert performances through streaming services. This is achieved by paying attention to how listening situations connected to symphony orchestras’ digital performances are characterized, how the audience is positioned in relation to the performances and the involved musicians, and furthermore to how the music is represented in text, images and verbal statements. The empirical data comprises the streaming service platforms, and supporting materials, of two concert institutions, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO), and was gathered during spring 2020, i.e. when concert halls were closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The article demonstrates how online listening practices are characterized as disconnected from constraints of time and space, and free for anyone to use, anytime and for al...
Deep Listening: Selling and Defining the Experience of Live Music
The Berlin Journal, 2017
Lecture pre-talk slide presentation before a public conversation with Christoph Lieben-Seutter, the Artistic Director of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. The conversation took place at the U.S. Consulate General Hamburg in front of invited guests of the American Academy in Berlin and the Consulate General. The main topic of our conversation concerned the modern forces that shape our listening experiences of live music in the acoustically-enhanced concert hall of today. Some of the forces include acoustics/technology (a fetish of digital “pure” sound); economic (ticket price-seat location and the access to varied ‘unique’ sound experiences—you get what you pay); socio-political (total control over the listener—do not speak, silence all devices, do not clap, do not cough, private vs. public consumption); and spiritual/non-temporal (the materialization of sound that goes beyond the everyday listening experience so that it encircles the individual in order to hear something more in the music—as if the music has a message for all of us to decipher; the concert hall as a temple, the oracle of Delphi, an escape from the everyday). The article "Deep Listening: Selling and Defining the Experience of Live Music" presents my lingering thoughts that followed our conversation.
2021
This article examines how ideas about music and music listening are articulated and what listening practices are constructed when symphony orchestras provide concert performances through streaming services. This is achieved by paying attention to how listening situations connected to symphony orchestras’ digital performances are characterized, how the audience is positioned in relation to the performances and the involved musicians, and furthermore to how the music is represented in text, images and verbal statements. The empirical data comprises the streaming service platforms, and supporting materials, of two concert institutions, London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO), and was gathered during spring 2020, i.e. when concert halls were closed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The article demonstrates how online listening practices are characterized as disconnected from constraints of time and space, and free for anyone to use, anytime and for al...
"The Professionals of Concerts and Live Music" - Call for papers - Sociology of arts and culture, SSA-congress 10-12 September 2019, Neuchâtel, "The Future of Work" - Français / English / Deutsch, 2019
--- FRANÇAIS (see below for ENGLISH and GERMAN) Le futur du travail: appels à communications Sociologie de l'art et de la culture, congrès SSS 10-12 septembre 2019 (-> 20 AVRIL) Chères et chers collègues, Vous trouverez en attaché trois appels à communications pour le congrès de la Société suisse de sociologie (SSS), les 10-12 septembre 2019 à l'Université de Neuchâtel, sur "Le futur du travail". Ils sont labellisés Foko-KUKUSO / CR-SAC Comité de recherche Sociologie des arts et de la culture, qui fête ses 10 ans cette année. Nos trois calls portent sur les thématiques suivantes: - Les professionnels des concerts et de la musique live - Le travail artistique en régime entrepreneurial - Travail artistique et 4 thèmes à choix: digitalisation, inégalités de genre, mondialisation/mobilité et critique sociale Nous attendons vos propositions au plus tard pour le 20 avril 2019. En nous réjouissant de vous lire et avec nos cordiales salutations, Thibaut Menoux et Valérie Rolle Organisation: Alexandre Camus, Michael Gautier, Andrea Glauser, Thibaut Menoux, Olivier Moeschler, Loïc Riom, Valérie Rolle --- ENGLISH The Future of Work: Calls for papers Sociology of arts and culture, SSA-congress 10-12 September 2019 (-> APRIL 20) Dear colleagues, Please find attached 3 calls for papers for the congress of the Swiss Sociological Association (SSA) of September 10-12, 2019 at the University of Neuchâtel on "The Future of Work". The calls are labelled Foko-KUKUSO / RC-SAC Research Committee Sociology of Arts and Culture, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Our three calls relate to the following topics: - The Professionals of Concerts and Live Music - Artistic Work in an Entrepreneurial Regime - Artistic Work and 4 possible Themes: Digitization, Gender Inequalities, Globalization/Mobility and Social Criticism We are waiting for your proposals by 20 April 2019 at the latest. We look forward to hearing from you! With our best regards, Thibaut Menoux et Valérie Rolle Organisation: Alexandre Camus, Michael Gautier, Andrea Glauser, Thibaut Menoux, Olivier Moeschler, Loïc Riom, Valérie Rolle --- DEUTSCH Die Zukunft der Arbeit: Calls for papers Kunst- und Kultursoziologie, SGS-Kongress, 10.-12. September 2019 (-> 20. APRIL) Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen Anbei finden Sie drei Calls für den Kongress der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (SGS) am 10.-12. September 2019 an der Universität Neuenburg zum Thema „Die Zukunft der Arbeit“. Sie werden vom Foko-KUKUSO Forschungskomitee Kunst- und Kultursoziologie getragen, das dieses Jahr sein 10-jähriges Bestehen feiert. Unsere drei Calls behandeln folgende Themenbereiche: - die Produktion von Livemusik bzw. Konzerten - künstlerische Arbeit im unternehmerischen Regime - künstlerische Arbeit in Verbindung mit vier Themen: Digitalisierung, Gender-Ungleichheiten, Globalisierung/Mobilität, Gesellschaftskritik Ihre Vorschläge können Sie uns bis zum 20. April 2019 schicken. Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Vorschlag! Mit besten Grüssen Thibaut Menoux et Valérie Rolle Organisation: Alexandre Camus, Michael Gautier, Andrea Glauser, Thibaut Menoux, Olivier Moeschler, Loïc Riom, Valérie Rolle
Conference book A long way to the top: The production and reception of music in a globalized world
Pauwke Berkers, Paula Abreu, Raphaël Nowak, Darrell G Baksh, Anna Oravcova, Sara Revilla Gútiez, Kenny Barr, Chloé Monin, Lotte Van Der Jagt, Koos Zwaan, Ayhan Erol, Julie Badisco, Samuel GE Murray
Liminalities, A Journal of Performance Studies, 2014
The series of Internet based technological developments in recent decades affects and transforms so deeply our practices and perceptions that the very notion of auditorium cannot remain untouched and unscathed. What we discern as a listening space for production and reception of music and for sound propagation in space and in time is now overlapping the specific physical structures and architecture (concert halls, venues, esplanades, etc.) towards enlarged and invisible sensory enveloping forms: internet auditoriums. We have to examine those 'spaces': their architectural filiation with places and rooms, their plasticity for being built, planned, settled and landscaped for listening, their ability to locate and seize listeners and to be explored by sound productions designed to be listened to.
THE BERLIN PHILHARMONIC DIGITAL CONCERT HALL: NEW STRATEGIES OF MUSIC KNOWLEDGE AND CONCEPTION
Sound in Motion Cinema, Videogames, Technology and Audiences. Enrique Encabo, ed. UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018 , 2018
Today’s society is immersed in a system in which Information and Communication Technology has been integrated to such an extent that it is impossible to live, work, research and socialize without it. It is essential in all areas of daily life and is part of a global process in which information flows instantly and without geographic boundaries. It allows communication in ways unimaginable just five years ago. Statistics of users world-wide show how the Internet has transformed societies as well as the preferences of users in their gregarious or isolated lives. Cyberculture, understood as the link between man and machine, has become a way of communication in everyday life creating new ties and new rituals of coexistence. In turn, new forms of community integration have been generated, in many cases virtual, thus creating a dichotomy between ideological association and geographic division. In the music environment, we have observed how this relationship has reconceptualized the way of appropriating this artistic discipline generating new types of knowledge that originate from the actual experience of the listener. This is the case of the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which was first announced in 2009. There would be someone who get amazed with the fact that the orchestra with the greatest tradition, discipline and link to world technology would seek to penetrate the world of cyberculture. But having delved deeply into the history of the Philharmonic and its relationship with technology, this was a natural and logical step that could not have been done otherwise.