Playful Technology-Mediated Audience Participation in a Live Music Event (original) (raw)
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Design Implications For Technology-Mediated Audience Participation In Live Music
Proceedings of the SMC Conferences, 2017
Mobile and sensor-based technologies have created new interaction design possibilities for technology-mediated audience participation in live music performance. However, there is little if any work in the literature that systematically identifies and characterises design issues emerging from this novel class of multi-dimensional interactive performance systems. As an early contribution towards addressing this gap in knowledge, we present the analysis of a detailed survey of technology-mediated audience participation in live music, from the perspective of two key stakeholder groupsmusicians and audiences. Results from the survey of over two hundred spectators and musicians are presented, along with descriptive analysis and discussion. These results are used to identify emerging design issues, such as expressiveness, communication and appropriateness. Implications for interaction design are considered. While this study focuses on musicians and audiences, lessons are noted for diverse stakeholders, including composers, performers, interaction designers, media artists and engineers.
Designing Interactive Audience Participation Using Smart Phones in a Musical Performance
In this paper we describe the design and evaluation of an interactive system for audience participation in live per-formances using smart phones to control the stereo pano-rama of the lead guitar. The system was developed through feedback from both spectators and artists. The evaluation was conducted during a live concert and builds on inter-views and video analysis. Findings include that musicians seem to be cautious about giving up control and that the audience at the same time wants a reasonable amount of control and clear feedback which in turn can be obtrusive to other spectators. We outline that balancing constraints with affordances is the key to both the audience's and mu-sicians' acceptance of such a system and that a playful participatory design process can lead to better results in this regard. It is also shown that using smart phones opens up a large possibility space but at the same time their use has to be subtle to not distract too much from the music.
TMAP Design Cards for Technology-Mediated Audience Participation in Live Music
2019
Historically, audiences have had various ways to participate in live music performances, including clapping, dancing, swaying, whistling, and singing. More recently, mobile and wireless devices, such as smartphones have opened up powerful new opportunities for audience participation. However, design for technology-mediated audience participation (TMAP) can be challenging: musicians and audiences have different demands, as does the coherence of the music, and group needs can vary widely. Thus, effective TMAP design requires the balancing of knowledge from diverse perspectives and must take into account the needs of diverse roles in creating and supporting performances. This chapter focuses on the process of creating and evaluating a set of design cards to support the interaction design and evaluation of TMAP systems. The cards are based on a previously created descriptive framework for supporting interaction design and evaluation in this challenging area. We discuss the conception an...
EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies, 2018
We discuss a setup for technology-mediated audience participation (TMAP)in live music using smartphones and highfrequency sound IDs in a playful setting. The audience needs to install a smartphone app. Using high-frequency sound IDs music samples and colors can be triggered on the audience's smartphones without the need to have an internet connection. The resulting soundscape is determined by the samples and parameters selected by the artist as well as by the location audience members choose in the performance space. We present the technical basis and iterative explorative design process of such a system for TMAP. The learnings from the perspective of musicians were technical requirements such as low latency, reliability, as well as increasing the number of possible sound samples and sound quality and we further present learnings on creating systems for TMAP from technical and creative perspectives.
Steering Audience Engagement During Audio-Visual Performance
The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in knowingly steering audience engagement. My interest in steering engagement stems from the intent I have with my performances; an intent to encourage audiences into considered thought about the topics I bring to my shows. As practice-based research, a series of performances formed its basis, with each adapted toward establishing a new style. I introduced audience conversations to my performances, doing so in real-time by harnessing the audience's second-screens. In this way, their smartphones facilitated spontaneous collaboration between the audience and I; in turn this gave me a way to steer them toward thinking about the themes behind my performances. By then bringing this style of performance to the context of live debate, a new paradigm emerged; one that challenges the audience to participate in shaping the emergent audio-visual event. I had to develop the capacity to monitor audience engagement, first offline with the `video-cued commentary' and then in real-time via two different `audience-commentary systems'. This may be of interest to anyone engaging in forms of audience analysis or viewer studies. How I developed second-screen systems may be of interest to designers of phone-network-based social-media commentary platforms. My effort toward simplifying how I generated audio-visual content and how I controlled it on-stage may make this research of interest to other digital-media performers and installation-designers.
Open Symphony: Creative Participation for Audiences of Live Music Performances
IEEE MultiMedia, 2017
Most contemporary Western performing arts practices restrict creative interactions from audiences. Open Symphony is designed to explore audience-performer interaction in live music performance assisted by digital technology. Audiences can conduct improvising performers by voting for various musical 'modes'. Technological components include a web-based mobile application, a visual client displaying generated symbolic scores, and a server service for the exchange of creative data. The interaction model, app and visualisation were designed through an iterative participatory design process. The visualisation communicates audience directions to performers upon which to improvise music, and enables the audience to get feedback on their voting. The system was experienced by about 120 audience and performer participants (35 completed surveys) in controlled (lab) and "real world" settings. Feedback on usability and user experience was overall positive and live interactions demonstrate significant levels of audience creative engagement. We identified further design challenges around audience sense of control, learnability and compositional structure.
Augmenting the Performer–Audience Live Participation in Professional Event Productions
Academic Mindtrek 2021, 2021
Event productions, such as corporate workshops, night galas, or networking events, can reach higher levels of participant experience and productiveness if performer–audience interactions are augmented with possibilities for live participation from mobile terminals. However, it easily happens that polls, backchannels, chat screens and other methods remain as mere activation tricks that fall short from a successful integration to events’ goals and content. Based on a 10-year process of developing live participation technologies, deploying them successfully in collaboration with event producers in over 100 professionally organised event productions ranging from 10 to 400 participants, we analyse techniques that increase events’ value for the audience and the organisers. Building on our experiences and event studies literature, we describe how positive audience participation can be achieved by supporting cognitive (informational), affective (experiential) and conative (behavioural) elem...
Large-scale audience participation in live music using smartphones
Journal of New Music Research, 2020
We present a study and reflection about the role and use of smartphone technology for a large-scale musical performance involving audience participation. We evaluated a full design and development process from initial ideation to a final performance concept. We found that the smartphone became the design tool, the technical device and the musical instrument at the same time. As a technical device that uses ultrasound communication as interaction technique, the smartphone became inspirational for the artist's creative work. In aiming to support the artist, we observed pervasive importance of retaining artistic control to realise artistic intent. This concerns the co-design process and the resulting concept of audience participation and supports recommendations for such participatory work.
Frontiers: Expanding Musical Imagination With Audience Participation
2016
This paper introduces Performance Without Borders and Embodied iSound, two sound installations performed at the 2016 Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival at Plymouth University. Sharing in common the use of smartphones to afford real-time audience participation, two bespoke distributed computer systems (Sherwell and Levinsky Music, respectively). Whilst the first one implements a cloud-based voting system, the second implements movement tracking and iBeacon-based indoor-positioning to control the choice of soundtracks, audio synthesis, and surround sound positioning, among other parameters. The general concepts of the installations, in particular design and interactive possibilities afforded by the computer systems are presented.