Transitioning Between Audience and Performer: Co-Designing Interactive Music Performances with Children

Live interactions have the potential to meaningfully engage audiences during musical performances, and modern technologies promise unique ways to facilitate these interactions. This work presents findings from three co-design sessions with children that investigated how audiences might want to interact with live music performances, including design considerations and opportunities. Findings from these sessions also formed a Spectrum of Audience Interactivity in live musical performances, outlining ways to encourage interactivity in music performances from the child perspective

Redefining Classical Music Literacy: A Study of Classical Orchestras, Museum Anthropology, and Game Design Theory

The current state of declining audiences for the performing arts in the United States is cause for concern for those musicians and ensembles interested in the continuation of the art forms. The previous model of using audience numbers as the sole or primary measure of an orchestra\u27s success is no longer sufficient in an era of participatory design and interactive experiences. Through observation and analysis of the culture of classical music, this study focuses on the emerging visions of participatory culture and the ways in which museum anthropology and game design theory can be used to redefine classical music literacy and audience development in terms of interaction and participatory design

Building the Field of Arts Engagement: Prospects and Challenges

The cultural sector in America is grappling with how to remain relevant to the rapidly changing society from which it draws its audiences and support. This is a demanding task -- adapting to rapid demographic and technological change is no less challenging for the cultural sector than for journalism, the music industry, publishing, or the taxi cab business today. But if the cultural sector does not take on this task, it risks marginalization. Cultural leaders therefore need to examine the mechanics of engagement in the arts in a concerted way, distill lessons from their successes and failures, and share those lessons -- in short, to build the field of arts engagement. To explore this topic, in 2015 Irvine commissioned AEA Consulting to undertake panel discussions, surveys, and bilateral interviews across the arts sector. This report contains observations and reflections by Adrian Ellis, Elizabeth Ellis, and their colleagues

Design Implications for Technology-Mediated Audience Participation in Live Music

Mobile and sensor-based technologies have created new interaction design possibilities for technology-mediated au- dience 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 sur- vey of technology-mediated audience participation in live music, from the perspective of two key stakeholder groups - musicians 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 expressive- ness, 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

The Missing Audience : A Query into the Future of the Orchestra and the Potential Benefits of Bringing Live Classical Music to the Community through Informal Performances

In this dissertation, I discuss the traditional organizational model adopted by symphony orchestras in the United States as non-profit arts organizations that are struggling to maintain solvency within the current philanthropic, political, and digital contexts. As part of the discussion, I conduct field research within the local area of the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in providing demonstrations of live and informal classical performance in various businesses and institutions while collecting data via surveys from willing adult participants (ages 18 and above) of all demographics, specifically lower income areas. The survey analysis gives important insights into public perception of symphony orchestras, and generational attitudes towards the support of such organizations, whether it be through attendance or individual giving. The survey study hopes to illuminate the benefits of implementing a more approachable marketing strategy within a local environment and cultivating a paradigm shift in how symphony orchestras access untapped markets of potential audiences

Off the edge

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.Work which takes from elsewhere forms an important thread in European art music. There is a long tradition of music which variously borrows, thieves, pastiches, plagiarises, ironically ‘retakes’, hoaxes, impersonates and appropriates. The music I have written for Off the edge, while seeking to honour and add to this thread, also attempts to zoom in upon and make explicit the idea of an ultimate and irreversible composerly self-annihilation, a kind of one-way exit-gate from the world of authored musical works itself made of pieces of music, which so much of this tradition, I feel, points towards. (Of my nine pieces, it is perhaps Time to go—only, with its ‘à la suicide note’ texts and its music that seems to slide in from far beyond the frame that is ‘composer Luke Stoneham’, which manages to get closest to this.) I have chosen the title Off the edge, because all of my music tries to capture a sense of nocturnal peripheral vision: be content with catching glimpses of the composer Luke Stoneham, because as soon as you turn to look at him face-on, he disappears

Short-Term Orchestral Music Training Modulates Hyperactivity and Inhibitory Control in School-Age Children: A Longitudinal Behavioural Study

Survey studies have shown that participating in music groups produces several benefits, such as discipline, cooperation and responsibility. Accordingly, recent longitudinal studies showed that orchestral music training has a positive impact on inhibitory control in school-age children. However, most of these studies examined long periods of training not always feasible for all families and institutions and focused on children’s measures ignoring the viewpoint of the teachers. Considering the crucial role of inhibitory control on hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity, we wanted to explore if short orchestral music training would promote a reduction of these impulsive behaviors in children. This study involved 113 Italian children from 8 to 10 years of age. 55 of them attended 3 months of orchestral music training. The training included a 2-hour lesson per week at school and a final concert. The 58 children in the control group did not have any orchestral music training. All children were administered tests and questionnaires measuring inhibitory control and hyperactivity near the beginning and end of the 3-month training period. We also collected information regarding the levels of hyperactivity of the children as perceived by the teachers at both time points. Children in the music group showed a significant improvement in inhibitory control. Moreover, in the second measurement the control group showed an increase in self-reported hyperactivity that was not found in the group undergoing the music training program. This change was not noticed by the teachers, implying a discrepancy between self-reported and observed behavior at school. Our results suggest that even an intense and brief period of orchestral music training is sufficient to facilitate the development of inhibitory control by modulating the levels of self-reported hyperactivity. This research has implications for music pedagogy and education especially in children with high hyperactivity. Future investigations will test whether the findings can be extended to children diagnosed with ADHD

Interpreting the score: participant experiences of value co-creation in a collaborative consumption context

Traditionally, service marketing scholars and organisations have tacitly conceptualised value co-creation as a set of processes or activities where participants know how to act, or „know the score‟ – however, this is not always the case. This dissertation questions such conceptualisations; in particular Service-Dominant (SD) logic‟s tenth foundational premise (FP10) which states that value is uniquely and phenomenologically determined by consumers, and argues for a greater consideration of the wider socio-cultural context from which value emerges. In order to address this gap, this is the first grounded study of value as it arises from multiple practices in a collaborative consumption context, specifically orchestral consumption. Framed by a relational constructionist approach, the study explores how multiple participants – musicians, conductors, audience members, and staff – experience value co-creation in the context of their participation in 47 orchestral, educational and outreach events facilitated by the London Symphony Orchestra. Participant narratives were collected using 47 depth interviews, 375 short interviews, and non participant netnography over a six month period. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, 20 value co-creation practices and 13 value experiences were induced from the data. The research integrates experiential and practice based perspectives of value by illustrating that value emerges from the shared understandings between conductors (service organisation managers) and participants (regular, novice and potential service consumers, front and back office service personnel and other service providers within a service value network) participating in a multiplicity of value co-creation practices. Value co-creation practices maintain, sustain and reinforce the sacred on behalf of participants and frame their experiences. Co-creating value therefore requires service organisations to deconsecrate or „open up the score‟ for novice participants; specifically, to share the understandings, engagements, and procedures embedded in such practices. These concern not just how-to-act but also how-to-interpret, which in turn may be negatively experienced by expert participants. The dissertation concludes with a proposed refinement of SD logic‟s FP10: namely, that value is both socially constructed and intersubjectively and phenomenologically determined