Audience experience : measuring quality in the performing arts

Traditional measures of quality in the performing arts include critical reviews, awards, attendance data, the reputation of the director, company or lead performers, and attributions of success such as festival participation or sponsorship and grants. However, the recent literature on audience values, quest for authenticity and the personal experience suggests the need for empirical research into the capacity of the audience experience as an appropriate and important measure of quality in the performing arts. The authors use primary research with performing arts audiences to explore notions of quality, audience risk and audience experience to redefine the quality-measurement paradigm.

Measuring audience response on-line : an evaluation of the portable audience response facility (pARF)

If it is the case that artists and art explore organization of the brain (Zeki & Lamb, 1994), then the investigation of response to artistic performance holds promise as a window to perceptual and cognitive processes. The portable Audience Response Facility (pARF) is an instrument for recording real‐time audience response (Stevens et al. 2009). Twenty, handheld, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) collect responses on customizable skin interfaces. The pARF server transmits the customizable options, synchronizes devices and collects data for export. In this paper we report ratings of the usability of the pARF that were collected after 37 participants had used it to continuously rate engagement along a single dimension while a female dance artist gave two performances of a short solo contemporary dance work. The motion of the dancer was also captured as she performed the piece but only usability rating data are reported here. Ratings indicate that the cognitive load imposed by continuously rating engagement while watching a dance performance was manageable and the pARF was easy to use. An extended familiarization phase may further reduce dual task demand.

Representing experience : changing audience relationships in contemporary art

By practice and research this exegesis includes the audience in the making of art, by using the responses of others that inhabit the artwork. It also establishes 'not-knowing' as a methodology to examine changing relationships to audience in contemporary visual arts.

Hidden stories : listening to the audience at the live performance

This paper explores how audiences describe and evaluate their experience of a live performance. Much of the arts marketing literature measures audience satisfaction with the entire event, including pre and post show talks, parking, ticket price, seating, merchandise and refreshments. Research undertaken at a range of live performing arts events in 2008 and 2009 revealed ‘hidden stories’ of audience members’ responses to performances. These responses are indicative of four aspects of the audience experience – knowledge, risk, authenticity and collective engagement. The stories, and their indicators, are the audience measure of quality of performance. This paper uses audience research at three contemporary theatre companies, to test and validate the audience experience as a new quality assessment instrument: the Arts Audience Experience Index.

Great bowerbirds create theaters with forced perspective when seen by their audience

Birds in the infraorder Corvida [1] (ravens, jays, bowerbirds) are renowned for their cognitive abilities [2–4], which include advanced problem solving with spatial inference [4–8], tool use and complex constructions [7–10], and bowerbird cognitive ability is associated with mating success [11]. Great bowerbird males construct bowers with a long avenue from within which females view the male displaying over his bower court [10]. This predictable audience viewpoint is a prerequisite for forced (altered) visual perspective [12–14]. Males make courts with gray and white objects that increase in size with distance from the avenue entrance. This gradient creates forced visual perspective for the audience; court object visual angles subtended on the female viewer’s eye are more uniform than if the objects were placed at random. Forced perspective can yield false perception of size and distance [12, 15]. After experimental reversal of their size-distance gradient, males recovered their gradients within 3 days, and there was little difference from the original after 2 wks. Variation among males in their forced-perspective quality as seen by their female audience indicates that visual perspective is available for use in mate choice, perhaps as an indicator of cognitive ability. Regardless of function, the creation and maintenance of forced visual perspective is clearly important to great bowerbirds and suggests the possibility of a previously unknown dimension of bird cognition.

A participatory model for ethnic audience development for the arts

This paper aims to investigate strategies to increase ethnic minority group consumers' participation in arts performances in Australia. Our findings are based on focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with participants from ethnic minority groups, namely, Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian in Australia. The findings indicate that a mixed cultural/arts events and culturally specific events are the most favoured forms for attracting participation from culturally diverse audiences. Further strategies are to provide more arts and cultural education for minority and
mainstream cultures, and appropriate marketing activities to minority groups could increase arts participation of ethnic consumers. Our research will contribute to further understanding of ethnic marketing literature and cross-cultural marketing for the arts sector.

A modern audience for the ancient mysteries of the occult : the evolution of Rudolf Steiner's esoteric architecture

In today’s secular society, occult conceptions of architecture may seem somewhat anachronistic, but at the turn of the twentieth century the bourgeoisie, alongside society’s artistic and intellectual elite, were enthusiastically embracing a myriad of esoteric doctrines and mystical impulses. One of the most prominent and enduring examples of this cultural phenomenon is to be found in Rudolf Steiner’s quasi-philosophical system of Anthroposophy. As a path of spiritual development based on ancient mysteries of the occult, Anthroposophy offered people the belief that there existed a way out of the chaos and meaninglessness of modern industrialised society. Steiner used the medium of architecture as a way of repackaging the occult’s venerable secrets into a tangible, material form that made their hidden message more readily accessible to his contemporary audience. While he was striving towards creating a totally new architectural language appropriate to the modern age, he perceived architectural style as an evolutionary process that revealed its spiritual content in a particular way in every epoch. As such, Steiner made free use of historical and mythological precedents as archetypal references in his work, thus giving his architecture a genealogy that has, until now, remained largely undefined. By investigating Steiner’s indebtedness to ancient temples and the architecture of the baroque, a greater understanding of his architectural heritage is made possible, which not only helps to locate him within the cultural milieu of his day, but also within the broader context of architectural history. A spiritual thread runs through this history that demonstrates that Steiner’s architecture is not as idiosyncratic as it may initially seem, though whether his work represents an original step forward in the development of modern architecture, or is merely a hangover of nineteenth century eclecticism, must also be considered in order to determine the architectural value of Steiner’s esoteric ideas.

Audience clapping (with hall reverb) SFX

A sound effect of audience clapping.

Audience clapping SFX (dry)

A sound recording and post-production design of audience clapping. It has been left dry for your own editing purposes.