The 'authentic dancer' as a tool for audience engagement

An engagement with performance is an experiential event. To have a lived experience within a performance construct infers that the experience is somehow ‘more live’. This paper situates the body of the audience member as a site of understanding and meaning making, and challenges the role of the traditional ‘passive’ presentation format and ensuing ethical considerations within that assertion. It looks at the relationships between audience experience and a series of creative tools that facilitate subtle shifts in this traditional dance paradigm. Along with the tools of audience agency, liminality, variations of site and proximity – tools that create engagement via physical interactions with the audience – can ‘performer authenticity’ also become a tool of connection with the audience? This paper looks at the overarching field of contemporary dance, with a primary focus on Western contemporary dance and the traditional dance paradigms prevalent in the construction and presentation of that form. It outlines the role of the experiential within this form and highlights established research and creation tools that encourage audience connection via audience interaction. It also looks at the role of the dancer within this construct, citing both current qualitative research into audience responses, as well as current theory and creative practice from an international field of artists creating work with the ‘authentic dancer’.

Is there an app for that? A case study of the potentials and limitations of the participator turn and networked publics for classical music audience engagement

The participatory turn, fuelled by discourses and rhetoric regarding social media, and in the aftermath of the dot.com crash of the early 2000s, enrols to some extent an idea of being able to deploy networks to achieve institutional aims. The arts and cultural sector in the UK, in the face of funding cuts, has been keen to engage with such ideas in order to demonstrate value for money; by improving the efficiency of their operations, improving their respective audience experience and ultimately increasing audience size and engagement. Drawing on a case study compiled via a collaborative research project with a UK-based symphony orchestra (UKSO) we interrogate the potentials of social media engagement for audience development work through participatory media and networked publics. We argue that the literature related to mobile phones and applications (‘apps’) has focused primarily on marketing for engagement where institutional contexts are concerned. In contrast, our analysis elucidates the broader potentials and limitations of social-media-enabled apps for audience development and engagement beyond a marketing paradigm. In the case of UKSO, it appears that the technologically deterministic discourses often associated with institutional enrolment of participatory media and networked publics may not necessarily apply due to classical music culture. More generally, this work raises the contradictory nature of networked publics and argues for increased critical engagement with the concept.

Variations in proximity as a tool for audience engagement

The tool proximity and ways in which variations in audience-performer proximity can engage audiences of contemporary dance in a different way is discussed. The key aspects and features of the Voyeur, created by the author in 2009, a dance work that tested these theories in action and looked at how specifically changes in the traditional presentation paradigm affected engagement are highlighted.

Development of Mobile Web App "ESP" for DeepBlue to interrogate how an audience is thinking

DeepBlue is much more than just an orchestra. Their innovative approach to audience engagement led it to develop ESP, their Electronic Show Programme web app which allows for real-time (synchronous) and delayed (asynchronous) audience interaction, customer feedback and research. The show itself is driven invisibly by a music technology operating system (currently QUT's Yodel) that allows them to adapt to a wide range of performance venues and varied types of presentation. DeepBlue's community engagement program has enabled over 5,500 young musicians and community choristers to participate in professional productions, it is also a cornerstone of DeepBlue's successful business model. You can view the ESP mobile web app at m.deepblue.net.au if you view this and only the landing page is active, there is not a show taking place or imminent. ESP prototype has already been used for 18 months. Imagine knowing what your audience really thinks – in real time so you can track their feelings and thoughts through the show. This tool has been developed and used by the performing group DeepBlue since late 2012 in Australia and Asia (even translated into Vietnamese). It has mostly superseded DeepBlue's SMS realtime communication during a show. It enables an event presenter or performance group to take the pulse of an audience through a series of targeted questions that can be anonymous or attributed. This will help build better, long-lasting, and more meaningful relationships with groups and individuals in the community. This can take place on a tablet, mobile phone or future platforms. There are three organisations trialling it so far.

Tweeting the TV event, creating ‘Public Sphericules’ : ad hoc engagement with SBS’s Go Back to Where You Came From – season two

This article uses the example of the mediatisation of Season 2 of the Australian documentary-cum-reality TV series Go Back to Where You Came From, and the associated #GoBackSBS Twitter feed, to investigate how public opinions are shaped, reshaped and expressed in new hybrid media ecologies. We explore how social media tools like Twitter can support the efforts of a TV production; provide spaces through which the public can engage ad hoc with a public event, be informed, shape their opinions and share them with others; and thus open up new possibilities for public discourse to occur. We suggest that new online public sphericules are emerging that provide spaces within which publics can engage with the cultural social and political realities with which they are confronted. In this way, we highlight the importance of mundane communication to the shaping and constant reshaping of public opinion.

Sneak peek: Dance audience relationships during open rehearsals

Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in behind-the-scenes events from mainstream dance companies and audiences alike. Online videos, open classes, open rehearsals, and backstage tours all provide insights for audiences about daily life in a dance company and how dance work is made. This article focuses on the use of open rehearsals in studio sites and investigates audience experience and relationship with dancers during these events. Applying Clare Dyson’s (2010) scales of audience engagement, I analyse two open rehearsal models that I observed as an audience participant in 2013: Friends Open Days with English National Ballet (London), and Inner Workings with Chunky Move (Melbourne). Through this analysis, open rehearsals emerge as an experience with elements reminiscent of both the traditional presentation paradigm and non-traditional presentation models. Elements such as close audience-dancer proximity, authenticity, and experiences in liminal sites, such as staircases and green rooms, present the possibility of new audience-dancer relationship within the mainstream dance company context.

Social Media Audience Metrics as a New Form of TV Audience Measurement

Digital media have contributed to significant disruptions in the business of audience measurement. Television broadcasters have long relied on simple and authoritative measures of who is watching what. The demand for ratings data, as a common currency in transactions involving advertising and program content, will likely remain, but accompanying measurements of audience engagement with media content would also be of value. Today's media environment increasingly includes social media and second-screen use, providing a data trail that affords an opportunity to measure engagement. If the limitations of using social media to indicate audience engagement can be overcome, social media use may allow for quantitative and qualitative measures of engagement. Raw social media data must be contextualized, and it is suggested that tools used by sports analysts be incorporated to do so. Inspired by baseball's Sabremetrics, the authors propose Telemetrics in an attempt to separate actual performance from contextual factors. Telemetrics facilitates measuring audience activity in a manner controlling for factors such as time slot, network, and so forth. It potentially allows both descriptive and predictive measures of engagement.

Roles and Responsibility of Digital Engagement Managers in Art Museums

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Realism and national identity in 'Y Tu Mamá También': an audience perspective

When referring to cinema and its emancipatory potential, realism, like Plato’s pharmakon, has signified both illness and cure, poison and medicine. On the one hand, realism is regarded as the main feature of so-called classical cinema, inherently conservative and thoroughly ideological, its main raison d’être being to reify and make a particular version of the status quo believable and to pass it out as ‘reality’ (Burch, 1990; MacCabe, 1974). On the other, realism has also been interpreted as a quest for truth and social justice, as in the positivist ethos that informs documentary (Zavattini, 1953). Even in the latter sense, however, the extent to which realism has served colonizing ends when used to investigate the ‘truth’ of the Other has also been noted, rendering the form profoundly suspicious (Chow, 2007, p. 150). For realism has been a Western form of representation, one that can be traced back to the invention of perspective in painting and that peaked with the secular worldview brought about by the Enlightenment. And like realism, the nation state too is a product of the Enlightenment, nationalism being, as it were, a secular replacement for the religious - that is enchanted or fantastic - worldview. In this way, realism, cinema and nation are inextricably linked, and equally strained under the current decline of the Enlightenment paradigm. This chapter looks at Y tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón (2001), a highly successful road movie with documentary features, to explore the ways in which realism, cinema and nation interact with each other in the present conditions of ‘globalization’ as experienced in Mexico. The chapter compares and contrasts various interpretations of the role of realism in this film put forward by critics and scholars and other discourses about it circulating in the media with actual ways of audience engagement with it.

The Business of Museums and the Engagement of 21st Century Audiences

Within the sub-theme of Collaboration, Partnerships, and Mergers – the author will create an engaging discussion with attendees on how the of business of museums lends itself to building collaborative and viable business partnerships which can be beneficial both in terms of revenue and audience engagement. A second element will examine through case studies how organizations such as the Oxford University Museum Partnership, The Lightbox Museum and Gallery as well as the British Museum and Museum of London retool and refocus their commercial interests to build sustainable partnerships and mergers with non-museum sector organizations to expand their retail and enterprising activities. Attendees and participants will gain an insight into these trends and methods currently being used by both large museum and small independent museums in the UK to grow their audiences through none traditional methods. Similarly, the author will demonstrate how non-traditional enterprising approaches to stewardship and education can demonstrate the public value of museums in an age when limited funding and competition for resources require museums to become more creative and collaborative outside their traditional roles, whilst continuing to engage and capitalize on the growing sophistication of 21st century audiences.

Character, Audience Agency and Trans-Media Drama

Changes in the television industry with regards to the development of new media technologies are having a significant impact on audience engagement with television drama. This article explores how the internet is being used to extend audience engagement onto platforms other than the television set to the point where television drama should increasingly be reconsidered as trans-media drama. However audience engagement with the various elements of a trans-media drama text is complex. By exploring audience attitudes towards character in the British television series Spooks and its associated online games, this article argues that in an increasingly converged media landscape audiences transfer values between platforms. Consequently the audience's perception of control in relation to their engagement with a trans-media drama text such as Spooks becomes complicated with values associated with television proving key to their engagement with the same fictional world in the form of games.

High Culture as Subculture : Brisbane's Contemporary Chamber Music Scene

The aim of the dissertation is to discover the extent to which methodologies and conceptual frameworks used to understand popular culture may also be useful in the attempt to understand contemporary high culture. The dissertation addresses this question through the application of subculture theory to Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene, drawing on a detailed case study of the contemporary chamber ensemble Topology and its audiences. The dissertation begins by establishing the logic and necessity of applying cultural studies methodologies to contemporary high culture. This argument is supported by a discussion of the conceptual relationships between cultural studies, high culture, and popular culture, and the methodological consequences of these relationships. In Chapter 2, a brief overview of interdisciplinary approaches to music reveals the central importance of subculture theory, and a detailed survey of the history of cultural studies research into music subcultures follows. Five investigative themes are identified as being crucial to all forms of contemporary subculture theory: the symbolic; the spatial; the social; the temporal; the ideological and political. Chapters 3 and 4 present the findings of the case study as they relate to these five investigative themes of contemporary subculture theory. Chapter 5 synthesises the findings of the previous two chapters, and argues that while participation in contemporary chamber music is not as intense or pervasive as is the case with the most researched street-based youth subcultures, it is nevertheless possible to describe Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene as a subculture. The dissertation closes by reflecting on the ways in which the subcultural analysis of contemporary chamber music has yielded some insight into the lived practices of high culture in contemporary urban contexts.

The 'Dirty Work' of the Lie

The panel "Duplicity/Complicity: Performing and Misperforming Lies" at PSi #15 in Croatia in July 2009 examined the half-truths, hidden assumptions and power relations embedded in every act of performance through an analysis of the way bodies, buildings, personae and communities perform and misperform lies. It was a collection of new academic voices from Australia and Croatia, intersecting and colliding and, at times, outright lying, with each other and with commentary from Alan Read. Inspired by this successful adventure in collaborative academic mis-performance, "The ‘Dirty Work’ of the Lie" takes the challenge set by the Prelude Panel at PSI #15 and subjects the ideas emerging from this panel to "friendly fire" in order to build a multi authored response to 'performance that lies', with reference to the work of A Chorus of Women, disabled artists Bill Shannon, Aaron Williamson and Kathryn Araneillo, US dance performer Ann Liv Young and US theatre and festival director Peter Sellars. In doing so, "The 'Dirty Work' of the Lie" provides a reflexive response to the duplicity inherent in the performances, and also in our own academic analyses. With Alan Read acting as interlocutor, each contributor will creatively respond to a paper presented by another, developing the key intersecting issues that emerged through the formation of the panel. These issues include impression management, self-belief and performers who are 'taken in by their own act', the dirty work of taking others in with an act, the guerrilla dimension of lying, the productivity of the lie, and questions of audience engagement and ethics. As a result, this new paper tests how the 'misperformance' of lies across different cultural sites, be it deliberate or accidental, can become a productive – and, indeed, politicised – aspect of cultural performance, betraying accepted attitudes, ideas and structures of authority and offering alternative visions. Through it’s distinctively multi vocal texture, "The 'Dirty Work' of the Lie" also interrogates the modes of analysis available to us, questioning the 'duplicity' in our reflecting, responding and listening to each other as well as the work.