huh - very interesting. I think that live performance is one of the few areas where people are expected to give full attention for an extended period of time. It makes sense that something like orchestral music (leaving aside questions of taste) would be a hard sell - there's nothing but sitting in the dark and listening. No theatrics on stage, no visuals, just complex sound. We're not very good at that.
I found the idea of attention being expensive very interesting. I come back again to the Meg Stuart/Benoit Lachambre piece and how they challenged our attention but if we trusted them with this expensive, finite resource, it would pay off. Not everyone could of course.
Makes me think about the gifts that get given on Oprah and shows like that. Give us your attention and you'll get a car! Maybe we should give our audience gifts for having come and sat through the show...
sorry for my recent absence! hard to keep up with all of these links :) :) i like the concept of attention as 'expensive' -- this is totally true for visual communication as well. for example i am trying to make my way through heavy academic texts: not attractive, make few affordances for quick or comfortable reading (they are poorly typeset, heavy books). in contrast look at magazines or more entertainment-oriented non fiction: loud, big, colourful: ways of holding your attention are built into the design because they can't guarantee you'll stay interested (and there is little payoff in reading through it -- unlike, i hope, the tedious but informative academic book) i guess the parallel for performance is that loud, colourful stuff holds your attention and quiet, obscure stuff demands some willful attention on the viewer's part. but if you don't have cars to give away how do you promise a 'payoff' to a wider audience?
2 Comments:
huh - very interesting. I think that live performance is one of the few areas where people are expected to give full attention for an extended period of time. It makes sense that something like orchestral music (leaving aside questions of taste) would be a hard sell - there's nothing but sitting in the dark and listening. No theatrics on stage, no visuals, just complex sound. We're not very good at that.
I found the idea of attention being expensive very interesting. I come back again to the Meg Stuart/Benoit Lachambre piece and how they challenged our attention but if we trusted them with this expensive, finite resource, it would pay off. Not everyone could of course.
Makes me think about the gifts that get given on Oprah and shows like that. Give us your attention and you'll get a car! Maybe we should give our audience gifts for having come and sat through the show...
sorry for my recent absence! hard to keep up with all of these links :) :)
i like the concept of attention as 'expensive' -- this is totally true for visual communication as well.
for example i am trying to make my way through heavy academic texts: not attractive, make few affordances for quick or comfortable reading (they are poorly typeset, heavy books). in contrast look at magazines or more entertainment-oriented non fiction: loud, big, colourful: ways of holding your attention are built into the design because they can't guarantee you'll stay interested (and there is little payoff in reading through it -- unlike, i hope, the tedious but informative academic book)
i guess the parallel for performance is that loud, colourful stuff holds your attention and quiet, obscure stuff demands some willful attention on the viewer's part. but if you don't have cars to give away how do you promise a 'payoff' to a wider audience?
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