Live Tweeting the Symphony?

Lasrick writes "Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard describes desperate attempts to engage with younger audiences on the part of arts organizations who are scrambling to make their productions more interactive. But who really is more engaged: A live-tweeting audience member, or someone staring silently at the stage? Quoting: 'Not surprisingly, many performers and older patrons of the arts hate this idea, which they regard as pandering to the young. But thankfully, the debate over participatory art needn’t devolve into a depressing bout of intergenerational warfare. The controversy raises a number of questions that are hard to answer: Is sustained focus even possible in mass audiences anymore? If not, what have we lost?'"

False comparison

[starX]

"But who really is more engaged: A live-tweeting audience member, or someone staring silently at the stage?"

I know this is Slashdot, and I'm going to take a leap and say most folks here aren't in the performing arts, but I am, and your comparison is a false one. A live-tweeting audience member isn't necessarily engaged with the performance, but more importantly, audiences seldom sit silently and stare at the stage. The whole point of live performance is that the audience provides instant feedback to the performer and vice versa, and to each other. Some of the most energetic audiences of Shakespeare plays are teens (or younger children) who haven't learned to loathe the classics yet. The real question is what do audiences and performers gain by adding interactivity via twitter (et al) to the mix vs. what is lost.

I'll float out there that, in many circumstances, phones and other wireless devices can cause interference with wireless microphone and backstage comm systems, so asking audiences to turn of their devices is a matter of ensuring that we don't get noise through AV systems. This will not affect all circumstances, of course, but it is a hard-deck restriction in many.

Re:Key is relevance, not interactivity...

[bimozx]

I have to fully agree with this. Like one of those Final Fantasy music orchestra concert that have been held a few times for the last few years. Or maybe the Legend of Zelda anniversary concert. You can bet those who attend both of these concerts are younger audience. I'm afraid people who tries to preserve Classic music is actually oblivious to the fact that those musics DO exist in the minds of young people, it's just that they are delivered through a different media and experience.

Re:False comparison

[starX]

You reckon they ban cellphones for interference reasons?! ...nothing to do with the glow of the screen moving in a dimmed room when people nearby are concentrating, or when they ring during a quiet passage, distracting the entire audience?

I don't doubt the lights may factor in to it, but depending on the model of phone, carrier, and location in the theatre, if someone has their cell phone on, you will hear it in my rig. Fortunately the PA system is more forgiving than our comms because we get interference on those almost every show; there's always someone who "forgets" to turn it off.