Description
Leshao Zhang, Yongmeng Wu, Mathieu Barthet · Queen Mary University of London · NIME 2016
A web app that lets an audience contribute to live improvisation without playing anything. Audience members vote from their phones on pre-set musical attributes — playing modes such as long tones, melody, rhythm, sound effects — and the aggregated votes are visualised for the performers as a live score that scrolls in time. Performers read it and improvise accordingly. The system automatically divides a large crowd into audience-to-performer groups, so each performer is answering to their own section of the room.
creative roles are shared amongst audience and performers
The paper’s honest finding is the useful one: the design difficulties were the audience’s sense of control, and latency. Voting gives influence without giving agency — you affect the direction but you never hear your own action. That gap between participating and controlling is the thing to keep hold of.
image: Zhang, Wu & Barthet, “A Web Application for Audience Participation in Live Music Performance: The Open Symphony Use Case”, NIME 2016 (CC BY 4.0)