Experience
What does experience 3.0 look like? That’s
what we asked ourselves in this issue’s Lab
section. The Holy Grail of musical entertainment
revolves around assembling as many people
as possible for a communal experience that is
uniquely rich in audiovisual content, customizable
and sharable – for spectators in the front row to
those in a rear corner of the hall.
Thanks to technologies like AR and VR, what
I’m describing is not just ‘future music’ – it’s here
right now. More and more artists are performing
live in video games, thereby reaching a worldwide
audience of millions. The all-encompassing
spatial performances available to gamers could
be embraced by festivals of the future. A special
bonus is the lack of a need for expensive stages
and light shows, reducing a concert’s ecological
footprint. Additional advantages of immersive
technologies are the transformation of music
distribution and the way we have social contact
while listening to music. At the same time, the
concert experience becomes better and cheaper.
Indeed: 3.0.
However, echoing through all these
promising examples are the words of Pritzker
Prize winner Balkrishna Doshi (see page 46):
‘It seems we’re connected only through virtual
vision and sound. When you meet someone, see
the smile on their face and shake hands, isn’t that
experience better than anything else?’ROBERT THIEMANN
Editor in chiefGoogle ‘photos of Woodstock’ and marvel at the
whirlwind metamorphosis undergone by music
festivals since 1969. The mother of all festivals
took place on the rolling hills of a farm in upstate
New York, where some 400,000 people gathered
to listen to artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin,
Joe Cocker, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The
celebration, billed as ‘three days of peace and
music’, ultimately included a fourth day.
Photos of the happening – most of them
in black and white – reveal a great mass of what
seem to be ecstatic music lovers, many half naked,
dancing, happy, radiating love, often sporting
groovy tie-dyed threads. Photos of the two stages
are harder to find, but I did come across a few
images of scaffolding, painted tent canvas and
theatre spots. Concert experience 1.0.
Search queries on contemporary music
concerts turn up brilliant spectacles: lasers in
all the colours of the rainbow piercing ink-black
skies and stages that wouldn’t be out of place at
Disneyland. Crowds of exhilarated people are still
enjoying music. That’s for sure. You might say that
the past 50 years have brought about a revolution
in colour, light and probably sound – an upheaval
in impact – but that not much else has changed.
Appearances can be deceiving, though.
Continue the search and you’ll find a completely
different concert experience: music fans
that capture what they see and hear on their
smartphones and share it on social media.
Eager to show that they were there in person,
they might think that what they post online is
more important than the concert itself. Music
experience 2.0.
12 EDITORIAL