Category: AUDIENCE

How Scientists Are Studying How We Respond To Music

Contemporary work on music perception embraces a variety of disciplines and methodologies, from anthropology to musicology to neuroscience, to try to understand the relationship between music and the human mind. Researchers use motion capture systems to record people’s movements as they dance, analyzing the gestures’ relationship to the accompanying sound. They use eye tracking to measure changes in infants’ attentiveness as musical features or contexts vary. They place electrodes on the scalp to measure changes in electrical activity, or use neuroimaging to make inferences about the neural processes that underlie diverse types of musical experiences, from jazz improvisation to trance-like states to simply feeling a beat.

Conserving Art In Front Of An Audience – A Good Idea?

While it undoubtedly generates interest, what is actually gained from watching conservators working? Conservation has become an increasingly painstaking and intricate process, in which the conservator might sit for hours peering through a binocular microscope making, at the most, small twitching movements with a cotton swab or scalpel, or entering extensive documentation of observations on a computer. This has limited appeal for a visitor.

In Search Of Less Wealthy Visitors, Louvre Starts Monthly Free Saturday Nights

“The world’s most-visited museum previously opened for six free Sundays a year, but a statement published Wednesday said this was failing to bring in visitors from a broad spectrum of society. … The Louvre is hoping to appeal to more people living in poorer Paris suburbs as well as to young adults and families with older children with the initiative.”

West End’s Top Ticket Prices Up By A Fifth, Though Lowest Prices Are Down 10%

“The average top-price ticket across all West End shows is £117.52, up 19% compared with 2017. This is the first time the average top-price ticket has exceeded £100, since The Stage started surveying in 2012. … For the first time in six years, The Book of Mormon has been overtaken as the most expensive seat across the entire West End by Hamilton, which has top-end tickets costing £250.”

Australia Is Becoming A Serious Arts Tourism Destination

In 2017, according to a new study released by the Australia Council, “nearly half of the eight million visitors to Australia engaged with the arts during their stay (43 percent), which proved more popular than wineries (13 percent), casinos (12 percent) or organised sporting events (six percent). … The report also shows that arts tourists have grown by 47 percent between 2013 and 2017, a higher growth rate than for international tourist numbers overall (37 percent).”

What One Theatre Learned About Engaging Audiences

Our big takeaway from the project was finding a common point of interest and building engagement with groups around that. If we started with people who were too far removed from the work, we failed. We had to be realistic about the learning journey audiences were on, given that we were only performing in venues for one or two nights, with an eight to ten week lead-in. We thought creatively about the elements of the production that the groups we hoped to engage might connect with. That could be anything from the politics, to the music or props, to the feel of the show (more like a gig or cabaret).

If All The Critics Are Gone, What Happens To Explaining New Dance?

For the most part, dance criticism as we have traditionally defined it is vanishing, probably forever. And no amount of verbiage on how pointe shoes are made or what a dancer eats for breakfast is going to help audience members — not to mention future historians — understand what is happening onstage in today’s dance. “This means that dance is becoming another item in the experiential supermarket, a thoughtless art without a memory,” Mainwaring writes. “As emerging choreographers come onto the scene — and there’s some very substantive work being made today — it remains unclear as to who will have either the expertise or the outlet needed to discuss the importance of these developing artistic voices.”