Category: AUDIENCE

Audiences Are Choosing ‘Immersive Experiences’ Over Looking At Objects In Museums. How Will The Art Business Handle This?

“Performance and installation pieces are now the preferred media of just such moments at biennials and museum shows. For the second edition in a row, the top prize for a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale was won by a performance. … But where does all this leave the commercial art world, which for centuries has relied on the passive contemplation of painting and sculpture to forge careers, reputations and fortunes? How do you monetise experiential art?” – The Art Newspaper

Letter From The Future: Stories In A Post-Print World

It strikes me as strange to mourn a format, particularly when the new format has made storytelling more accessible and widespread than ever before. Virtual reality transcends literacy, language, ability and geography; it’s collaborative and adaptive and inherently empathetic, permitting us to walk any number of digital miles in someone else’s shoes; it’s even affordable, thanks to the team of rogue librarians behind @AlexandriaRising, who created the sliding-scale pricing system. – The New York Times

Classical Music’s Streaming Problem

According to a new survey commissioned by Primephonic, 34% of the 1,000 Americans surveyed are interested in listening to classical music, but only 16% actually do so. Put another way, only half of the people interested in streaming classical music are actually listening. Primephonic and Idagio ($10 monthly) — another classical music-only streaming service that launched in the U.S. in 2018 — intend to take advantage of the gap in those numbers, to improve access to classical music by offering new-user-friendly software and guided listening. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Decade After ‘The L Word’ Ended, It Returns To Get More Things Right This Time

Lesbians, the producers of The L Word thought after the show ended its run in 2009, would become more omnipresent in mainstream U.S. culture. Maybe true, but no queer women’s ensemble show arose in its wake (unlike the many, many, many, many, many ensemble shows about straight folks that have been on TV in the past decade). So, what the heck, it’s back – but new, fresh, and much more in tune with what it calls “Generation Q.” – The New York Times

What Does Music Mean?

In Portland, Oregon ArtsWatch’s Matthew Neil Andrews is writing a series about classical music and meaning. For instance: We know music can help people process trauma (think of the Boston Symphony playing Beethoven’s Funeral March from the Eroica the afternoon JFK was murdered) – but what if it’s designed to do that? Does that change the experience? And “the main question is whether using music to address these issues is appropriate and effective. What good do these shows do, in terms of actually stimulating change?” – Oregon ArtsWatch

Why Do Music Fans Want ‘Constant Content’ From Singers Even After The Musicians Are Dead?

It’s generational, really: “The old consensus decreed that in order to build a respectable legacy, an estate should protect what the artist had already put out and be discerning with anything more. Fans were furious with Drake’s bungled attempts at putting together a posthumous Aaliyah album, and frustrations arise whenever a Prince release is announced. … But those artists come from an era where the album was the respected format and fans wanted little beyond the occasional alternate version of a hit they had known for 30 years. In the saturated streaming market, made up of audiences with shorter attention spans, the idea of a traditional legacy is being passed over for a more-is-more approach.” – The Guardian (UK)

Social Media Has Made Our Democracy More Toxic. But We Can Fix It

“The problem may not be connectivity itself but rather the way social media turns so much communication into a public performance. We often think of communication as a two-way street. Intimacy builds as partners take turns, laugh at each other’s jokes, and make reciprocal disclosures. What happens, though, when grandstands are erected along both sides of that street and then filled with friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers, all passing judgment and offering commentary?” – The Atlantic