When I was in Prague, I saw the Lucky Dragons perform again (had seen them before in SF, too). There was a lot of audience participation, which in general audiences seem to dig quite a bit. LD dude first handed out CD-R’s and demonstrated what to do. He had a projector projecting some video, and some type of photocell setup as a control input on his laptopery, such that when you move a CD through the light beam, the sound changes. He also distributed cloth covered tentacles connected to the laptop borg, mostly sticklike things which produced percussive sounds when shaken. Further, acoustic percussion and soundmakers were distributed. The audience-triggered sound complemented what he was doing himself. For the most part, it turned out surprisingly cool, although one dude didn’t seem to get the picture very fast when we were fading out. Picture from a 2008 perf in NYC:
Anyway, the other day I had an idea for an audience participation piece. One of the funny things about conceptual art, or whatever you want to call it, is that once a concept has been stated, a piece has been authored by someone (well, as long as a name gets attached to it in some fashion, I suppose). So if you independently have the same idea later and take a go at it, you’re just performing someone else’s piece. Whereas “Joe Blow’s Blues” is your own wonderful creation, despite it being yet another 12-bar blues. This is just by way of saying that it’s possible/likely this has been already done. If so, I’d like to know. If not, Copyright 2010 Ghost of the Machine, motherfuckers!
“A Simple Idea”
Instructions for a musical performance. Each audience member is given a controller which, when pressed, triggers one particular note to sound (e.g. the G below middle C). If possible, the controller is able to affect the volume and duration of the note. All music in the piece results from the audience using these controllers. Variations in the plan are possible based on whether or not each audience member gets to control more than one note if there are extra controllers, or whether the timbre produced by each controller is alterable.
Perhaps some sort of guidance, written or verbal, different for each performance, could be given at the start if more structure was desired. I’m curious whether this would produce a bunch of garbage, or something sublime, or garbage at first, awesomeness after a while. Would the musical ability of an audience help or hinder a performance? Would audience members try to communicate verbally? Would fights break out? In any case, I’d like to hear it.
I’ve been involved in a few musical jams and performances and such that involved bringing together various people who may or may not necessarily know each other, and aren’t regularly involved with one another in musical endeavors. I do have to add that these are generally free improv sessions, so you’re dealing with something that has very few set “rules” or regulating concepts, and a lot of leeway as to what’s acceptable or worthy, but in my experience, a lot of times these things fail for the simple reason that ALL music (but ESPECIALLY any musical form that isn’t dictated and relatively rigid) is absolutely dependent on the participants carefully listening to one another, respecting boundaries and contributions from other members, and to a degree, suspending their own egos, subsuming them to the group as a whole, and honestly a lot of people just aren’t very good at this.
I know that what this article is referring to is different from an open free improv jam session, but some of the basics are the same: you’re dealing with a number of people who may have wildly varying levels of experience, expertise, ability, and knowledge of what you’re trying to accomplish, and may have never played together before, if at all. No matter how much you reduce the musical functions you want these people to perform, no matter how much you simplify them such that a monkey could do it, you’re still relying on that person’s innate musical understanding to integrate whatever sounds they’re supposed to make into the whole, and as much as the populist in me wants to (and has spent the last fifteen years wanting to) believe that this is an innate ability we all have, the truth is in most people it has to be nurtured and cultivated. There are definitely people who do have a natural and innate understanding of how to make music in this manner, but most people don’t, and so what you may well end up with is particularly unmusical chaos.
For some people, the concept of listening to the sum of the sounds made by everyone else in the room, and then figuring out how to integrate their own sounds into that morass, is just overwhelming. These people will typically respond either by playing their part very tentatively, quietly, and ultimately contributing little more than a background sound, which can be very effective really, and add to the ambience of the piece, or (worst case) they’ll just go for broke and overplay, ignoring what’s going on around them, hoping that whatever they do will contribute to the music simply by adding to it.
This isn’t to denigrate people who aren’t used to this style of playing, or method of making music; I wouldn’t be any better if someone threw me onto a stage and told me to be an extra in “MacBeth” without giving me any guidance or direction. And sometimes you can make something so simple and nearly foolproof that a disparate group of people, properly motivated and maybe with a little bit of quick but thorough instruction first, will be able to pull off something that works, sounds good, and inspires them to make more music, which is the ideal objective for something like this. It’s just something you have to kind of plan for, and then be pretty lucky and get the right people involved.
My two cents anyway.