Summative Report
Going to many gigs in such a short space of time has been amazing. I
have had many experiences. However, I wonder if each experience has been slightly numbed by the quantity as
‘less can be more’ (Baudrilliard on Callot, 1968). Similar to the nature of
consciousness, the impact of each
gig could have been reduced both
because of the anticipation/preparation
for the next gig and/or because the legacy
of each experience is more short-lived because it is truncated by preparing
for another gig shortly after rather than reflecting on memories from the
previous one (Varela, Thompson, Rosch, 1993).
Ethnography links to the format of my project (collecting data through observation in an environment) an ‘interpretation of the events that took place’ (Dey, 2002). However, I wondered whether logging each experience detracted from the experience? Has each musical experience been tainted by thinking throughout the performances, trying to make notes in the breaks and considering how it could be visually captured? Photographers must have this problem, for example Zauberman (2016) describes this as ‘something that stands between you and the experience’.
The following elements of musical experience are those I have discovered
are important when considering aura:
-Being absorbed in the
performance and being part of the
musical space
-The interaction and feeling close to the performers
-The stage presence of the
performers and their unique charisma
-Who you go to the musical
experience with and how much they enjoy
it
-Others around you and their
response to the music
-The stage lighting,
especially when it is an enveloping glow
-Qualities that made that specific
experience unique
-The power of the music and
its impact on making you move
-Background sensory feelings
and if enjoying
-How intimate the venue is
and the participation of the surrounding
audience
-The view, if you can see and
what kind of experience you’re going to have
-How well you know the music prior
to going
-The length of the set, if it
is too long
-If there was anything that was annoying/disappointing
about the experience
Going forwards, the next area of research would be to visualise more
than just the view and the performance but also broader factors like the audience’s responses, not only to the
performance but also their effect on my experience. This would create a more holistic analysis of musical
experience, recognising more of the factors identified in the reflections of
each gig.
Further, perhaps the most authentic representation of experience is drawing in the audience, in the experience
(Varela, Thompson, Rosch, 1993). I did this twice in my investigation, the
images hold their own aura and created a different interpretation of the
experience than reflecting upon after. This reportage element could be something that I could explore further.
The more well-known bands for whom I knew the lyrics and had pre-conceived ideas of how they looked
and performed, I found harder to illustrate. They were especially difficult to
start, more stressful to represent and share as others would have expectation. Therefore, drawing and
experiencing only lesser-known bands takes the pressure off each illustration and
could allow me to focus more on that experience rather than preconceived ideas.
Started to create a few scrapbook pages digitally but decided that it was more appropriate to hand craft them analogue.
