Welcome to Year 2020, COVID19 hits Planet Earth really hard. Most governments are unprepared and fail to take appropriate counter-measures in time, we are all confinement in our own houses. Yet, most of performing art still rely on physicality as it’s first premise.
What has changed between being in the club and watching a livestream of the club from home?
The vast majority of performing artists, already relying on unstable income, are now in the cul-de-sac. They have to re-invent themselves online and unprepared. Some of them can count on subsidized initiatives where an empty expensive club is filled with expensive animated lights and they can DJ to their remote audience while the technicians switch points of view of expensive travelling high resolution cameras. Unfortunately, less established DJs can only try to spin records from their kitchen, with a blurry laptop webcam, and unstable cable internet, resulting in less than ideal performance and mixed results.
Only transposing real life practices to the internet does not work well.
In real life performances, the public is gathering around the same place, at the same time, because the mix of technology, talent and sweat is united there. This very moment where your favourite artist will unroll before your eyes a never-heard-before guitar solo is unique; it will only happen once in the real life, and there will only be two categories of persons: those who attended to it, and the rest.
Let’s see how one can emulate those feelings.
The most immediate setup involves a central streaming platform such as Twitch or Mixer. The artist uses a broadcasting software such as OBS to send its real-time audio and video feed to the platform server. The public can then go to platform webpage and see and hear the artist’s performance in real-time. After creating an account on the platform, the public can send text messages in a chat box displayed next to the artist performance video.
Seeing other viewers react and talk in the chat as it happens is an effective way for the viewer to realize that “other human are really watching this at the same time as I do”; that’s the gathering feeling.
The artist can also see the text messages. He can even integrate them into its own video feed and performance. When doing so, the public also realizes that “the stream really is happening at the same time as I watch”; that’s the is attending-to-it.
The artist can even create a performance that includes the public’s participation in real time, for example asking for themes and improvising lyrics from it, “the performance really is happening at the same time as I watch”, the never-heard-before.
Let’s wrap-up: by using simple chat technology, and organizing the show around interacting with the public, those three missing feelings can be emulated during live stream shows.
Until next time, take care.
EDIT 2020/10/02: The same concept applied to manga analysed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-yDxfDGxk&feature=youtu.be