Music as an invitation: liveness in digital piano performances through participating audiences

Project Information

KDR - UiB

Grant agreement ID: 101066906

DOI

10.3030/101066906

Project closed

EC signature date 18 July 2022

Start date 1 May 2023

End date 30 April 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 226 751,04

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - KDR - UiB (Music as an invitation: liveness in digital piano performances through participating audiences)

Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Concerts were cancelled during the lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. As such, the pandemic has made digital concerts become the new norm. Yet such digital events often challenge the relationship between performer and audience by compromising the experience of liveness, i.e. ‘the feeling of always being connected to other people'. In this context, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project KDR - UiB will investigate audience participation as a way to enhance a sense of being connected to other people in digital musical performances. Using participatory action research methods, it will work with women and girls to collaboratively create online piano performances. Audience feedback and reflections of the artist researcher, supported by literature review, will inform knowledge about the intensification of the relational and affective aspects of the music experience and its impact on the sense of liveness. The project focusses on audiences of women and girls, considering the lack of opportunities for these groups in terms of their participation in classical music. In this way, this project seeks to contribute positive change towards more inclusive music practices for the post-pandemic and digitalised world.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

This project explored participatory strategies for the development of online concerts, which involved the creative collaboration of women and girls from several countries.

During the first year of the project (2023-2024), 14 women from 7 countries were recruited by the MSCA researcher Késia Decoté. This group of women, from various social backgrounds, participated in a series of online creative workshops where, with the facilitation of the researcher, they took ownership of the creative process. This creative dynamic resulted in a series of work-in-progress videos, and a collaborative online concert which was delivered as a YouTube premiere. These online music performance works, while being developed collectively, also expressed the voices and subjectivities of the participants as individuals.

This revealed new understandings about the significant impact of participatory processes on the sense of ‘liveness’ in the experience of music through the internet.

In the second year of the project (2024-2025), the researcher recruited 6 teenage girls from 4 countries to participate in the realisation of a piece of music which was commissioned specifically for this project. The participants joined a series of online workshops, and performed a series of creative tasks under the guidance of the researcher and the commissioned composer. The material produced by the participants integrated a new piece of music - ‘Hecate writes’ for video and piano - which was premiered in a live streamed concert performed by the researcher. This concert also featured participatory proposals for the in-situ audience, thus being simultaneously part of the methodology and one of the artistic results of this research.

The second year of research, in particular, revealed new perspectives for the practice of classical music performance from the point of view of the researcher as a performer. This includes new understandings about the role of the performer in the live music experience

The findings of this research were informed by audience feedback, in dialogue with reflections from the researcher-performer and the literature review. Feedback was collected from all audience groups - women participants from year 1, teenage participants from year 2, and in-situ attendants of the concert of year 2 - using a variety of methods: group and individual after-concert conversations via video conferences, anonymous feedback form, and audio recording of comments of in-situ audience right after the concert.

This project also presented a symposium on Music and Sound Art with participating audiences. This event gathered international scholars and practitioners who are references in the fields of Participatory Music and Participatory Sound Art. The discussions held in the symposium contributed with knowledge about innovative ways to engage audiences, specially in performance of classical music. It also inspired reflections about the artistic motivations, ethics, and the point of view of the audience in such participatory proposals.

These creative processes revealed insightful methods for the development of classical music performance in digital contexts. The participatory processes performed in this research generated new understandings about the impact of the participatory process in the online music experience.

Artistic results of this research include a series of work-in-progress music videos, two online concerts, and a collaborative piece for piano and video.

All artist results are publicly available on the YouTube channel of the project: https://www.youtube.com/@musicasaninvitation

Results of this research also include textual and multimedia publications such as: a Handbook on strategies for online participatory online concerts (https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3759558/3764605); a Chapter featuring reflections about the impact of the collaborative process on the sense of liveness in the experience of music digitally and remotely (integrating a book organised by the ACTUS: Audience as Performers project); a Multimedia Exposition with commented documentation of creative processes explored in this research (https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2975619/2975620); a Multimedia Article on gender, technology and new formats for the piano recital (to be publicly available in due course); an e-book of personal writings including reflective commentaries and testimonies of the participants about their experiences of participation in this project.

Additionally, deepening the gender dimension of this project, the researcher has conducted a rediscovery of the work of composer Jocy de Oliveira (Brazil, 1936 - ). Jocy de Oliveira is a pioneer in experimental and avant-garde music, performing the first electronic music concert in Brazil. As part of the Career Development of this MSCA researcher, Oliveira’s full works for piano have been recorded, the only audio documentation of these works since the release in 1981 of recordings performed by the composer herself. This work on Jocy de Oliveira’s music strengthens the discussions about women, technology and music developed from this project, which explored new forms of participation of women and girls in technologically mediated classical music performances.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This research has contributed new knowledge for the field of classical music in particular, to music performance in digital contexts.

This study has generated new methods for the development of participatory online concerts, new understandings about the impact of participatory proposals in the experience of music digitally and remotely, and new perspectives for the practice of classical music performance.

This research has brought to light the understanding of the affective dimension as as essential element in the experience of music. By engaging audience members in strategically designed online participatory creative processes, a framework was created for an affective layer to emerge while making music collectively and remotely. This affective layer has been built from the hands-on involvement with the creative process and the interpersonal relationships.

Through these participatory explorations, it has been seen that the affective dimension contributes to the construct of structure, meaning and expressivity in the experience of music. This deepening into the music experience has the potential to enhance the sense of ‘liveness’, by making an impact on the online music experience at an embodied level.

While participatory practices have been explored in other areas such as community music, music therapy and even in composition, this is a novel path in the field of classical music performance. The application of participatory methods in the development of classical piano performances in this practice-based research has then proposed challenges to concepts and elements which are intrinsic to the presentation-based tradition of Western Art Music.

Stemming from the practical investigations of this research, and in dialogue with theoretical discussions on music performance as ‘an encounter between human beings’ (Small, 1998: 10), we here propose a new conception of the identity of the performer: once seen as an interpreter of the music work, now the performer is a provider of frameworks where experiences can happen.

This new conceptualisation about the role of the performer also opens up new perspectives for the practice of classical music performance, including the amplification of possibilities for varied creative exploration such as: interdisciplinary practices, collective creative processes, also the embrace of the audience as a creative agent of the music experience.

While this research initially shared a concern about developing new technological tools for audience interaction, the development of the project in real life did not reveal such a need: the processes of audience participation asked, instead, for differentiated interpersonal intelligence and skills. This was particularly observed when some of the participants faced some difficulties with the use of already existing tools, which are widely considered as popular in this socio-economic context.

However, in the goal to develop more inclusive and compassionate practices, cross-cultural sensitivity and interpersonal skills were the strategies which allowed the successful engagement of audiences and development of relevant creative works. Here, in the search to develop relevant music practices in an increasingly more digitalised world, innovation urges to walk hand in hand with empathy.

still images from the work-in-progress 1

screenshot of the 'music as an invitation' website