The Immersive Spectacle: Performance and the Audience in Pop Music - Part 1

THESIS STATEMENT: In a visually dominated culture, spaces of sound have the potential to produce an immersive audio-physical experience that facil~ates spatial awareness and challenges traditional listening experiences. The aural and spatial awareness is unquestionable. Although it is a primitive human refiex to direct visual focus to the original sound source, technological and architectural devices no longer require the sound source to be in the same space as the distributed sound Recording and distribution devices have deconstructed the relationship between sound and space. Technological innovations, especially speakers and digital screens, no longer require the listener to be in a single space with a homogenous seating arrangement. With homogeneously organized seating arrangements in sound spaces, the listener is a passive participant Whereas, when a person is moving, the listener becomes an active participant responding to a sound in space. An active participant has the potential to create an immersive and unique audio-physical experience more than a passive listener Other arrangements, such as lying down, allow the listener to be more aware of their spatial surroundings because they cover more surface area, but certain observing arrangements are further or closer away from the sound source, making the experience more less instantaneous (figure 2) Pop music has a potential focus for design and challenging traditional listening experiences, because provides provocative tensions with immersive audio-physical environments For instance, Pop music reaches a large audience, which would typically need a large space, where as focusing on the audio-physical experience focuses on the individual, which is easier to manipulate in a smaller space In addition, Pop music is primarily a spectacle, which focuses on vision, whereas an audio-physical experience incorporates multiple senses, not only hearing and feeling Both Pop music and immersive audio-physical experiences not only use technological innovations as significant devices but also strive to create a unique, original, and inventive experience that the audience has never experienced befor