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Design and implementation of new communication channels between public and an artistic performance

Title Design and implementation of new communication channels between public and an artistic performance
Publication Type Master Thesis
Year of Publication 2008
Authors San Agustín, A.
Abstract

Music, and in general, an artistic performance, has always been a social and collective interactive event. After the arrival of the recordings and the sequencers, a performance record become a unidirectional flux of communication that begins with the creative process of composition and finishes with the public´s passive listening, without the possibility to interact with it. Nowadays, thanks to new concepts and new technologies, an artistic performance can be redirected (real time adapted) even if it is a pre-recorded composition, to what the artist perceives about the public´s reaction. The main goal of this master thesis is to provide new communication channels between the public and the performance in order to: 1. Inform the public about what is happening in the performance context, 2. Inform the artist about the public feelings and perceptions and 3. Allow the interaction between the public and the performance.

In order to achieve these goals, we are going to develop a framework that provides two different communication channels through a set of new technologies. The first communication channel is based on a unidirectional automatic information delivery technique called Proximity Marketing; the other uses a similar technology background, but offers a bidirectional communication exchange that enables a real time interaction between users and the performance. These systems are based on a Bluetooth wireless communication protocol, where user´s mobile devices serve as the remote interaction control and a computer server receives and manages all networked interaction traffic in a collaborative manner. The election of a mobile device offers several positive characteristics: privacy, versatility, many communication functionalities, identity reinforcement and also makes the project more affordable.

The framework designed during this master thesis has been tested in a real scenario, a Dance Club. Some applications have been implemented in order to provide a finalized evaluable project, obtaining promising results and a moderate success. The overall perception of the system is positive balanced, and Proximity Marketing communication channel is revealed as a powerful artist image improvement tool and an efficient automatic information delivery system. Nevertheless, the active implication of the public in a performance presents some disadvantages and has to be as easy, accessible, familiar an immediate as possible.

Finally, this framework is proposed to be the foundations of two possible applications, whose designs are presented in the last chapter of this master thesis.