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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00907
- Thesis Title
- Steering Audience Engagement During Audio-Visual Performance
- Author
- Léon McCarthy
- E-mail
- leonabed AT yahoo.co.uk
- 2nd Author
- N/A
- 3rd Author
- N/A
- Degree
- PhD
- Year
- 2016
- Number of Pages
- 116
- University
- Northumbria University
- Thesis Supervisor
- Dr. Steven Gibson
- Supervisor e-mail
- stephen.gibson AT northumbria.ac.uk
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Dr. Ben Salem-Bernard
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Media & Communication Design
- Copyright Ownership
- Northumbria University
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/31605/
- Keywords
- Live audio-visuals, audience participation, second-screening, VJing, live cinema
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in knowingly steering audience engagement. My interest in steering engagement stems from the intent I have with my performances; an intent to encourage audiences into considered thought about the topics I bring to my shows. As practice-based research, a series of performances formed its basis, with each adapted toward establishing a new style.
I introduced audience conversations to my performances, doing so in real-time by harnessing the audience's second-screens. In this way, their smartphones facilitated spontaneous collaboration between the audience and I; in turn this gave me a way to steer them toward thinking about the themes behind my performances. By then bringing this style of performance to the context of live debate, a new paradigm emerged; one that challenges the audience to participate in shaping the emergent audio-visual event.
I had to develop the capacity to monitor audience engagement, first online with the `video-cued commentary' and then in real-time via two different `audience-commentary systems'. This may be of interest to anyone engaging in forms of audience analysis or viewer studies. How I developed second-screen systems may be of interest to designers of phone-network-based social-media commentary platforms. My effort toward simplifying how I generated audio-visual content and how I controlled it on-stage may make this research of interest to other digital-media performers and installation-designers.