One of the challenges of my project was getting audiences to reveal their ideas of what had happened. Could I have done something different to encourage this? I looked at audience participation in the arts and came across this piece from MoMA which traces the idea back to Marcel DuChamp who stated that art is not complete until it went out into the world and is viewed by an audience who bring their own interpretation. It’s a concept that as been covered in earlier parts of my degree. The idea is sound but the realities of getting participation are harder.
I found this report from the Arts Council on their Creative People and Places project which was set up to encourage greater participation in the arts in areas that traditionally have low engagement. In it they say “ One significant challenge that Places face is the fact that there are typically low levels of participation in community activity and decision-making across all kinds of interests and sectors, so arts and culture are not uniquely affected’ If the Arts Council with a budget of over £6 million and a big workforce struggle it’s not surprising that it was hard to get engagement for a small project like mine.
I looked to radio stations who base whole shows on emails from listeners, but I can’t find any analysis of this phenomenon and the motivation that drives it. Maybe radio isn’t a good comparison, the listeners relationship with a radio show is quite intimate.
Instead I looked at social media. Again I didn’t find an enormous amount of information but this post in the Medium website talks about the motivations to interact with Facebook. When using social media we easily enter a flow state (article here) Likes and comments make us feel connected to others. A like sends a simple signal of empathy to the receiver but also give away information about ourselves. Another study found that analysis of likes could predict, things like political activity, health and substance abuse. This article hypothesise that users are more likely to self censor if the audience for their comment is hard to define.
My project didn’t have the intimacy of a radio program or the defined audience of a personal social media post so that could put people off commenting. Additionally my social media followers are mostly friends, I don’t have a big online brand as an artist. If there is an element of fame or fan worship in social media comments then I don’t have the profile to attract that. Set in this light it’s not surprising that I struggled to get my viewers to draw attention to themselves online and comment.
My take home message from all of this is that I need to continue to work to build my brand. I have always kept my creative side a little bit separate. If I can come across in a more cohesive manner maybe my audience would feel more comfortable in revealing themselves.
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