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February 25, 2005
The MP3 Experiment
Improv Everywhere is a New York-based performance art group (or purveyor of large-scale, witty pranks - your pick). Their exploits are consistently smart, funny, and well-documented.
One of their recent projects was the MP3 Experiment, inspired by the Flaming Lips' Parking Lot Experiments and Headphone Concerts and Andy Kaufman's Performance at Carnegie Hall. Weeks in advance, participants were instructed to download a 27-minute mp3 file to their audio-player of choice and told the location and time of the performance. At the theatre, each audience-member donned headphones and started their mp3 players at the same time. Throughout the performance, participants were instructed to blow bubbles, give high fives, divide into groups (including secret instructions to each group), take photographs, and dance. All done in complete silence as seen by the outside viewer!
As visual media players become more portable and pervasive, one can imagine a similar project incorporating an active audience that reacts in groups to pieces of video each member is individually presented with. Perhaps participants are shown a set of shapes that they must form in groups (a la Michel Gondry's music video for "Mad World"), or they are given a map of some space and led on a treasure hunt with the added temporal challenge of clues being uncovered along a timeline. Not everyone would have to have the exact same video either. Groups could be instructed to use different versions, or technology permitting, video streams could be changed in real-time based on location or other variables.
Posted by jeppink at February 25, 2005 12:53 AM