BUSKING FOR SMARTPHONES
You walk around the corner on a busy street sprinkled with pedestrians and notice the familiar half-circle: an audience surrounding a busker. They horseshoe themselves while listening intently, one hand clutching a drink, the other holding a cell phone at eye level as they watch the busker – through their phone’s camera display.
Two immediate issues are apparent:
- With no hands free, the audience cannot clap. The result? Little to no engagement with the performer. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Jack White recently listed this as one of the reasons why he hates the audiences of 2014. Last year at the Bonnaroo Arts & Music Fest, I was in the audience when Edward Sharpe stopped mid-song and screamed, “Put down the damn cell phones!” before continuing. Those two performers regularly have tens of thousands of people in front of them. For a busker with a comparatively small audience, and perhaps less confidence, this lack of energy can be demoralizing and more importantly, it can negatively affect the amount of money dropped in the hat.
- While staring through the display of their smartphones, people miss the real street performance – the nuance of audience engagement, the eye contact they might receive from a performer, and the active sensory experience they miss out on while trying desperately to hold the phone camera steady. Will the audience remember the busking performance, or will they remember the finicky app filter that they were trying to use while taking photos? Buskers are artists worthy of active listeners – not just another tourist attraction in which to snap a photo, upload to instagram, check off the list, and move on.
Rather than enjoying the unique performance in front of them, today’s audience is using the performer and the performance not only to document their “good time,” but also to substantiate on social networks that [at least in that moment] they are having more fun than their friends.
What is lost of the performance experience with this voyeuristic display? It is time researchers take on this task, both studying the effects of viewing performance through [an actual] lens, and delving into the effects of social media on audiences engagement with street [and mainstream] performers.
“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction.” – Albert Einstein
However, as a musician, music researcher and a representative audience participant, I am also guilty of wanting to document the remarkable musical moments experienced in life, but I like to think I do so cautiously. I never aim anymore to catch the best moments of the show. Instead I attempt to catch the fragments I might forget. Of course, all things are relative: as I finish typing this, my new kitten curls up on the keyboard, displaying sheer adorability, demanding attention, and reminding me to close the laptop for a few minutes to make the most of this particular moment in his life – without a camera in hand.
Dhani Adomaitis — follow her here! @sociosound