Initial Concepts and Opportunity Areas

Although music festivals are discrete events produced by different organizations, music festival audiences always complete a similar set of planning and coordinating tasks in order to attend them, and the anticipatory and reflective, post-festival experience of attending any music festival is similar to any other.

While there are similarities between the support services many larger music festivals provide to their audiences in the planning and anticipatory phases of the activity cycle, such as informational documents or instructional guides or FAQs, few music festivals provide substantial support to the post-event experience beyond a message board or an active social media page. The average festival producer must look instantly to the next year or next event in order to make the next profit and build the next experience for new customers – but the audience member’s experience with past events do not end instantly after they’ve returned home. Exactly what happens and how audience members feel in between events isn’t in the interests of festival producer, but to festival fans, these in-between times are almost as important as the events themselves.

 Currently, there is no substantial umbrella service or online community that successfully supports the ongoing processes of music festival experiences of planning, communication, anticipation, reflection and sharing. There is no collective music festival knowledge repository, or any service that successfully connects and archives content relating to different music festivals for the larger music festival enthusiast community, over time. Generally speaking, once a festival has graduated from a future event to a past event, the content related to the event is lost to the wilds of the internet for festival enthusiasts to harvest or dig up on their own.

According to my research, a large majority of individuals who are interested in music festivals attend more than one per year, and many hope to continue attend them in to the future, even as they move through new life phases. This means there will be lots of anticipatory and reflective festival activity phases to support and many festivals attended over a lifetime. My design concepts will aim to support the ongoing experience with multiple music festivals and the times in between them, in order to make the act of attending music festivals easier, more meaningful, enriching, educational and ideally, even more fun for audiences everywhere.

Concept 1: Support three levels of sharing and reflection around music festivals: personal, small/social group, and larger festival community

Concept 2: Connect disparate music festival experiences with one umbrella service (making note of similarities and differences)

Concept 3: Support basic festival needs and activities for festival-goers with an online community (that encourages active participation)

An interesting rant on the limits of data bandwidth and mobile device use at large music festivals:

"This all left me wondering – what if? What if there was an open pipe, both up and down, that could handle all that traffic? What if everyone who came to the show knew that pipe would be open, and work? What kind of value would have been created had that been the case? How much more data would have populated the world, how much richer would literally millions of people’s lives been for seeing the joyful expressions of their friends as they engaged in a wonderful experience? How much more learning might have countless startups gathered, had they been able to truly capture the real time intentions of their customers at such an event?"

"But I also like to take a minute here or there to connect to the people I love, or who follow me, and share with them my passions and my excitement. We are becoming a digital society, to pretend otherwise is to ignore reality. And with very few exceptions, it was just not possible to intermingle the digital and the physical at Coachella." - John Battelle

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2012/04/a-coachella-fail-ble-do-we-hold-spectrum-in-common.php

The Festival Experience Survey, by the numbers:

330 total respondents 

from 40 different states in the US

and 6 countries including Canada, Mexico, Germany, Thailand, Australia, the UK and Thailand

 98% of survey respondents were planning to attend another music festival in the future.

96% of respondents reported positive changes in their outlook or felt more optimistic about life in general after a music festival.

94% were willing to travel even farther than they ever had before for a music festival.

84% had experienced festival ‘comedown’ or post-festival depression.

84% felt proud that they attend music festivals and wanted other people to know.

75% discussed events beforehand online on message boards or social media.

75% did not plan stop attending music festivals at any point in the future.

67% shared photos and media they collect after an event.

55% were between 22 and 30 years old.

39% had traveled between 300-1000 miles (one-way) for a music festival, and 33% had traveled even farther than that!

A draft conceptual model for a music festival - as experienced by an audience member

A music festival acts as a crucial space of displacement from the everyday, where many brains and bodies come together to attempt to sync through a shared, larger experience. The primary syncing agent is music, and the secondary syncing agent is the venue. Music provides a common thread to unite people and different social groups within the space of the music festival.

My model is the following: a music festival, as experienced by an audience member, is fundamentally about physical and social displacement followed by alignment (or re-alignment). This displacement affords a new space for learning both about the self, one's social network, other people, and of course, about music and the event itself. 

This model illustrates my theory that that the novel foreignness of the music festival environment  provides individuals with a a crucial space for growth and reflection - and can be an agent for positive personal change and increased music appreciation and understanding.

First forays into ideating. Solutionizing? Conceptual model interventions?

I think at this point I've developed a fairly nuanced understanding of the music festival experience from the point of view of audiences, the activities that surround them, people's motivations for attending them, and how they can enhance people's lives. I am working on developing visual/conceptual models for most of these areas, which should allow me to better explain them to other people.

So of course, the next step will be to step in to the spaces I've identified and start to build something that supports the experiences of people operating in those spaces (that is, planning for, talking about and going to music festivals!). 

My initial ideas are of course, currently web or app-supported experiences. (Unfortunately I can't ideate quite so far out in to the future where people aren't using their laptops or other personal computing devices to interact with the services I build.) The metaphor of a social media network comes quickly to mind when I think about how to begin to explain the service I'm starting to envision, but the the primary difference between the current social media models currently in use is that my idea, other than some planning and coordinating tools, will not be about the ever-changing present, not 'now-centric', but more about sharing, memory, personal reflection and of course, music. Ideally this will support the three levels of music festival (human) experience I've landed on conceptually, which are your personal experience, your immediate social group's experience, and the larger festival community.

Given these initial visions, I've started reading about design for behavior change and persuasive design (and have rapidly become a fan of BJ Fogg and The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab).

Also happy to announce that I'll be attending the International Music Festival Conference in Austin this December! I will be there to absorb everything I can from current festival industry professionals and get another hefty dose of the business and artist's perspective on the current state of music festivals.

Ideas never come out neatly the first time.

The Music Festival Activity Cycle

 

A Plethora of Sketches.

...and that's not even all of them.

Interview Synthesis, Part I

In this round of research, I explored some of the areas I’d learned about in my survey in more depth. I conducted some interviews with individuals I’d consider festival experts of sorts, meaning people who have been to many music festivals, are enthusiastic, active music festival attendees, have been attending music festivals for many years, or who are already engaged in producing or supporting music festival experiences and services.

By exploring certain areas that I learned about from my survey in a more focused way, I’ve developed a better understanding of some of the intricacies of music festival experience – notably, from the point of view of people who fundamentally understand and seek out these events.

On sharing music festival experiences

 One area that I focused on was what people do after a music festival, and the sharing of music festival experiences. Interestingly, there is a high desire to share music festival experiences for personal reasons, and also high motivation for seeking media and content related to a music festival experience. That is – people want to share their own experiences, photos, and media, but they also are highly interested in other people’s sharing.

Many groups are attempting to unify the space around a festival by collecting images, fan-sourced media, posting to Facebook pages and groups, and blogging about festivals. Hashtagged photos and video snippets on apps like Vine readily come to mind – but the space is still open for innovation. The high desire to share about music festival experiences in my survey indicated this as well.

I looked at why people share, the meaning of sharing a music festival experience with others and the possible benefits and drawbacks of sharing. A crucial distinction that emerged was between the need to share experiences for personal versus socially-motivated sharing. Sharing content of any kind will have different motivations. Sharing content to your personal social networks, for instance, is about sharing meaningful experiences. It is a personal experience, one about reflection and the inclusion of others.

Sharing content to wider networks or more public (online) places would be about educating others, attempts at making the festival experience vivid for people who weren’t there – whether to share why people were excited about it, or simply to explain why it mattered so much to the individual doing the sharing. Any attempt to share the ‘feeling’ of being there, or the meaning of having been there seems worthy, though most people agreed most sharing does next to nothing to approximate the actual music festival experience. Simply put, words and pictures, and even video clips rarely capture the true nature of a music festival. One person mentioned how even professional videos of music festivals are ‘totally clinical’ and fail to capture much.

Interestingly, nearly everyone I spoke with is inherently interested in hearing about other people’s music festival experiences – whether or not they were also at the specific festival. There seems to be a common understanding of why these experiences are important, and an eagerness to share them, and a happy openness to hearing them from other people (I at least feel this way…). I think it indicates a deep understanding between people of sorts – even if the music festival experiences are not the same, they provide instant sympathy and intensely common ground.

There is a desire to ‘see the festival’ through other people’s eyes – as everyone’s music festival experience is deeply personal and unique, but naturally, they are centered around the same basic activities and musical performances.

In summary, sharing music festival experiences is about two things:

Personal satisfaction: about you making meaning, expressing feeling, love, enjoyment
Social sharing: sharing for other people: knowledge, for fun, common understanding

 Other areas I explored, which I’ll attempt to write up later, were:  

Music festival strategy and expertise – that is, the information and knowledge you need to make the most of each specific festival, as is one is unique and presents unique challenges and opportunities – in addition to your own personal knowledge about how to manage your own music festival experiences (especially when camping, or surviving a multiple-day event, for instance)  

The wisdom and knowledge of the crowd or the masses - self-policing, learning how to operate ‘together’ in a space, and function as a crowd (there is a nuanced understanding of things like moving in lines, not cramming in to locations, avoiding bottlenecks, and simply logistics and spatial issues negotiated by crowds)

The unique experience of music at a festival, and also live streaming – we like live streams, for the most part, for different reasons. I will explain more later.

Satisfying and growing yourself as an individual (at music festivals over time) – and how knowledge accrues at festivals

Your closer/small friend group vs. the larger festival social experience

Behind the scenes view of logistics building the Life is Beautiful Festival

I am currently looking for reviews of LIB, as it was both a first-time event and also a new sort of experiment in making a music festival happen within city streets and infrastructure. This video provides a bit of a taste of just how much work goes in to producing events of this scale.

Life is Beautiful - "Final Countdown" from Downtown Films on Vimeo

Take the opportunity to re-wire your brain to see the good in the world...at a music festival.

"The simple idea is that we we all want to have good things inside ourselves: happiness, resilience, love, confidence, and so forth. The question is, how do we actually grow those, in terms of the brain? It’s really important to have positive experiences of these things that we want to grow, and then really help them sink in, because if we don’t help them sink in, they don’t become neural structure very effectively."

"The problem is that the brain is very good at building brain structure from negative experiences. We learn immediately from pain—you know, “once burned, twice shy.” Unfortunately, the brain is relatively poor at turning positive experiences into emotional learning neural structure."

"In terms of our need for satisfaction, of experiences of gratitude, gladness, accomplishment, feeling successful, feeling that there’s a fullness in your life rather than an emptiness or a scarcity. As people increasingly install those traits, they’re going to be more able to deal with issues such as loss, or being thwarted, or being disappointed."

"On the one hand, due to modernity, many people report that moment to moment, they’re having fairly positive experiences, they’re not being chased by lions, they’re not in a war zone, they’re not in agonizing pain, they have decent medical care. And yet on the other hand, many people today would report that they have a fundamental sense of feeling stressed and pressured and disconnected from other people, longing for closeness that they don’t have, frustrated, driven, etc. Why is that? I think one reason is that we’re simply wasting the positive experiences that we’re having, in part due to modernity, because we’re not taking into account that design bug in the Stone Age brain that it doesn’t learn very well.

For me, by repeatedly taking in the good to grow inner strength, you become much more able to deal with the bad. For me, taking in the good is motivated by the recognition that there’s a lot about life is hard." - Dr. Rick Hanson

 http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/how-to-build-a-happier-brain/280752/

We can all benefit from taking a moment to learn from our positive experiences. I stand by my assertion that in addition to music itself being good for the brain (making all those neurons fire at once, decoding sensory input in pleasing and healthy synchrony, and filling our synapses with all natural, good-feeling neurotransmitters), that having the positive experiences with other people at music festivals is really a crucial learning experience for everyone.

"I don't think people are looking for the meaning of life so much as the experience of being alive." 
- Joseph Campbell

Music festivals: more real than real life?

As I started out in planning this thesis project, I was excited to dig in to the subject of what a music festival fundamentally 'is', given the high intent required of people to travel long distances in pursuit of an intangible, music-centric experience - and of course, the massive investment of money, time, and social and mental energy they often require. 

I began by asking questions like this:

"Isn't it odd that we have to build these artificial spaces like music festivals (or events like Burning Man), displace ourselves from our daily environments, and insert ourselves somewhere completely foreign surrounded by art and music to finally feel like we get to 'be ourselves'?"

Then I realized that maybe this analysis was...backwards.  

Maybe the current state of our daily lives, at least in Western, industrialized societies, with their tendency toward incredible and often unfulfilling repetition (whether in school, work, job hunting, cleaning, rising to and completing mundane daily responsibilities), and the general trend toward social isolation and fragmented, superficial communications through social media, is actually more of an artificial construct than the closely knit, self-reliant community that we can experience at a music festival, a community that works, cooperates, experiences and celebrates closely and together.

Maybe the music festival experience is more true to human nature than the modern lives we feel  driven to flee, just to feel more alive.

Seen in this way, the kinds of novelty-seeking people chase at a music festival could be about more than just having fun, but also about the self-education our current cultural infrastructures fail to provide. We learn quickly when we have to adapt to new situations, and as Maslow suggested, healthier, fully actualized individuals deal with the unexpected and even crises in life, with more creativity, spontaneity and equanimity. Maybe it's just as important for culture that we have opportunities to pull ourselves out of our daily structures and environments and throw ourselves headfirst in to completely different, spontaneous, even chaotic situations - simply to learn how to deal with them.

Maybe the more we experiment and the farther away from the norm we can get ourselves, the better we can deal with those moments when our daily experience of 'normal' goes completely off-script.

We must manufacture places to chase serendipity.

Perhaps these escapist tendencies and celebrations actually serve us better than our daily routines.

Who knows, but it's fascinating to ponder.

First set of possible design intervention areas for music festival experiences

After fully absorbing my survey data, which was inspiring in itself, I've done some sketching and pondering what I learned. I've come up with several areas that might be worth exploring further around festival experiences - areas that seem to be meaningful and important to people about their experiences, and that aren't necessarily formally supported by any current festival offerings. I'm not a fan of flimsy, maudlin positive sentiments, and the intensity with which people shared their feelings about these areas of experience seems to suggest their real importance in many people's lives.

So far the areas I'm looking at designing some kind of possible support systems for are below. They roughly align to the pre-festival, during-festival and post-festival experience areas.

•  the 'after the festival' positive feeling: expressing, harnessing or sharing it, making it useful to you and other people

• connecting *you* to music: your music, your music community, the personal significance and history of your own music tastes, activities and listening

• supporting self-development and self-exploration at festival: looking at who you are, who you are at a music festival, who do you want to be, who do you want become in the future, personal goals, etc.

• the festival community at large and music festival history: sharing experiences, memories, and recording what often goes unrecorded and forgotten

• the novel, serendipitous or unexpected experience: social connections and experiences, or unusual, out-of-the-ordinary vibrant life experiences

• tribalism, nomadism, or visually expressing membership in a larger, geographically-agnostic community

• music festival experiences over a lifetime: families, music festivals and aging audiences

Reflections on Americanization, Escapism

 I've been thinking about what a drive to attend music festivals means, culturally, for our zeitgeist, and trying to collect thoughts on the subject. Here are a few:

"The development of popular culture from the novel via the image to the triumph of popular music and the "center-less'' heterogeneity of television, created forms of cultural expression that are singularly useful for the purposes of imaginary self-extension and self-empowerment. The result is an increasing separation of expressive elements from moral, social, even narrative contexts. Here is the triumph of "mood over morals.'' Americanization, indeed, is carried by the promise of heightened imaginary self-realization for individuals who are freed from the bonds of social norms and cultural traditions.

Americanization, thus, cannot be viewed as a tacitly engineered hidden cultural takeover but as a process in which individualization is the driving force. This process is most advanced in the US for a number of reasons. The promise of a particular form of individualization provides the explanation why American popular culture finds so much resonance in other societies where it has taken hold almost without resistance (mostly carried by a young generation trying to escape tradition).

Cultural Americanization is thus part of a modernizing process. Americanization is not a form of cultural imperialism, but the embodiment of modernity's promise of painless self-realization for each individual, in contrast to the demands made by more traditional concepts of emancipation. Globalization, which often appears as the triumph of cultural standardization, in reality undermines standardization. No single national culture is the driving force but, instead, globalization is powered by a restless individualism drawing on a growing store of mass symbols. So: we are not becoming Americanized. We "Americanize'' ourselves."
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/invasion-of-the-culture-snatchers- 

"But, judging by the appetite shown worldwide for this narrative, it seems clear that identification with such adventures is almost universal. It seems to speak to a deep longing in men – and in the women who also enjoy these films and TV shows – for a time in one’s life when one could dash toward freedom, adventure, and self-reinvention, unencumbered by social ties and family obligations."
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-great-escapism

But, judging by the appetite shown worldwide for this narrative, it seems clear that identification with such adventures is almost universal. It seems to speak to a deep longing in men – and in the women who also enjoy these films and TV shows – for a time in one’s life when one could dash toward freedom, adventure, and self-reinvention, unencumbered by social ties and family obligations.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-great-escapism#cad7sqvVLYRCHBpQ.99

The characteristic form by which music activates the imagination is by short evocations of out-of-context images, or a diffuse feeling of boundlessness, both of which need not be integrated into any meaningful context. Listeners to popular music need not ``earn'' their aesthetic experience through participation. Contrary to prior visual forms of cultural expression, including the movies, there is no longer a need for continuity in the flow of images; contrary to what happens with a novel, no mental translation is required because the sensual effect of music creates associations that are shaped not by narrative but by mood.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe development of popular culture from the novel via the image to the triumph of popular music and the ``center-less'' heterogeneity of television, created forms of cultural expression that are singularly useful for the purposes of imaginary self-extension and self-empowerment. The result is an increasing separation of expressive elements from moral, social, even narrative contexts. Here is the triumph of ``mood over morals.'' Americanization, indeed, is carried by the promise of heightened imaginary self-realization for individuals who are freed from the bonds of social norms and cultural traditions.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAmericanization, thus, cannot be viewed as a tacitly engineered hidden cultural takeover but as a process in which individualization is the driving force. This process is most advanced in the US for a number of reasons. The promise of a particular form of individualization provides the explanation why American popular culture finds so much resonance in other societies where it has taken hold almost without resistance (mostly carried by a young generation trying to escape tradition).

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCultural Americanization is thus part of a modernizing process. Americanization is not a form of cultural imperialism, but the embodiment of modernity's promise of painless self-realization for each individual, in contrast to the demands made by more traditional concepts of emancipation. Globalization, which often appears as the triumph of cultural standardization, in reality undermines standardization. No single national culture is the driving force but, instead, globalization is powered by a restless individualism drawing on a growing store of mass symbols. So: we are not becoming Americanized. We ``Americanize'' ourselves.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/invasion-of-the-culture-snatchers-#Vq5o4XgFmo2CWZ2q.99

The characteristic form by which music activates the imagination is by short evocations of out-of-context images, or a diffuse feeling of boundlessness, both of which need not be integrated into any meaningful context. Listeners to popular music need not ``earn'' their aesthetic experience through participation. Contrary to prior visual forms of cultural expression, including the movies, there is no longer a need for continuity in the flow of images; contrary to what happens with a novel, no mental translation is required because the sensual effect of music creates associations that are shaped not by narrative but by mood.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe development of popular culture from the novel via the image to the triumph of popular music and the ``center-less'' heterogeneity of television, created forms of cultural expression that are singularly useful for the purposes of imaginary self-extension and self-empowerment. The result is an increasing separation of expressive elements from moral, social, even narrative contexts. Here is the triumph of ``mood over morals.'' Americanization, indeed, is carried by the promise of heightened imaginary self-realization for individuals who are freed from the bonds of social norms and cultural traditions.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAmericanization, thus, cannot be viewed as a tacitly engineered hidden cultural takeover but as a process in which individualization is the driving force. This process is most advanced in the US for a number of reasons. The promise of a particular form of individualization provides the explanation why American popular culture finds so much resonance in other societies where it has taken hold almost without resistance (mostly carried by a young generation trying to escape tradition).

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCultural Americanization is thus part of a modernizing process. Americanization is not a form of cultural imperialism, but the embodiment of modernity's promise of painless self-realization for each individual, in contrast to the demands made by more traditional concepts of emancipation. Globalization, which often appears as the triumph of cultural standardization, in reality undermines standardization. No single national culture is the driving force but, instead, globalization is powered by a restless individualism drawing on a growing store of mass symbols. So: we are not becoming Americanized. We ``Americanize'' ourselves.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/invasion-of-the-culture-snatchers-#Vq5o4XgFmo2CWZ2q.99

The characteristic form by which music activates the imagination is by short evocations of out-of-context images, or a diffuse feeling of boundlessness, both of which need not be integrated into any meaningful context. Listeners to popular music need not ``earn'' their aesthetic experience through participation. Contrary to prior visual forms of cultural expression, including the movies, there is no longer a need for continuity in the flow of images; contrary to what happens with a novel, no mental translation is required because the sensual effect of music creates associations that are shaped not by narrative but by mood.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe development of popular culture from the novel via the image to the triumph of popular music and the ``center-less'' heterogeneity of television, created forms of cultural expression that are singularly useful for the purposes of imaginary self-extension and self-empowerment. The result is an increasing separation of expressive elements from moral, social, even narrative contexts. Here is the triumph of ``mood over morals.'' Americanization, indeed, is carried by the promise of heightened imaginary self-realization for individuals who are freed from the bonds of social norms and cultural traditions.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAmericanization, thus, cannot be viewed as a tacitly engineered hidden cultural takeover but as a process in which individualization is the driving force. This process is most advanced in the US for a number of reasons. The promise of a particular form of individualization provides the explanation why American popular culture finds so much resonance in other societies where it has taken hold almost without resistance (mostly carried by a young generation trying to escape tradition).

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCultural Americanization is thus part of a modernizing process. Americanization is not a form of cultural imperialism, but the embodiment of modernity's promise of painless self-realization for each individual, in contrast to the demands made by more traditional concepts of emancipation. Globalization, which often appears as the triumph of cultural standardization, in reality undermines standardization. No single national culture is the driving force but, instead, globalization is powered by a restless individualism drawing on a growing store of mass symbols. So: we are not becoming Americanized. We ``Americanize'' ourselves.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/invasion-of-the-culture-snatchers-#Vq5o4XgFmo2CWZ2q.99

The characteristic form by which music activates the imagination is by short evocations of out-of-context images, or a diffuse feeling of boundlessness, both of which need not be integrated into any meaningful context. Listeners to popular music need not ``earn'' their aesthetic experience through participation. Contrary to prior visual forms of cultural expression, including the movies, there is no longer a need for continuity in the flow of images; contrary to what happens with a novel, no mental translation is required because the sensual effect of music creates associations that are shaped not by narrative but by mood.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe development of popular culture from the novel via the image to the triumph of popular music and the ``center-less'' heterogeneity of television, created forms of cultural expression that are singularly useful for the purposes of imaginary self-extension and self-empowerment. The result is an increasing separation of expressive elements from moral, social, even narrative contexts. Here is the triumph of ``mood over morals.'' Americanization, indeed, is carried by the promise of heightened imaginary self-realization for individuals who are freed from the bonds of social norms and cultural traditions.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAmericanization, thus, cannot be viewed as a tacitly engineered hidden cultural takeover but as a process in which individualization is the driving force. This process is most advanced in the US for a number of reasons. The promise of a particular form of individualization provides the explanation why American popular culture finds so much resonance in other societies where it has taken hold almost without resistance (mostly carried by a young generation trying to escape tradition).

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphCultural Americanization is thus part of a modernizing process. Americanization is not a form of cultural imperialism, but the embodiment of modernity's promise of painless self-realization for each individual, in contrast to the demands made by more traditional concepts of emancipation. Globalization, which often appears as the triumph of cultural standardization, in reality undermines standardization. No single national culture is the driving force but, instead, globalization is powered by a restless individualism drawing on a growing store of mass symbols. So: we are not becoming Americanized. We ``Americanize'' ourselves.

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/invasion-of-the-culture-snatchers-#Vq5o4XgFmo2CWZ2q.99

NY Times Review of Bonnaroo 2012: Understanding one of the largest American music festivals

 I really liked this analysis, and wanted to save a couple relevant quotes.

"Never mind me and my choices: put those acts together, and what’s the message? What does it express? Not newness, really, but something about grooves and songwriting and resonance; perhaps, all together, a desire for longevity. The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is not about “authentic” music — beware of that word — but it might be about music that either has had a long life or expects to. Music that isn’t instantly forgettable. Music that you would want to deposit in the correct recycling bin."

"Bonnaroo is mainly a camping festival, sold out this year at 80,000. It’s an experience festival ... because Bonnaroo really is understood as a marker in people’s lives. And experience trumps aesthetic sensibility."

"I have an unrealistic fantasy of a music festival purely of excellence, with no responsibility toward any aesthetic or sound or region, only toward the principles of unity and purpose in sound. Bonnaroo is not that. But it allows you, at least, to dream in those terms."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/arts/music/bonnaroo-music-and-arts-festival-in-all-its-multiplicity.html?pagewanted=1

Maslow on Health as Transcendence of Environment

"The danger that I see is the resurgence, in new and more sophisticated forms, of the old identification of psychological health with adjustment, adjustment to reality, adjustment to society, adjustment to other people. That is, the authentic or healthy person may be defined not in his own right, not in his autonomy, not by his own intra-psychic and non-environmental laws, not as different from the environment, independent of it or opposed to it..." (pg 168)

Notes on "The impact of music festival attendance on young people's psychological and social well-being"

 "I felt something that I hadn't really felt before and I've been chasing it ever since." (pg 169)

While the cognitive, emotional, psychological and cultural benefits of exposure to and participation in musical activities (such as playing, dancing, listening, etc.) are well documented and thoroughly researched, I've found little research into the benefits of music festival experiences. This article, released in Psychology of Music in 2010, provides a thorough investigation of the topic, and some additional quantitative data in support of the benefits of music festival attendance. While it's specific to young people, I posit that the impacts would be similar across age ranges.

So we know music is a good thing, and good for you. But what about the whole festival experience, the full immersion in a musical community context, paired with that?

Music festivals don't just contribute to 'a transitory state of subjective well-being' but also become 'party of the way a person defines themselves' (pg 169). 

The study focused on four facets of a music festival experience: the music experience, the festival experience, the social experience, and the separation experience.

As for the music experience, which affords participants 'unstructured and informal music learning':

"Rather than being passive recievers of music, participants felt they played a central role in the music experience" (pg 168)

The festival experience:

"The experience was seen to start weeks, even months before the festival commenced. The anticipation and preparation contributed to a gradual build-up of excitement, and when the festival was over the cycle started again, with anticipation of the next festival" (pg 169)

"The sheer enjoyment of festival participation was expressed strongly by participants and was so satisfying that they were continually drawn back to repeat the experience." (pg 169)

The social experience:

"Sharing the same taste in music led to more positive appraisals of others and the desire to befriend them" (pg 170)

"...once a group is formed, its members benefit. They attain the emotional gratifications of belonging to an 'elite' group that they themselves define as distinct from other groups" (pg 171).

The separation experience:

"By providing a new social context that was removed from the expectations and routines of everyday life, it allowed participants to reflect and re-evaluate their own self-understanding and self-acceptance" (pg 172).

Similar to my survey results, this study found that many of their participants would endorse the statement that "I feel happier with myself as a person", "I feel I have grown/developed as a person" (pg. 177).

So, at least for young people (aged 18-23), festivals can provide a crucial space for self-development and exploration. As the article concludes, "for some participants the music festival experience was not only meaningful in itself, but gave meaning to the rest of their lives" (pg 178).

In summary: getting away from everyday life and routines and off to a music festival, is, more often than not, really good for people and their lives.

Rough Conceptual Modeling: An attempt to map out the music festival 'microcycle'

I've been playing with conceptual diagramming my understanding of what attending a music festival really means - that is, what it usually requires in terms of logistical processes, and the behaviors and general activity phases that most audience members move through each time they attend a music festival. In addition to exploring the effects of music festival experiences on people, both in terms of internal perceptions of the self, and external perceptions of the world at large, and how these could be coordinated through some kind of service proposition, I've been trying to look at the procedural cycles both on a micro, and macro level, that any individual must go through in order to attend whichever music festival they choose. 

Here's a rough model of what I'd call the 'music festival activity microcycle' that characterizes the experience of attending each music festival. I believe it holds even if people choose to attend music festivals throughout their life, and perhaps into more advanced life stages than I'd initially considered.

My survey data suggested that a lot of music festival fans were interested in participating in music festivals until they were no longer physically able. This raises lots of interesting questions about what an aging festival audience needs or wants, or what the music festival of the future might actually look like, or be for its audience members.

Given the idea of long-term engagement with many (or at least a few) music festivals, whether this means repeat attendance of the same festivals or attending new ones, this process would become rote as a festival attendee becomes an expert, yet would be repeated over and over throughout an individual's life. I'm also interested in the relationship between the high levels of quantifiable, tangible, personal investment are that are required to attend any music festival (e.g. energy, money, planning, etc.), and the largely intangible, nearly unquantifiable return on this investment. Frequent traveling for music festivals is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, as an act of highly-motivated, pure, high-value experience seeking.

Positive festival review, from local government perspective: TommorrowWorld Comment from Comm. Pitts at BOC Meeting

Notes on Abraham Maslow's Toward A Psychology of Being

Maslow's analysis of peak experience meshes well with the descriptions of great experiences at music festivals, which I had corroborated by the information in my survey. I've pulled a few quotes from his work which echo the sentiments I saw in the responses to my survey on music festival experiences below.

The huge number of people who suggested that they *do* feel more positive, confident, inspired, open and accepting of others after a music festival seems to parallel Maslow's descriptions of the healthiest states of being and cognition (the highest moments of which are peaks - or peak experiences). I argue that a good music festival experience is akin, or simply is, one arena in which many people may simultaneously share a peak life experience.

On the aftereffects of peak experiences:

"The person is more apt to feel that life in general is worth while, even if it usually drab, pedestrian, painful or ungratifying, since beauty, excitement, honesty, play, goodness truth and meaningfulness have been demonstrated to him to exist." (pg.95)

"The peak experience is felt as a self-validating, self-justifying moment which carries its own intrinsic value with it.
....
The contrast is very sharp with the ordinary experiences of life, especially in the West" (pg. 75)

Maslow writes further about how in our daily lives and behaviors, nearly everything we do "is done for the sake of some further goal, in order to achieve something else." (pg 75). It seems to me that the ideal music festival experience is its own goal, and usually not pursued by individuals and audiences for any reason other than to have the experience of being there (and the music, of course!). The goal is the experience, and the experience of living and being at a music festival, unwinding in real-time, is the goal. Seen this way, the behaviors indulged in by participants at a music festival are not necessarily goal-oriented as they are undertaken in the span of time in which a person may be actually 'living' in a goal state.

I think this is a unique and powerful thing. Maslow continues to describe the elements and attributes of a highly actualized person, or the Cognition of Being (he calls it B-cognition) and the cognitive processes he sees as the highest health and goal for humans in general. People in B-cognitive states are "universally tolerant, B-amused and B-accepting". (These sound a lot like the things people said over and over about changes in perception and outlook after a music festival in my survey.)

"There seems to be a kind of dynamic parallelism... here between the inner and the outer. That is to say that as the essential Being of the world is perceived by the person, so as does he concurrently come close to his own Being (...to being more perfectly himself). ... this thereby enables him more easily to see the B-values in the world. A he becomes more unified, he tends to be able to see more unity in the world." (pg 90)

He also writes about the maturity of the highly actualized individual; but that this maturity is unique in the following sense: "they were very mature ...at the same time, also childish. I called it "healthy childishness," a second naivete".

And this seems to suggest why a good music festival experience, with all its challenges and novelty, can actually inspire confidence: "Only the flexibly creative person can really manage [the] future, only the one who can face novelty with confidence and without fear." (pg 15)

Finally, this seems to speak to the high numbers of people who reported 'wanting to be a better person' or 'share the positivity' after a music festival experience; "Very often this feeling of gratitude is expressed or leads to an all-embracing love for everybody and everything, to a perception of the world as beautiful, and good, often to an impulse to do something good for the world, an eagerness to repay, even a sense of obligation" (pg 107).

Music technology and live shows

"The popularity of music festivals, such as San Francisco's Outside Lands or the upcoming Treasure Island Music Festival this month, directly parallels the rise of the Internet, said Kevin Arnold of San Francisco-based Noise Pop Industries, a speaker at Tuesday's event.

The reason is the Internet democratized access to these smaller bands," he said.
Festivals have also become more tech-centric, particularly with their tie-in to hackathons, where developers create apps to use at the festival. Outside Lands hosted its first-ever hackathon in August just days before the festival.

But Arnold said it isn't all about the apps; many fans use "music sherpas" -- a friend or fellow concertgoer -- to guide them from stage to stage to find their favorite bands.

"The fan-to-fan, human connection is still what matters," Arnold said."
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24217223/sf-music-tech-event-plays-up-importance-live

Why a festival, more so than an iPod?

"Music," say Cross, "is above all a communication system for the creation and maintenance of social relationships. A body of people listening to one piece of music is able to have both the same experience – that of the group – and each one a unique experience – that of the individual. But their shared affiliation with one rhythm acts as a kind of social glue."

Robertson agrees. "Wellbeing – a healthy sense of oneself, and pleasure in oneself – comes when your internal identity is broadly congruent with that which you find outside," he says. "I believe this is a profound model of healthiness, and so it's not surprising that we would seek out shared experience that matches our own internal aesthetic." "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3656733/Can-music-make-us-happy.html

And now for something completely different...

Decided to take a less scientific but fun approach to all the long responses I got to the survey, and threw them into a word frequency analysis word-cloud maker.  This is mostly for fun, but why not!

So, according to the world cloud:

What inspired people to go to their first festival?

 What do we remember most vividly about a festival experience? 

Do we feel different about life after a music festival?

Music festival survey anaylsis, continued!

1) Where were all these people from?

So, who are these over three hundred people (309 now!) who took my music festival experience survey?

I got responses from 40 states across the United States, and even from five countries abroad. (Hello to my fourteen respondents from Canada, and another handful from Germany, the UK, Australia and Thailand!).

Responses came from the following states:

2) How many music festivals have they attended in the last year? 

I've been looking through the open-ended, longer written responses people generously provided and identifying recurring themes, and coding certain common sentiments so I can measure how frequently certain subjects or ideas are mentioned in response to my prompts. Here's are some of the interesting things I've learned so far.

3) How old were they?

 
4) What usually brings people to their first music festival? 

Of the responses to this question, 55% of respondents mentioned music, 36% mentioned their close friends and family members convincing them to go (and the great festival stories they heard from them!), 28% mentioned the desire to have the experience, 13% mentioned the logistical concerns (having enough money for tickets and time to travel, etc.), and 8% mentioned the desire to travel.

5) Do people feel differently about life after attending music festivals, or feel that their outlook has changed in anyway?

70% of the responses mentioned a long-lasting positive change in their outlook or life after attending a music festival. 11% reported no change in outlook, and 9% reported a positive change, but not a lasting change.  4% of the responses mentioned being more inspired in general after a music festival (usually to make or play more music or art), and even fewer mentioned negative experiences (1%).

There seem to be two main ways that people's perceptions shift after a good music festival experience (and some even mentioned unpleasant or less-awesome music festival experiences that resulted in an overall good impact on their lives). People's perceptions of themselves change for the better, as does their perception of other people. A few people even mentioned overcoming intense personal issues, life crises or coming out of depression, quitting their jobs or changing their careers, just because of a positive music festival experience.

Common sentiments mentioned about self-perception after a music festival were the following:

• I know myself better after a music festival
• I am a happier / kinder person after a festival
• I am more confident / less fearful / less worried
• I am energized / inspired
• I want to be a better person
• I appreciate the little things in life more
• I am inspired to listen to / play more music 

Common feelings about other people, or external perceptions of the world were:

• I am more open / more social / more friendly after a music festival (Note: This was mentioned quite frequently.)
• I am less judgmental of other people
• I have more faith in humanity / other people
• I am more bonded with my partner / family / friends
• I take the positivity I feel after a festival and try to apply it in my daily life (!!)

Naturally, a few negative scenarios were mentioned, including frustration with reentry to daily life, questioning reality, and feeling down about society as a whole - but no major negative effects were mentioned.

6) Are we interested in stopping attending attending music festivals at some point in the future?

78% of those surveyed responded with a resounding "NO!". "Not until my body fails me" was a common sentiment. Only 5% assumed or asserted that yes, they would definitely stop attending music festivals at some point. Starting a family and age-related discomforts were the main reasons cited, but quite a few people mentioned having a desire to bring their current (or future) children to music festivals.

Initial survey review: "What inspired you to attend your first festival?"

Current survey total: 295 responses!

Interesting initial takeaways:

By and large, it's people's friends ('best friends'), families, and good stories that get people to go to music festivals for the first time. The most frequently mentioned specific band that influenced people to attend their first festival was *drumroll please*....Radiohead. Second highest response was of course, the Grateful Dead.

Apparently convenience (their being local) and affordability are also major reasons people went to their first festival. Given how expensive festivals are getting, hopefully this isn't a reason of the past!

Here's a snapshot of the themes emerging from the survey results on first festival experiences:

People (of course!), music & lineup, travel and location, experiential elements & social culture, logistics and finances, and of course, other miscellaneous influences.

Currently listening to:

Survey update

285 responses and counting, and a whole lot of enthusiastic sharing (and some festival love, too)!

More to come. I've got more  data and information to dig through than I ever expected (which is awesome!). I know what I'll be doing for the next week...

Notes on Katja Battarbee and Ilpo Kokinen's Co-experience: User Experience as Interaction

Summary

Simply put; many of our experiences as human beings a co-created with other people. User experience research often overlooks that simple fact.  Fundamentally, sharing an experience can make it more meaningful. The act of discussing or even arguing over whether an experience is meaningful allows for better interpretation and even reinterpretation - which can provide a basis for mutual relationships between people, even if just for a moment. Of course, sharing experiences, especially emotionally intense ones, is risky, and can incite all kinds of reactions from other people, from sympathy to laughter. People are inherently creative when they come together and interact, and given any product or situation, will actively adapt and make it their own. User experiences created with other people are fundamentally different than those created alone.

Relevant Quotes

"People as individuals depend on others for all that makes them truly human." (pg 7)

"Lifting up experiences: Often subconscious experience migrates to become 'an experience' through a social process." (pg 8)

"When people act together, they come to create unpredictable situations where they must respond to each other's actions creatively." (pg 9)

"Experience is symbolization: what people select from experience to be shared with others." (pg 10)

"In presenting things as 'an experience', they invite others to join in." (pg 10)

"...an eagerly waited holiday trip to Paris is a complex experience that may last for weeks and contain many larger an smaller, sometimes contradictory elements" (pg 10).

"When experiencing strong emotions, the process of symbolisation requires more effort." (pg 11)

"Social interaction is to the experiences of the individual the same as a sudden jolt of nitroglycerine: it makes things happen." (pg 15)

Brainstorming Round 1

Today I went through several brainstorming activities. I thought about my knowledge gaps surrounding music festival experiences. What don't I know, and what don't I understand - about people, their music festival needs and wants, and the events themselves? I thought of as many things as I could, and then sorted them by timeframe - whether they are about the experience before a festival, during an event, or the aftermath.

Then I wrote down every possible idea I've had so far for things that festivals could do for audience members that would be awesome that don't exist yet. These are all things that would excite me, as a veteran music festival-goer.

I've also been re-reviewing all the reading I've done, including books, academic articles and news stories about festivals for gems of information that seem relevant to improving festival experiences for audiences. I also reviewed my notes from SXSW earlier this year.

For instance, what are the things that inherently make people happy? How do people co-produce their own experiences? What are the elements of peak experience that could map on to music festival experience?  My next step will be to take inventory of all the ways festival promoters and events can connect with or support their audiences.

My kitchen has turned into thesis central.

Great Quotes about Music Festivals

"Even before we looked at it, it hit us. We wanted it to be far. So you surrender. So you can’t leave your house and see a couple bands and be back home that night. We want you to go out there, get tired, and curse the show by Sunday afternoon. That sunset, and that whole feeling of Coachella hits you." - Paul Tollett
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/touring/1083099/paul-tollett-goldenvoice-team-on-the-struggle-and-ultimate-success

"Festivals bring new generations into the music fold, they place families and CEOs into the ranks shoulder to shoulder with hopeless dreamers and hippy drifters. They’re either the best or they’re the worst, and since I don’t have to choose, I guess I won’t. But what is certain is the ten year lease on the festival grounds. Firefly will be in Dover next year - so will all the fans, all the bands and all the hype. Whether the motivation behind it is as bleak as the bottom dollar or solely focused on the captivating power of live music is yet to be seen, but it might as well be enjoyed." - Raymond Lee
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/173012-examining-a-new-music-festival-firefly-2013/

"They used to be about leaving the social snobberies and constraints of everyday life at the gate. The mud and general madness was a great social leveller. Banker or buddhist, everyone was in it together. Now many are sponsored by big corporate brands and money can buy you luxury unimaginable years ago - tipi with shower and double bed for £3,000 anyone?
...
"If your sub culture sets you apart, once everyone else joins in it no longer makes you different. You're just normal."

But researchers say one thing has not changed and spans the divides - the temporary escape from the mundane routine of everyday life.

"Young people like festivals to experience the freedom of youth and their own new music, and older people like them too, trying to remember their own youth, not least by seeing their favourite bands reforming," says McKay.

"And that kind of child-like freedom is a great part of the promise of any festival: outdoors, open air, camping in the countryside, music and other arts, with a group of like-minded people, seeking relaxation or excess."

Put that way, it sounds so good." - Denise Winterman
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8692313.stm  

"Right about here it’d be easy to crack about the true meaning of rock ‘n’ roll or whatnot. But the festival scene is its own beast. Promoters may think of their events as the spiritual descendents of Woodstock. It’s debatable whether the Aquarian Exposition was truly an historical inflection point of expanded consciousness, but it’s clear that the modern festival has perfected its formula, establishing a baseline level of competent organization while limiting spontaneity to the the occasional special appearance. A festival like Coachella is — like similar destination events such as Bonnaroo and even Burning Man — its own justification now. You go to say you’ve been. Speculating on the next year’s Coachella lineup is a cottage industry at this point, but no matter who makes the cut, the general contours will remain: a healthy mix of indie rock, art-pop, EDM, and hip-hop. Not buying a pass to a Björk-less Coachella would be like avoiding a buffet because it lacks chiles rellenos.

Still, an all-buffet diet is no way to live. Coachella and its like offer a particular experience: a weekend with friends beset on all sides by music, a chance to gorge on buzz and revel in nostalgia. Comparing it to the a la carte option of individual shows isn’t remotely fair. A club gig puts you closer to the mechanisms. Band members are much more likely to run the merch table or watch the other acts from the floor. Interactions between audience and performers is closer to a conversation than a commencement address. Brand presence is mostly limited to the gear. There’s less pressure to focus on the hits. And underrepresented styles can thrive. (It’s also in the price range of way more people.) The nature of the festival is more: more choice, more spectacle, more people. Playing and attending Coachella are mutually-reinforcing validations. The scale confers importance; the crowds confer worthiness. Eighty thousand people can’t be wrong." - Brad Shoup
http://www.stereogum.com/1245041/deconstructing-coachella-and-the-music-festival-industry/top-stories/lead-story/

 “But according to research reported in the New York Times, there's one catch to those relaxing dream holidays: they don't actually leave us any happier afterwards. In single-minded pursuit of peace and quiet, we miss out on noisy, disruptive joy.

Peak moments don't require pristine beaches. They can emerge from cramped, deplorable conditions; just think of your favorite concert. I know mine. I camped in ankle-deep mud for three days at the UK's Glastonbury Festival with Finnish and Japanese tentmates, and by the time the headliners played, we had run out of soap, common language and food other than dried octopus. After enduring mediocre opening bands to stake out a spot, our view was suddenly eclipsed by tall late-comers.

Then, an oooooooOOOOOOOH! rippled through the crowd. A bass line thumped; a thousand craning necks relaxed into a groove. A stranger lifted me so I could see the stage. In my mouth, the octopus jerky turned from salty to sweet. We became mighty, a tide of exultation rolling over the damp, British countryside. Within hours, we would retreat to our separate shores - but at that moment, we were rolling deep with strangers.” - Alison Bing
http://www.fest300.com/magazine/the-joy-of-the-crowd#sthash.1XVgg6D0.dpuf


"It was like a throwback to the old days, with so many different groups of people coming together for three days of music on a farm in the middle of nowhere. You felt like you were a part of something bigger than yourself, but it wasn’t something that pushed on you. It just happened. I have never felt such positive energy at a music festival before."

 http://whiteraverrafting.com/community-at-counterpoint-makes-best-festival-experience-2012/2012/10/05/#ixzz2gX7WzKZ6

Music Festival User Experience Design (MFUXD) Reading List

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience", New York: Harper & Row,1990.

Turino, Thomas, “Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation”, University Of Chicago Press, 2008.

Campbell, Richard Bret, "A Sense of place: Examining music-based tourism and its implications in destination venue placement". UNLV Theses/Dissertations/Professional Papers/Capstones. Paper 1142, 2011.

Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a psychology of being. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.

Battarbee, Katja and Koskinen, Ilpo, "Co-experience: User Experience as Interaction". CoDesign, Vol.1, No.1, March 2005, 5-18.

Packer, Jan and Ballantyne, Julie. The Impact of Music Festival Attendance on Young People’s Psychological and Social Well-being. Psychology of Music, 39(2) 164–181, 2011.

Dispenza, Joseph, “The Way of the Traveler: Making Every Trip a Journey of Self-Discovery”, Avalon Travel Publishing, 2002. 

To do:

Allen, Johnny, “Festival and Special Event Management”, Wiley, 2008.  

Leach, D. (1962). Meaning and correlates of peak experience. Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida