Friday, October 4, 2013

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.


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