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