massMobile: towards a flexible framework for large-scale participatory collaborations in live performances

Abstract

2013). massMobile: towards a exible framework for large-scale participatory collaborations in live performances.massMobile is a client-server system for large audience participation in live performances using mobile devices. It allows for rapid development, deployment and iterative experimentation in participatory design, while minimising technical and logistical overhead. It was designed to flexibly adapt to a variety of participatory performance needs and to a variety of performance venues. It allows for real-time bi-directional communication between performers and audiences utilising existing 3G, 4G or WiFi networks. Audience members access massMobile through a smartphone-optimised web application utilising common web standards. An offsite server passes data between the audience and the performer(s) and stores the data for later analysis. In this paper, we discuss the goals, design and implementation of the framework, and we describe several projects realised with massMobile.

Large-scale audience participation in live music using smartphones

“…massMobile (Weitzner, Freeman, Chen, & Garrett, 2013) was designed to be a flexible and scalable framework for audience participation. In massMobile, the audience uses a web app, therefore participation is not restricted to a specific platform.…”

“…Poème Numérique stands for a smartphone app as well as an interactive performance with the same name where audience members use the Poème Numérique app to participate. This was inspired by similar approaches using smartphones for large-scale audience participation such as massMobile (Weitzner et al, 2013) and Echobo (Lee & Freeman, 2013, May 27-30). Furthermore, we built on the technical concept to use ultrasound communication as in the Sense of Space (Hirabayashi and Eshima, 2015).…”

Interaction Topologies in Mobile-Based Situated Networked Music Systems

“…(1) A technical part based on web standards-the soundworks framework-for rapid prototyping of collective and interactive scenarios, similar systems have been described in [12][13][14]. (2) A theoretical part based on the concept of interaction topologies, aimed at describing and analysing such systems.…”

Large-scale music compositions and novel technology innovations – Summarizing the process of Voices of Umeå, an artistic research project

“…The Australian-based composers/researchers Cat Hope and Lindsay Vickery have been working with animated notation in their compositions, building their own Decibel Score Player and written articles on the subject (Hope, Vickery, 2010. Jason Freeman is another composer/researcher working with animated notation as well as aspects of participatory art in his projects (Freeman, 2008(Freeman, , 2010(Freeman, , 2013, not to forget the Icelandic composer collective S.L.A.T.U.R 6 which have worked with animated notation in several projects. From an educational and pedagogical perspective the composer and music teacher Shane Mc Kenna has used animated notation in his compositions as well as a pedagogical tool in school classes to encourage musical collaboration and ensemble performances (Mc Kenna, 2011).…”