Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[announcer] People who are in the swing go for the compact new RCA
- Today we'll be talking about the rise of the record player
and how radio birthed the rock star as you know it
That fundamentally changed our cultures relationship with music
and why does that matter? Because VR and AR a brand new medium! What are we going to birth?
It's not going to be the rock star!
Only since the arrival of the phonograph have people had such a passive relationship to music.
Prior to the phonograph- and I mean all the way prior- all the way back to the beginning of history
before even recorded human history music was live.
You couldn't pop on a record or tune into 91.3 sense finality to hear a song.
If you wanted to be entertained, you'd listen to whoever was around, probably uncle junebug
playing the fiddle or your sister and neighbor singing a duet.
(singing) I don't want nobody ***' with me in these streets!
Before the phonograph, people with any shred of musical talent perform with their friends and family.
Then broadcast radio came along and changed everything!
Why listen to your stupid second cousin yodeling
when you could be listening to Elvis?
Radio, TV, music all those are broadcast media,
and that broadcast only goes one way.
The performer, well, performs
and the audience is a passive recipient.
The reason that we have rock stars is because of the broadcast medium.
American-style karaoke, unfortunately, has inherited much of that performative rock star attitude.
A single person stands on a stage and sings to the audience.
It is such a different feel.
Performance inherently is about doing well and even worse, being judged on how well you did.
the distinction couldn't be more stark.
The culture of performance has so invaded our concept of music
that the idea is singing in front of friends strikes terror in the heart of most Americans.
(screams)
It doesn't have to be this way.
VR can swing the pendulum back to music being experiential and participatory
instead of judgmental and performative.
Plenty of big rich rock bands are trying to figure out how to do a VR music experience.
(Kurt Cobain) I thought we were big rich rock band.
But as far as I know none of them have yet caused a viral moment.
There's plenty of room for experimentation,
no matter how much your budget or fame is.
Live concerts, you know, those ones in the real world-
they sound actually kind of crappy most of the time compared to your headphones.
(Unintelligible and off-key singing)
They overcharge for a Jack and Coke and make you stand in line to use the bathroom,
or even hang up your jacket! So why do we bother?
Because concerts are more intensely embodied experience than listening alone on your headphones.
They set your brain blazing with the over stimulation of light shows and thumping bass
and the press of the crowd dancing around next to you.
Live concerts are not trying to be headphones
and VR experiences cannot be weak copies of either live concerts,
or the audio fidelity of a headphone.
They have to take full advantage of the strengths of the medium
which means they have to know what VR is uniquely good at, and play to those strengths.
What can VR do with music that a live concert or headphones can never do?
The future of VR music isn't big rich rock bands making enhanced music videos.
It's a new generation of artists that get the best
out of both performance and participation with the possibilities this new medium affords us.
My provocation to you is to try to make music experiences which are participatory, creative, fun.
Today we talked about the shifts from making music
with your friends and family before the advent of broadcast media,
to the rise of the superstar, to now this moment where new frontiers can combine the best of both.
In the latest news, my co-conspirator and I are putting
together a quarterly meet up in San Francisco to talk about what it means to
use the entire body as the interface with digital experiences, not just the
fingers and thumbs on keyboards and controllers.
That's going to be coming up at the end of June.
We haven't figured out the exact date and venue yet,
but we'll be announcing that on the embodied reality Facebook group,
and also on my Twitter.
If you also believe that VR is capable of so much more than first-person shooters
and horror games and want to push the boundaries of that medium,
come hang out with us! See you next time, and hopefully in the meat space soon!
Till then, I'm Crystal Beasley and this is Embodied Reality.