Most would call Apple’s iPod and other similar personal digital audio players ‘handy little appliances.’ But at least one researcher is exploring how these devices are really tools for consumers to reshape time, mood, and personal space. BBC News offers this article on the subject, which has also popped up in recent issues of the New York Times and elsewhere.
According to Dr. Michael Bull, who has interviewed lots of digital personal audio device users, these portable cocoons of music have become tools for reclaiming choice in an environment that barrages us all with outside messages.
‘They construct their moods, they re-make the time of their day,’ says Dr Bull., ‘It’s a much more active process even though it’s dependent on the machinery. Choice is the key factor, he says. By choosing the music, you reclaim some of the world — it’s no longer dominated by messages pointed at you.
The difference between these devices and their older, Walkman-type players is that users can carry their entire music library with them, and select from among 10,000 or so audio files in building a personal soundtrack (I had another weblog on this topic back in February).
In a quote that could apply to any emergent technology (from the compact disc to the cantilever in architecture):
Digital players in general and the iPod in particular are having a dramatic effect on the way people behave, he says.
When new technologies and ideas interact with their users, there are always fascinating effects that nobody can predict. The advent of the printing press, according to some scholars, reshaped the nature of childhood as the need for literacy created the formalized education system. The introduction of the telephone encouraged the growth of central cities and skyscrapers, as manufacturing managers could suddenly be miles away from their factories and closer to their clients. The innovations and aesthetics of constructed space have influenced form and style in musical composition and performance (think of the co-evolution of cavernous cathedrals and echoing, ethereal choral music in the 16th century, for example).
This is important stuff for arts managers, believe it or not, because the technologies evolving over the past decade are reshaping our audiences’ relationship with music, media, language, and visual space. We can’t possibly know where such changes will lead us, but we can begin to explore how they might influence our current management, marketing, education, outreach, and community engagement.
Commercial entertainment is already working on it, as shown by this recent effort in instant recording of live performance, and similar efforts by Clear Channel last year.
Arts organizations are driven and defined, in part, by the relationship their audiences choose and prefer with their specific art form (classical music, film, jazz, and so on). Since that relationship is shifting, we had best be aware of it.
