An audience can take its form in many different ways. Especially today in the modern world we live in which is flooded with media and technology. You can be a part of an audience in the comfort of your own bed. However my audience experience was not nearly close to being in bed.
My First major and memorable audience experience was when i was 16 and attended an all ages music festival called Groovin the Moo in Maitland, my first of many. Festivals are amazing because it is an opportunity to see multiple artists perform live, surrounded by thousands of people who appreciate their work too. My five friends and I got a parent to drive us on the 3 hour trip. Everyone had been planning for this for a long time, outfits ordered months in advance, makeup planned and excitement growing and read for basically a big dress up dance party.
This audience experience was unlike a tv, youtube or movie audience which are often “dispersed and fragmented” (Middlemost, 2020) ; it was interactive and shared in unison all together in one spot experiencing a live performance at the same place and time. A festival audience can only be experienced if you are actually there.
Only negatives about a festival begins with the large crowds, because large crowds means lines for everything. Lines to the bathroom, for every food truck, lines for drinks and ofcourse lines for entry. The large crowds lead to a silent understanding of a set of ‘unspoken rules’. The adaptation of these unspoken rules corresponds with what type of audience you find yourself in , which keeps everyone happy. For example, at a movie theatre it is known to not be obnoxiously loud, like chewing loudly and talking. However at a festival these ‘rules’ differ greatly. This includes the importance of being self aware. Which means saying excuse me when trying to push through the masses in a desperate attempt to be closer to the stage as well as well as remembering personal space whilst dancing. Nobody wants a sweaty body jumping and trodding on them while enjoying music. Personally this does not take away from the utopian aspect surrounding music festivals.
My experience of being a part of an audience at this music festival was a shared experience of thousands of people, all a part of an audience watching some form of content. (Middlemost, 2020) Turnbull stated that, “members of the audience…may not only be consumers of the media text but also producers of their own media forms about that text” this refers to being an active audience or a “produser”, each person making sense of different performances and using media to be discriminatory and critical or , praiseful. “Some people believe and accept the message, others reject it using knowledge from their own experience or can use processes of logic or other rationales to criticise what is being said.” (Miller and Philo,2001) This furthermore describes how individuals may share an experience together, but take from it completely different ideas from that experience based off a multitude of factors.
References
Turnbull, S. ‘Imagining the Audience’ p 59-72 in Cunningham, S and Turnbull, S (eds) (2014) The Media and Communications in Australia, 4thEdition. Allen and Unwin. Viewed 19t April 2020
Miller and Philo. ‘Active Audience’ in slide share. Published 10 February 2012. Viewed 19 April 2020
Renee Middlemost. Lecture slides (2020)
Kyras blog 