‘The game is on!’ Eventness at a distance at a livestream concert during lockdown

Abstract

In many countries the lockdown measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic forbade social gatherings, including for performing arts. Numerous artists developed projects, often attempting to reach audiences in cyberspace. We offer an ethnographic study of such a project: a jazz concert played live for a particular audience, who attended it from home. We seek to understand how musicians, audience, and the material setting made it possible to engage with music in a way that gave these moments a particular density. What made this experience meaningful, we argue, was the eventness of the performance: the ‘game was on’, happening in the moment, in the unpredictable, risky interactions between musicians, and with the ‘push of the audience’ listening to the gig in real time. The eventness of this online concert was created in such a way it made possible a collective engagement with and through live music, notwithstanding the physical distance.

Evaluating Influencing Factors of Audiences’ Attitudes toward Virtual Concerts: Evidence from China

“…The emergence of virtual entertainment platforms has gained popularity as a new space for music events, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 1 , 2 ]. The definition of virtual concerts varies in the academic literature, such as livestream concerts [ 3 , 4 , 5 ], holographic concerts [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], and concerts requiring VR hardware [ 9 , 10 ]. In this study, a virtual concert is defined as a musical performance in which participants are projected into a digital virtual environment in the forms of virtual avatars [ 11 , 12 ].…”