From Sound to Senses: How New Generation Music Festivals Have Become the Sites of Multisensorial Experiences (forthcoming July 2023)

by Burcu Yasin

This probe investigates how new generation electronic music festivals become multi-sensorial sites for the audiences through the case of MUTEK, an electronic music and digital art festival held annually in Montreal. 

Launched in 2000, MUTEK has become through the years a hub not only for electronic music but also for technology, digital arts and sound art by constantly adapting itself to trends within contemporary digital creative industries. Within the emerging popularity of sensory design practices and their reflection in the art scene, MUTEK has brought the sensorial dimension into the festival site by employing unusual stage settings, visual elements, unique sonic worlds and extensive light design. Fully integrated into a new generation of music festivals, it mirrors significant shifts in the art world while challenging the traditional festival format. In doing so, MUTEK has become a site where art forms and design practices conjure to create a whole new sensorial atmosphere. 

MUTEK indeed constitutes its atmosphere through other media; such as its official website, flyers and posters to radiate the festival atmosphere through colour choices which remind of the light shows during the performances, minimal fonts, and web interface echoing the futuristic design models with an emphasis on sustainability. From this angle, while MUTEK promises a unique multisensorial experience during the festival, it also presents a lifestyle to its audience through its futuristic, sustainable, and experiential manifestations via digital and material media. By doing so, it creates strong ties with its audience, underlying that they share musical tastes and, even more crucially, lifestyles.

In this project, I will be analyzing how MUTEK creates multisensorial experiences through the use of light, stage-setting, space, and visual elements in the festival site to let its audience to experience a unique atmosphere. In addition to this, I will also be focusing on how MUTEK utilizes different media to extend this experience beyond the festival site.

The project aims at answering the following questions: a) How are new generation music festivals turning into multisensorial sites? b) How does this multisensorial site has been generated ? c) How are these atmospheres carried through other media? 

The data will be obtained through sensory ethnography methods. Based on the embodied research methods and sensory embodied reflexivity, I will be using my own body as an instrument to observe the live performances. After each performance, I will be free drawing and writing my observations without using any eraser to be able to create a cognitive map of my own experience.  The data will be supported with the interviews that I will be conducting with the festival organizers.

While analyzing the collected material, I will be drawing on the literature on the concept of atmospheres (Böhme, 2017; Abels, 2020; Friedel, 2020; Bille, 2019, Anderson, 2009), sensory anthropology (Howes, 2005), popular music studies (van Veen, 2017; Broudehoux and Bonin 2020) and sensory design and marketing. The project will be presented as a written format in a digital platform along with short videos and photographs from the events. 

Bibliography

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