Understanding Interpretation, Informing Composition: audience involvement in aesthetic result

What is it about?

This paper summarises a research project which investigated how a greater understanding of audience interpretation might be beneficial to the compositional process. Audiences were encouraged to record their experiences of electroacoustic audiovisual works and the findings used to inform the evaluation of theoretical ideas. Findings from an initial phase of testing were also used to inform a novel composition, which became the object of testing for the second phase. Results from the second phase were used to modify the novel composition to challenge the findings from the first two phases. These compositional assumptions were then evaluated in light of audience responses from the third phase of the testing. This iterative process of triangulation allowed the research to bring together theoretical ideas, empirical and creative practice research methodologies. A full exposition of the project is available in Hill, A (2013) Interpreting Electroacoustic Audio-visual Music. PhD Thesis, De Montfort University. [Available Online: https://www.dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/9898]

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Why is it important?

The integration of empirical and practice research methodologies presents a valuable model for future studies, facilitating interdisciplinary perspectives and evaluating theoretical ideas with practical data collection.