For our third tweet seats event, we saw Propeller Theater Company’s Twelfth Night at Power Center.

UMS: Tell us a little about you. If you have an online presence you like to share publicly, please tell us the relevant websites or user names/handles.

Annette Smith: Independent thinker, small furry creature lover, amateur photographer, lifelong learner, automotive marketing executive. Proud graduate of Chicago and Michigan. Find me @bluepersiancat on Twitter.

Hannah Mahalak: My name is Hannah Mahalak. I go to Chelsea High School as a Senior and plan to attend Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee next year. Currently I am involved in the high-school show choir, Company C, and also the Varsity Swim Team. I am @ha_m24 on Twitter.

Nisreen Salka: My name is Nisreen Salka and I am a freshman at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, studying Business Administration (Marketing) with a minor in Screen Arts and Cultures. I enjoy photography, writing, reading, and socializing with friends. I am very passionate about everything I do, and throw my heart and soul into my every endeavor. I am @Nizzi_Salka on Twitter.

Jasmine Hentschel: My relationship with UMS started back in my sophomore year at U of M, when I started interning in the production department. It was one of the most enriching, enlightening, and greatest learning experiences not only of my undergraduate career, but of my entire life. I currently work for Cambridge Michigan Language Assessments making standardized English language tests, and I’m headed to U of M’s School of Information to study computational linguistics in the fall. @JasmineShuree on Twitter.

UMS: In one sentence, how would you describe your relationship with technology?

Annette Smith: Love/hate. Still remember my first computer and discovering the internet…I didn’t sleep for two weeks, it was like the door to a magical whole new world had opened to me, and I couldn’t get enough. I also fell in love the first time I saw a flat screen television, but was too practical to buy one at $12K. The “hate” part comes having to figure out how to work/use the new stuff, and oftentimes getting frustrated while I’m doing this.

Hannah Mahalak: I would say I am pretty tech-savvy. I have a smart phone, so I tend to keep up with the latest and greatest trends and news updates.

Nisreen Salka: I believe that technology is an essential part of daily life; I use my iPhone, laptop, and camera every day to finish academic work, schedule appointments, coordinate extracurricular activities, and keep in touch with friends that I haven’t seen in a while.

Jasmine Hentschel: I am wonderfully overwhelmed by the incredible knowledge and power that technological advances of recent decades have afforded people all over the world.

UMS: Why did you decide to participate in this project?

Annette Smith: As someone relatively new to Twitter, I want to take my tweet game to the next level. Blending Twitter with my love of the arts seems like a natural step. I am intrigued by the prospect of being able to share my thoughts, reactions to the performance with others real-time. I’m also interested in how/if others respond. It may be crickets out there. We’ll see!

Hannah Mahalak: I am taking a class at Chelsea [High School] that is a mentorship course with UMS and getting a little taste of each department. I’m trying to get as much experience as I can in the music business and all that goes into it since that’s what I will be studying next year.

Nisreen Salka: Although I love technology as a whole, I have never jumped onto the social media bandwagon. I suppose I always thought it was some sort of fad, a waste of time, or a superficial way to gather information and/or keep in touch. It has recently dawned on me, however, that maybe social media has some merit, and I decided it was about time that I tried it. I want to see if it would really interfere with my life in a negative way, or actually improve my understanding of the world around me in the same way the rest of technology does. I would also like to see the impact it has on my understanding of the performance.

Jasmine Hentschel: I think UMS is an incredible organization that really brings a great deal of phenomenal art and culture to the vibrant city of Ann Arbor. Having worked as an intern for several years in the production department, I’ve been to dozens and dozens of UMS shows and I thought this would be an exciting new way to get involved. I am very curious to see how it feels to be engaged in the performance in a totally different way.

UMS: To you, what does it mean to “be present” during a performance or another arts experience?

Annette Smith: This is a tough one to put in words, but to me I think this means to be engaged in the artistic experience with my heart as well as my mind. When I’m “present”, I am 100% engaged. Every word/note/movement is heightened. Sometimes, I can actually feel the performance. To be honest, it’s easiest for me to “be present” at musical performances, where I close my eyes, and just focus on the sounds and how they make me feel. And when I finally feel that first frisson, I know I’m there.

Hannah Mahalak: To “Be Present” is a lot more than just sitting in the audience. I believe that you need to try and look for a deeper meaning to each story the performer is trying to convey. The more you invest into the performance the more you can get out of it.

Nisreen Salka: Being present in a performance means watching the performance attentively, understanding what is happening on stage, and connecting with the performers themselves.

Jasmine Hentschel: Being “present” is a matter of being engaged in a performance and giving it all of your consideration and attention, regardless of your preconceived notions and expectations of what it might be. It’s about not only noticing the little things, including all of the time and effort that gets put into every aspect of a performance, but also how it makes you feel before, during and after, and how you the art you’re watching ties into and relates to your personal experiences and those of all of mankind, whether it be theater, dance, music, or some other art form.

Meet the tweets.

How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance?

Annette Smith: I had to take my eyes off stage to tweet, so missed seeing a few things, but still felt like I heard everything. Tweet seat location – at back of the balcony – was not ideal. I could not really see facial expressions, costume details, etc. It’s a little tight and cramped having all of the tweeters (twitterers?) sitting side by side with the black boxes on our laps. Not unbearable, but there definitely wasn’t much space to move or stretch.

Hannah Mahalak: I really enjoyed the tweet seat experience. It made me pay attention to the play more and stay focused. It was a really unique and innovative way to get the word out about the performances and the UMS organization.

Nisreen Salka: Tweeting during the performance allowed me to express my opinions about the performance without speaking, and therefore without annoying others who were fully immersed in the play. It also encouraged me to think more about the purpose of the play, almost to critique it, rather than just follow the narrative. I was able to think more about the artistic merit of the performers, express those opinions to other interested viewers, and read their responses. Exposure to other viewers’ opinions also encouraged me to notice aspects of the performance that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Jasmine Hentschel: This was my first tweet seats experience, and it was definitely a little more difficult than I had expected. I think it would have been much different had it been a musical performance, because with music you can still hear and feel the music, even if you’re looking down at your phone. With Twelfth Night, I had difficulty getting adjusted to the language at first, and was completely unfamiliar with this particular play. I had a hard time trying to tweet during the performance at first because I had to completely stop paying attention and look down at my phone. It was a matter of removing myself from the very personal and introspective experience of watching, experiencing, and processing the play and changing my mindset to think about how to express my thoughts and opinions to a public audience. You have to not only carefully consider your thoughts, but also how to phrase them in a way that will make sense to other people. You have to use your brainpower to focus on minor things like spelling, grammar, and how to make your thoughts make sense that otherwise would never be crossing your mind during a performance.

Taylor Davis: I enjoyed that not only could I tweet my thoughts and experience, but through following the #umslobby hashtag I could communicate and interact by others.

Did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Annette Smith: I expected having to take my eyes off stage to tweet – no way around this. Since I was expecting this, it didn’t really bother me. The location of the seats was a surprise. To get the maximum visual experience of live theater, the back of the balcony is almost the last place you want to be. I didn’t expect the “tight” feeling from all of us sitting together. But we adjusted. After intermission, some of the tweet participants either exited or moved, freeing up space, and making it much more comfortable.

Nisreen Salka: I did expect to consider the performance more carefully, but I did not expect the strong effect of other viewers’ responses. At times, the tweets followed almost like a conversation, with questions and answers, and at others the tweets formed a list of comments. Both formats encouraged me to notice aspects of the performance I wouldn’t have otherwise, and to consider those elements when I tweeted again.

Hannah Mahalak: Yes, I expected to pay more attention to the play and get really involved in the play and each character.

Jasmine Hentschel: I definitely expected some sense of disconnect just considering the nature of the gig. However, like I said, I think I didn’t totally take into account the fact that doing this for a musical performance and a play is a totally different thing. It was a little harder than I anticipated, but I think it definitely would’ve been easier if I had been more familiar with the play ahead of time!

Taylor Davis: I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed interacting with others. At first, I was nervous that I didn’t really have anything that I considered “tweet worthy” and that my twitter followers would enjoy and interact with. However, as the performance progressed, I was able to see what other people were saying through following the #umslobby hashtag. Once I was able to read their tweets and see their interactions, I tailored my tweets to join in the conversation.

What I found the most surprising was that I had two friends text me that the next time I go to a UMS event they want to come with. I also had someone respond to my tweet asking where I was, which is kind of a cool grassroots and authentic way that UMS can further their marketing.

Curious to try it? Sign up.

For our second tweet seats event, we saw Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán in Hill Auditorium

Meet the participants. 

UMS: Tell us a little about you. If you have an online presence you like to share publicly, please tell us the relevant websites or user names/handles.

Matt Landry: I am a K-12 certified music teacher, a University of Michigan graduate, Detroit Symphony Orchestra intern, and saxophonist of the Akropolis Reed Quintet, a five-time national prize-winning classical music ensemble. I tweet from @akropolis5tet, and I help manage the ensemble’s website: www.akropolisquintet.com.

Jared Rawlings: I am a process-centered innovative teacher, and an emerging researcher. I tweet @Jared_Rawlings and my website is: www.jaredrawlings.com.

UMS: In one sentence, how would you describe your relationship with technology?

Matt Landry: I have a love/hate relationship with technology, enjoying its contribution to bettering life while wondering if it is making humans less human.

Jared Rawlings: My relationship with technology is necessary in order to build my personal/professional learning network.

UMS: Why did you decide to participate in this project?

Matt Landry: I decided to participate in order to further deepen this relationship. I wonder if being engaged electronically in a live performance will enhance or detract from the beauty on stage.

Jared Rawlings: I am always looking for new ways to include professional development – on demand.

UMS: To you, what does it mean to “be present” during a performance or another arts experience?

Matt Landry: To be “present” at a performance one must consider what the event will be remembered as. One must comprehend the magnitude of the live performance, clear the mind to listen and/or view, and have a perspective of the event while it is occurring. Looking back on events and their personal significance is important, but doing so at the time of the performance, to me, is being “present.”

Jared Rawlings: Being present means it’s a way of capturing the “lived experience” of the concert goer.  Also, given the temporal nature of music, theatre, and dance the tweet seats project is a way of focusing in on this phenomenon that is exclusive to live arts in Ann Arbor.

Meet the tweets.

UMS: How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance; did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Matt Landry:

Jared Rawlings:

Curious about live tweeting during a performance? Sign up.

Welcome to winter’s first tweet seats event: Gabriel Kahane & yMusic on Janury 17 (they perform again on January 18!).

Meet the participants.

UMS: Tell us a little about you. If you have an online presence you like to share publically, please tell us the relevant websites or user names/handles.

Corey Smith: I am a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in Music Composition. I’m a composer, but also a poet and performance artist. I tweet @Corey_D_Smith and if I ever actually get around to it, I’m starting up a blog at coreysmithmusic.tumblr.com.

Hannah Weiner: I’m a junior studying English and Philosophy, an editorial intern for UMS, and I’m about to begin writing an Honors thesis on the relationship between poetry and hip-hop. I’ve written concert and album reviews for a couple publications on campus, most recently: arts.umich.edu/seen. I have a casual music blog where I post about new music: http://whateverneveramen.tumblr.com/

Cody Takacs: I am a recent graduate of the School of Music earning my BM in Double Bass Performance. I appear frequently as a soloist specializing in new music with performances ranging from the University of Michigan’s Collage Concert to Carnegie Hall. As an educator, I have been the double bass instructor for Skyline High School’s orchestra and chamber music coach for Michigan Bass Bash.

UMS: In one sentence, how would you describe your relationship with technology?

Corey Smith: From the video games I played as a kid to the notation software I use to write music, technology has impacted almost every area of my life, for better or for worse. I’ve grown up with it and I am excited by it, thrilled at how it can expand communication, information, art, and the world.

Hannah Weiner: I don’t hate technology, but I have a more intimate relationship with people (and things) when technology is left out of the equation.

Cody Takacs: I use technology to build and maintain a strong musical network and also to share and express my musical ideas.

UMS: Why did you decide to participate in this project?

Corey Smith: I’m terribly interested in the capacity for social media to enhance an artistic experience and I’m particularly captured by the possibilities offered by Twitter. It’s brief, powerful, and (perhaps most importantly) exists in real time, allowing for a democratic and real dialogue to occur while the performance is happening. When I heard that UMS was opening up the tweet seats, I just knew I had to apply.

Hannah Weiner: In a weird way, broadcasting my immediate reactions might make me appreciate the performance more than I would if I didn’t have to think about what messages I was trying to send out. I’m curious how Twitter will affect my experience with live music.

Cody Takacs: As I mentioned in the second question, I like to use technology to share and express my musical thoughts and ideas. I feel that the Tweet Seats project would allow me a great opportunity to relay my thoughts and ideas to my musical network and even public at large.

UMS: To you, what does it mean to “be present” during a performance or another arts experience?

Corey Smith: Presence for me is pursuit of a state of higher awareness. It is complete and total engagement with the moment in hope that I forget about my body for a second, and become subsumed in the artistic present. It means physical, emotional, and intellectual engagement with the experience in the hope that I can touch the sublime.

Hannah Weiner: I think it’s pretty simple – being alert and attuned to the messages that the artist is trying to send you. Mostly just being aware of how a performance makes you feel, or what it makes you think, and then having a conversation with yourself (or others) about why and how the artist does that.

Cody Takacs: To be “present” at a performance to me means 1) that the listener is physically present and 2) that they are mentally experiencing the performance on one or a combination of any of Aaron Copland’s three planes of listening that find best suiting for their own listening experience (the sensual, expressive, and sheerly musical planes).

Meet the tweets.

UMS: How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance?

Corey Smith: There was a certain level of detached concentration that the tweet seats demanded. I was engaged with the music at a very cognitive level, always ready to find something else to notice and then tweet about. It certainly allowed me to stay alert and in a constant state of analysis, but perhaps didn’t let me become too emotionally engaged in the performance.

Cody Takacs: From a listening standpoint, I feel that tweeting didn’t really change the way I listened or payed attention during the performance. This is the type of performance I’d normally be intrigued with all the details of what’s happening in the music and on stage rather than simply being present at a performance, sitting back, and relaxing to it. If anything, sometimes I felt obligated to tweet, and tweeted for the sake of tweeting something. Overall, I did really enjoy the experience because I was able to share my thoughts on the performance immediately when I had them.

Hannah Weiner: Tweeting made me more self-conscious of my role as an audience member. I felt like I was constantly asking the question of “What should I be doing?”, so tweeting forced me to decide what parts of the concert I was going to acknowledge and focus on. Since the other two people in the tweet seats study music, I realized if I was going to broadcast any of my musical knowledge, it would pale in comparison to their analysis. I instead found myself enjoying what I knew about the concert – Kahane’s references to contemporary poets, his lyrics, etc.

UMS: Did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Cody Takacs: For the most part, this is how I expected my Tweet Seat experience to go. In general, Tweet Seats is a wonderful experience that I look forward to participating in in upcoming concerts!

Corey Smith: It was certainly surprising! But it’s worth noting that the performance was no less fantastic because I stayed in a particular head space. Tweeting forced me to stay engaged in a very analytic way, but there was so much to enjoy that the I really don’t think I lost very much at all! Although I was ready to be away from my phone for a while after the show…

Hannah Weiner: I had a feeling tweeting would make me analyze the concert more, but I didn’t expect it to make me think about my role as an audience member. Usually, I listen to the music passively and don’t think much about why it’s making me feel a certain way. I assumed tweeting would force me to take an active role, but I didn’t anticipate any step in between “passive member” and “active member.”

How do you feel about using technology during live performances?

This fall, we kicked off our pilot tweet seats program. Our participants came from all walks of life and all kinds of attitudes towards technology.

This winter, we’re opening tweet seats up to you, our audience. Are you curious about live tweeting during a performance? Fill out the form below if you’re interested in tweeting with UMS at one or more of the following performances:

Thursday, January 17: Gabriel Kahane & yMusic. Find out what happened.
Sunday, January 27: Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán Find out what happened.
Wednesday, February 20: Propeller: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Find out what happened.
Saturday, April 6: Esperanza Spalding
Saturday, April 20: Alison Balsom, trumpet & the Scottish Ensemble

As a reminder, tweet seats refer to seats in which tweeting is permitted during the performance. Only these tweet seats participants will be permitted to use devices in a special tweet seats section; for the rest of the audience, our standard device policy applies (“Turn off all cellphones and electronic devices”).

The UMS Tweet Seats project continued at Gilberto Gil’s performance on November 16.

Interview with participants to come. For now, enjoy the tweets:

Editor’s note: This season, UMS is launching a new pilot project: tweet seats. Read the complete project description and pre-interviews with participants

For the third tweet seats event, we saw the Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg:

This week’s participants:

• Paul Kitti, writer for iSPY magazine
• Mariah Cherem, Production Librarian at Ann Arbor District Library
• Mark Clague, U-M Associate Professor of Musicology and UMS Board member
• University of Michigan social media intern Taylor Davis

Read the whole tweet seats conversation.

UMS: How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance? Did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Mariah Cherem: At first, I did feel awkward tweeting. I felt that it took me out of the moment a bit, and removed me one more step as observing my experience in a different way. As the performance went on, there were times when I felt completely comfortable tweeting, and other times when I frankly just wanted to let go of that way of thinking because I didn’t have much (more) to say.

UMS: If you’ve participated in prior tweet seats, how did tweeting at this performance compare to tweeting at Aspen Santa Fe Ballet or at Rhinocéros?

Paul Kitti: Tweeting the orchestral performance had less of an effect on my experience than it did during the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and Rhinocéros. It was less interruptive and I felt it didn’t take away from the experience, because I didn’t need to have my attention on the stage the whole time. It felt natural because I’m used to being on social media while listening to music.

Mark Clague: As I could hear the orchestra even while looking at my cell phone’s screen, I found tweeting the concert less disturbing than tweeting for the dance and theatre events I had experimented with previously. The sold-out audience for Mariinsky also provided an exciting atmosphere. There was more Twitter dialogue at the intermission and afterwards from friends and current students–maybe a result of the larger seating capacity of Hill Auditorium and this added to the fun for me. There was also a bit of debate about the concert and which piece was played most expertly. Several people I know who didn’t tweet were clearly following the feed and commented to me about it face-to-face encounters the next day. I did receive one disapproving Tweet response from a follower who objected to my picture of the orchestra (assembling and not taken during the performance) as a violation of decorum. The august traditions of great music in our concert halls may prove discouraging to new media. In some ways, tweeting orchestra concerts seems like the perfect entry point for social-media enabled conversations to start (since one does not have to “see” the stage constantly to experience the art fully), but on the other hand the formal nature of our classical concert rituals might make it difficult to sanction change. I wonder if Hill wouldn’t be the perfect location for an intermission tweet exchange in which all patrons were encouraged to discuss a performance during the interval and/or immediately after a performance. Because of the large seating capacity, there are likely dozens with active Twitter accounts who might want to sign on. The screens showing the stage in the lobby could instead post the twitter feed to share the discussion more broadly.

UMS: How did you feel about tweeting in Hill Auditorium?

Paul Kitti: Because I was tweeting in Hill Auditorium, I was seated in the very back row of the balcony. The place is beautiful and I got to take it all in from this perspective. I felt a considerable distance from the performance, however, and – added to the fact that I was tweeting and relaying information to the outside world – it kind of put me in suspension rather than feeling connected to the music.

Mariah Cherem: Hill is a gorgeous venue – from both a visual and auditory standpoint. It was great to be able to hear so well even in the very back corner row. I wish that I had been able to take my phone out of the box to capture more of the visuals. I should have captured some visual detail/close-ups for twitter/instagram during intermission, but frankly I was too focused on getting in a quick break!

Stay tuned for the next tweet seats event: Gilberto Gil on Saturday, November 16.

How do you feel about using technology during live arts experiences?

Our distinguished panel of tweet seats participants getting ready to tweet at the Mariinsky Orchestra performance last weekend. Learn about our tweet seats project.

Editor’s note: This season, UMS is launching a new pilot project: tweet seats. Read the complete project description and pre-interviews with participants here.

For the second tweet seats event, we saw Théâtre de la Ville: Ionesco’s Rhinocéros:

This week’s participants:

• Paul Kitti, writer for iSPY magazine
• Greg Baise, Detroit-based concert promoter, arts writer, and DJ
• Leslie Stainton, U-M School of Public Health Findings magazine editor and umslobby.org contributor
• Mark Clague, U-M Associate Professor of Musicology and UMS Board member
• University of Michigan social media intern Mollye Rogel
• Michael Kondziolka, UMS director of programming, scheduled to tweet at this event, was not able to participate. See his note about why below.

Read the whole tweet seats conversation here.

UMS: So, how did tweeting affect your experience of this performance?

Paul Kitti:  For this particular performance, tweeting was most often on the back burner for me. It was impossible to tweet without missing something, as the performance was in French with surtitles (and I only know about three words in French…) The outcome, which I expected, was that I enjoyed the play as well as the twitter conversation, but the dialogue I missed in the process left some holes in the experience.

Greg Baise: I found myself thinking of tweets, but waiting for lulls to post them. Some tweets got away because I was deep into the play. Initially I was concerned that my tweeting activity would be a distraction to others. It turns out it was more of a distraction to myself!

Mark Clague: I was surprised by the conversational quality of tweeting Rhinoceros. Since we were reacting to a provocative narrative characterized by inference, juxtaposition, and an epic sense of language that seemed immediately referential and symbolic, many of the tweets searched for meaning. I paid attention to the hashtag and responded to several of the other tweet experimenters, but also to a couple of friends who either attended or just reacted to my observations. One such interchange led to a couple rounds of comments and ultimately intractable disagreement in interpretation. I found myself musing on the disagreement for days afterward and discussing the show face-to-face with another friend to clarify my own understanding. I didn’t change my mind and still prefer a more open interpretation connected to contemporary events, but my commitment to that understanding is richer and deeper for the tweets. Another thing I liked is that a question occurred to me the next day and I could tweet @UMSNews to get my question answered — YES, the set was transported from Paris to Ann Arbor. Finally, I attended the play a second time the next night and did not tweet. My experience was different — I became aware of how many people were speaking French in the audience. I don’t speak French, but gradually improved my understanding of the actors as the play progressed. Also, I sat in row 8 or so close to the stage, rather than tweeting from the back of the balcony. The emotional intensity of the play was much higher sitting so much closer. I was engaged both nights: the first felt a bit more intellectual (tweeting the show in this situation felt like taking notes at an exciting lecture) while the second was more raw and emotional. I’m guessing that my experience on night #2 was richer for having “researched” the play the evening before.

Leslie Stainton: If anything, this second experience of tweeting only confirmed my earlier antipathy to the form (if that’s the right word). It probably didn’t help that I saw the show near the end of the work week and after a glass of wine, so the dim lights and French dialogue and stratospheric tweet seats combined to send me into a bit of a nap. I felt oddly detached from the performance, and I suspect part of that had to do with the isolation I now associate with tweeting live theater. You’re apart from the crowd, with your little black box and too-bright phone. The production itself was gorgeous, provocative, beautifully acted, deeply meaningful. Some of this came together for me at the end, when I really did wake up with a “pow” and suddenly wished I could see it again, without the filter of tweets, and certainly from a better seat than the ones we had. (Didn’t bother me nearly so much with Aspen-Santa Fe, but this production needed to be seen up close, I think.) What “stuck” from the experience is my realization that I don’t want to tweet again–as I said to someone on my way out, I’d prefer to keep my brain farts to myself next time. But thanks for the experiment, and thanks to UMS, as always, for going about this so intelligently and carefully. And thanks for making it possible for those who DO get something out of this medium to keep at it.

Michael Kondziolka: I bailed on my commitment to be a tweet seater last night.  Not because I didn’t want to try it out, but because if became clear that the General Manager of Théâtre de la Ville and the US tour producer of Rhinocéros wanted to sit with me at the opening night performance. I didn’t want to run the risk of offending anyone by creating a moment of “cultural misunderstanding.” After the show, I mentioned this to them both and they were, not surprisingly, first a little put off by the whole notion of tweet seats and, after more conversation, intrigued. I shared the tweet stream with them…and they seemed to like it. Interestingly, there seems to be very little commitment or conversation at the moment in Paris around the role of social media in connecting with audiences OR in building or attracting new audiences.  At least this seems to be the case at TdlV. The GM of TdlV wanted as much information on the topic as I could give him…clearly he knows that he needs to look at these issues very seriously. Imagining what the experience of tweeting during last night’s performance would have been like gives me a rash. The complexity of the show…the layers of meaning and metaphor embedded in the text….how that meaning is delivered through the force of the acting and physical performance…PLUS the reading of super-titles (my French is only so-so)…was a lot to take in and make sense of from time to time. The idea of another layer — the processing of my thoughts and experiences and transmitting them in real time on a little illuminated keypad with my thumbs in real time — might have sent me around the bend. But I am still willing to try at an upcoming show!!

UMS: What do you think makes for a performance “sticky” (the performance “sticks” in your memory months or years later)? Do you think live tweeting a performance make it more or less likely to be “sticky”?

Molly Roegel: The quality of a performance in terms of acting, directing, music and set design, makes it “sticky” for viewers, as well as the relevance to them and how much they can personally understand. Live tweeting made this performance far less sticky to me as I could not pay attention to the subtitles, Instagram, Twitter, and the actual performance in any sort of way that would have allowed me to get the full experience of the play. I greatly enjoyed live tweeting but it was definitely not conducive to gaining the full scope of the play.

Mark Clague: Tweeting Rhinoceros has certainly made the experience more memorable or “sticky” for me. Four days later I can remember specific lines of dialogue and the emotion of the play remains vivid. I’ve had several conversations about the play with friends inspired by my twitter exchanges and reviewed my tweets archived on Twitter.com to review the performance, which reminded me of several personal responses that had begun to fade. Tweeting the show is definitely a source of distraction — I’m watching my cell phone screen at times rather than the stage. However, it’s not like I avoided all distraction the next night when I wasn’t tweeting on assignment. For the most part, I found that tweeting enhanced my attention and put me in a mindset to parse and understand the show. If the purpose of art is to get us to think and to think in unexpected ways, Twitter seems (for me at least) to serve this goal.  If tweeting an art experience were to become more routine and typical, I wonder if some sort of compromise that takes the best of both my night 1 & 2 experience would be possible. One could tweet intermittently and engage with a broader conversation as the show inspired it. The brevity of Twitter leads to an immediacy and directness that might balance emotional reaction with analytical understanding.

Stay tuned for the next tweet seats event: Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg on Saturday, October 27.

How do you feel about using technology during live arts experiences?

Editor’s note: This season, UMS is launching a new pilot project: an experiment at the cross-section of live performing arts and technology commonly known as “tweet seats.” Read the complete project description and pre-interviews with participants here.

For the first tweet seats event, we saw Aspen Santa Fe Ballet:

This week’s  participants:

• Leslie Stainton, U-M School of Public Health Findings magazine editor and umslobby.org contributor
• Paul Kitti, writer for iSPY magazine
• Mark Clague, U-M Associate Professor of Musicology and UMS Board member
• University of Michigan Director of Social Media Jordan Miller

Read the whole tweet seats conversation here.

UMS: How did tweeting affect your experience of the performance?

Paul Kitti: Tweeting about the performance to people I knew weren’t in attendance made me more conscious about not only how I was perceiving the experience, but how others might. I also feel if I hadn’t been actively thinking about things to say about what I was seeing, I would have viewed it more passively – almost as if in a trance. I think it was a good thing to be viewing the performance analytically, but at the same time, it somewhat took away from the dreamy, ethereal effect of the ballet.

Mark Clague:  I was looking forward to the performance with added anticipation knowing that I’d be participating in the Tweet Seats experiment. For me, the result was positive in that it focused my attention into distilling my experience into pithy statements that could be shared via Twitter. There certainly were times when I had to check out from watching the dance to attend to writing a tweet, although as it turned out, I think tweeting could easily have been limited to the breaks between dances. I did feel a bit uncomfortable tweeting, knowing that I was “breaking the rules” of typical concert behavior and that the glow of my smart phone’s screen on my face might distract others. This distraction factor would seem to be maximized in theatrical presentations and dance where the audience is in complete darkness and the stage is lit with colored lighting and other effects that are vital to the aesthetic of the performance. Dance / theater must be watched so it prompts the question of whether an instrumental concert might be more hospitable for tweeting as one can hear and look at a handheld device at the same time, plus audience lighting is low but not black for say an orchestral concert which would make screen glow less remarkable.

Leslie Stainton: I think I felt a bit the way I did in third grade, passing notes back and forth during class and hoping I didn’t get caught, meanwhile missing most of what the teacher was trying to teach. I’m afraid the experience has not changed my (admittedly biased) opinion that tweeting–and much of social media, for that matter–is a largely superficial, narcissistic activity beloved by people with a tendency toward ADD. I didn’t mind tweeting during intermission, but when I did it during the performance I completely missed what was happening onstage and disrupted any sort of narrative continuity. I found myself thinking more about how clever I could be tweeting than about what the pieces were trying to say to me. It kept me from delving more fully into the experience. I was “present,” yes, but mostly to myself and the small gaggle of people who were tweeting and following tweets. In retrospect, I think I got the lesser end of the deal.

Do we really need to “perform” as we watch performances? And what about those audience members who were spending their time tracking tweets rather than engaging fully with what was happening onstage? And what about the poor performers–going through their extraordinary paces to a distracted audience?

Jordan Miller: I think that the tweeting greatly enhanced my experience. I was able to share my thoughts with a whole variety of people, and to hear what they had to say. There were some people tweeting with a much greater knowledge of dance than I have, and that helped me appreciate aspects I wouldn’t have even thought about.

UMS: Did you expect this effect or are you surprised by this outcome?

Paul Kitti: I really didn’t know what to expect, but I wouldn’t say I was surprised. The ongoing tweet conversation made it feel more like a community experience, which I thought was cool.

Mark Clague: One surprise to me was that our tweeting didn’t really amount to a conversation. I think this was because we were sitting together at the back of the hall and thus our dialogue happened by turning to each other in response to a tweet rather than using twitter. Several times one person would turn to another at an intermission break to say “nice tweet,” or to discuss a topic that might have been too sensitive to post to the world — for example, the sexual overtones of the opening dance. In this sense, tweets did create a conversation and introduced me to new people, but tweets served as conversation starters for a face-to-face dialogue rather than the conversation itself. I can imagine a twitter section doing something similar in that those who choose to sit there are making a statement that they are engaged in the performance to search for things to share and discuss. Therefore, one doesn’t feel awkward in turning to a neighbor during the show to find out their twitter ID name and to ask a face-to-face followup based on some observation. I’d love to experience a performance in which several dozens of tweeters were engaged as I wonder how the momentum of the electronic conversation might be different. I made new friends at the Santa Fe performance via Tweeting and what surprises me is that I’d recognize them today if they sat next to me on a campus bus. Rather than substituting for person-to-person engagement with virtual friends, my twitter seat experience created real world connections.

Leslie Stainton: I’m not convinced the activity of tweeting enriched my experience of the concert in any way. I’ll try it again Thursday (though can’t promise how actively I’ll tweet during a show, in French, that has no intermission!). It certainly doesn’t seem to be the same sort of reflective activity as, say, blogging, or writing up a comment for the Lobby. Maybe I’ll change my mind? Doubt it!

Jordan Miller: I hadn’t expected the conversation to be so robust. Not only were the official “tweeters” engaging, but there were other audience members tweeting during intermission and before and after the performance as well, and that was very cool. In fact, I was able to meet up with a student who was at the show and talked to her afterward.

Stay tuned for the next tweet seats event: Théâtre de la Ville’s Ionesco’s Rhinocéros on Thursday, October 11.

TWEET SEATS EVENTS

Tweet Seats 1: Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. Find out what happened.
Tweet Seats 2: Théâtre de la Ville: Ionesco’s Rhinocéros. Find out what happened.
Tweet Seats 3: Mariinsky Orchestra of St. Petersburg. Find out what happened.
Tweet Seats 4: Find out what happened.