ENTANGLING LIVENESS:
THE EMBODIED EXPERIENCE OF YOUTH-ORIENTED
LIVE MUSIC EVENTS
Jacinta Bernice Herborn
Doctor of Philosophy – Humanities and Communication Arts
2017
Western Sydney University
Acknowledgements
To Alby, thankyou for your love and support during this tumultuous trip.
To Mum and Dad, thankyou for your continual help, patience and encouragement.
To Grandma, your support through my university years has been a
constant source of motivation.
To all of my friends, especially Meghan and Nicole, thank you for providing
necessary distractions and having unwavering confidence in me.
To my supervisors Dr. Penny Rossiter, Dr. Anne Rutherford and Dr. Sally Macarthur,
thank you very much for all your advice and guidance, this thesis would not exist
without your expertise and persistence.
To all participants, thankyou for your time and energy. Your enthusiasm, and love for
live music created this thesis and I hope I have done justice
to the experiences you shared with me.
The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original
except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this
material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution.
…………………………………………………………
Jacinta Herborn, April 2017
Contents
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………… v
Introduction:
The embodied experience of youth-oriented live music events ………….. 1
Why live music? ……………………………………………………………… 3
Researching live music ………………………………………………………. 9
Interviewing …………………………………………………………………. 13
Observation/participation ……………………………………………………. 18
Defining liveness ……………………………………………………………. 19
Youths and youth-oriented live music events ………………………………. 22
Chapter Structure ……………………………………………………………. 24
Chapter 1: Entangling theory and theories of entanglement …………… 32
Introduction …………………………………………………………………. 32
Embodiment and the lived body ……………………………………………. 36
Sensory perception and the corporeal depths ………………………………. 41
The body as open and enmeshed …………………………………………… 54
Entanglement and intra-actively being and becoming ……………………… 61
Liveness as an affective force ………………………………………………. 66
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….. 71
i
Chapter 2: Methodological Entanglements …………………………….. 73
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 73
Gathering acorns and digging for gold ………………………………….... 75
Autoethnography and participation ………………………………….……. 82
Shifting positions, affinities and distanciations …………………………… 85
Active bodies and the co-constitution of the interview …………………… 96
Writing as an entangled process …………………………………………... 102
Toward an entangled methodology ……………………………………….. 107
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………… 119
Chapter 3: The technological entanglements of liveness ………………. 121
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 122
The entanglement of live and recorded ……………………………………. 125
Handheld technological mediation and the disruption of liveness ………… 130
Incorporating technologies and shifting techno-somatic involvements ……. 135
The ‘recording attendee’ as a co(a)gent and the destruction of liveness…… 143
The lively technosomatic involvement of photography …………………… 148
Stage screens and the affective reconfiguration of liveness ………………. 152
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………. 161
Chapter 4: The touch of heat from the surface to the depths …………. 164
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 165
Heating up the ‘sensual revolution’ ………………………………………. 168
Weathering the heat ………………………………………………………. 169
ii The affective force of heat ………………………………………………… 178
The haptic and heat as energizing ………………………………………….. 181
Heat and the respiratory system as a sensing region ………………………. 189
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….. 197
Chapter Five: Affective atmospheres …………………………………… 200
Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 201
Understanding atmospheres ………………………………………………… 205
Feeling and discussing atmospheres .……………………………………….. 209
Moving in the mud ………………………………………………………… 216
Disrupting the illusion of groundlessness …………………………………. 223
Becoming intensely entangled …………………………………………….. 228
The intra-activity of atmosphere …………………………………………… 231
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………. 238
Chapter 6: Affective movements and the liveliness of interviews ……... 240
Introduction ……………………………………………………………….. 242
Enlivening the interview …………………………………………………... 245
Being alive to the entanglements of crying ……………………………….. 252
Unexpected movements …………………………………………………… 261
Colliding bodies and patterns of movement ………………………………. 270
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………. 277
Conclusion: Ongoing entanglements ……………………………………. 279
Entangling the embodied experience of liveness …………………………. 280
iii Open interviews and co-constitution of meaning …………………………. 286
Entangling writing …………………………………………………………. 292
Technological entanglements ……………………………………………… 294
Reference List ……………………………………………………………. 302
Appendices
Appendix A: ………………………………………………………………. 316
Appendix B: ………………………………………………………………. 318
Appendix C: ………………………………………………………………. 322
Appendix D: ………………………………………………………………. 324
iv Abstract
This thesis is an ethnographic study of young people’s embodied experiences of youth-oriented live music events, including both festivals and single-headliner shows.
The study draws on material generated through semi-structured interviews with twenty-one eighteen to thirty year olds, as well as my own experiences as a participant at live music events. The interconnected concepts of ‘embodiment’,
‘liveness’ and ‘entanglement’, are central to the analysis of this material, and are developed throughout the thesis. The works of both Drew Leder (1990) and Tim
Ingold (2000, 2006) are utilised throughout the thesis to develop an understanding of the body as an open and dynamic entity always enmeshed with its environment. This understanding of the body-in-the-world allows for the concept of liveness to be extended and developed. Embodied experiences of liveness are multisensory, but also involve the corporeal depths and are triggered or enabled through attendees’ interactions with the live environment. Drawing from the work of Paul Sanden
(2013), which discusses liveness as a fluid and complex concept, the thesis argues that liveness involves a fleeting, shifting and dynamic entanglement between body and environment that produces, enables and shapes the embodied experience of young people at youth-oriented live music events.
The embodied experience of liveness involves an ongoing and dynamic process through which things, forces and feelings momentarily combine, clash or coalesce.
Attendees actively and purposefully negotiate or re-negotiate elements of their entanglements, such as their body-technic relationship, to enable or reconfigure the experience of liveness. Karen Barad’s (2007) work develops the concept of entanglement and is used through the thesis to explore entanglements as always
v involving the active emergence of bodies and things, both human and non-human. At live music events a transient and shifting entangling occurs, and the embodied experiences of attendees are pulled, at times powerfully, into their attention. During such moments the body, the environment, and their entwinement are felt. Utilising
Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson and Helen Owton’s (2015,p.247) notion of ‘intense embodiment’, it is suggested that attendees can experience moments of intense entanglement. Attendees attune to the dynamic aspects of their environment in these moments and at live music events, such dynamism can include the constantly shifting atmosphere. These atmospheric shifts shape, colour, and texture the experience of liveness and draw attention to the continuous movement of music, emotion, affect, bodies, weather and other things that entangle to produce live music events.
Such movements also occur through the research process and in particular through interviews, as the inter-affective atmosphere and inter-corporeal experiences of the interview shift, intensify and diminish. The concepts of diffraction and intra-action are central to Barad’s discussion of entanglement and as demonstrated through the work of Lisa Mazzei (2014), Barad’s work has important methodological applications as it forces the reconsideration of the position and role of the researcher, understandings of data and how that data is generated. Here, the concepts of entanglement and intra-action are used to explore the methodological development of this research that unfolded not as a linear progression but instead as a messy meshing and tangling of things, thoughts and feelings. The interwoven concepts of entanglement, liveness and embodiment are therefore central to both the research topic and the research process.
vi
Introduction: The embodied experience of
youth-oriented live music events
Deep, throaty vocals vibrate through the air like a monk’s chant and the drum beat pounds through the floor of the Metro Theatre, reverberating in my chest like a second heartbeat. For a moment the crowd cheers and claps as they recognise the familiar opening of Cloud Control’s song Gold Canary and the relaxed, steady rhythm of the music contrasts with the excited crowd. Lead singer Alister Wright’s crisp but quaking vocals cut through the cheers, and the movement of the crowd adjusts to the rhythm of the song as bodies sway to the beat. Small, illuminated screens of phones and cameras pop up and down above the heads of attendees as individuals take photos or record sections of the song. The stage lights oscillate and change colour, the performers silhouettes constantly shift and young faces in the crowd are momentarily illuminated then drowned again in darkness. Smoke floods the stage floor intermittently and drifts across the crowd. The dusty smell mingles and mixes with the distinctive scent of too many bodies standing too close together. The air feels dense in the room that seems at the same time cavernous and tightly wrapped around the crowd.
Developed from field notes produced at Cloud Control, Metro Theatre, George St.
Sydney, 12th of September 2013.
Youth-oriented live music events create intense physical, emotional and affective experiences that forcefully rupture the routines of everyday life and produce
1 meaningful experiences for attendees. In these unique, transient, and lively environments the liveliness of the world is amplified and felt. This thesis focuses on the embodied experiences of young people at youth-oriented live music events and, through this focus, outlines and develops the interconnected meanings of the key concepts of embodiment, liveness and entanglement. The experience of liveness is explored as an embodied engagement that always involves the entangling of body and environment. Through this entwining, elements of one’s body and environment become focused on and experienced in ways that are distinct, vivid, and always shifting. The three core concepts of this thesis – embodiment, liveness and entanglement – are interconnected through my analysis. Exploring this interconnection allows for the interrogation and extension of each concept.
This thesis adds an important dimension to conceptualisations of liveness that have to date focused primarily on what constitutes liveness and the characteristics of liveness, by focusing instead on the engagement between body and environment. The experience of liveness is physical, emotional and affective and is always bound to the highly dynamic, vibrant and sensually rich environments in which it occurs. By examining the engagement between body and environment at youth-oriented live music events the concept of entanglement is developed and extended to demonstrate its centrality to the concept of liveness and also to broader understandings of embodiment. Moreover, researching the embodied experience of liveness has drawn attention to the liveliness of the research process and the significance of this in recognising and exploring research as an entangled embodiment.
2 Why live music?
The intense and very visceral experiences triggered or enabled by live music events had me hooked from around age sixteen and my first forays into the world of gigs, concerts and festivals. And it seemed I was not alone; friends buzzed with excitement before and after events. They spoke, sometimes for hours, with eyes ablaze about particular songs, moments, gestures and things that happened onstage or in the crowd.
They would eagerly flick through dark, blurry photos on their phones and fervently listen to the music that they had just experienced live. For months leading up to events, we would pour over line up announcements, prepare for ticket sales with military precision and as often as possible, pack into venues with hundreds, sometimes thousands of other young people. The stomach leaping, throat tightening, spine tingling, goose-bump inducing experiences produced through attendance at these events energised me but with time they also sparked an academic interest, particularly as I began to engage with the concept of embodiment.
As my understanding of that concept began to expand through my undergraduate and then postgraduate university studies, my personal live music scene seemed to shift and shrink as local venues shut down or became repurposed. The Backdoor, and the
Embassy Hotel in Penrith, Treis Elies in Katoomba and the Hopeton Hotel in Surry
Hills were just some of the live music spaces I would frequent that shut their doors to bands and their fans1. Simultaneously, when at events I started to become (somewhat painfully) aware that the crowd was filled more and more with people who seemed younger than me. I was in the second half of my youth and quickly moving toward the
1 During the course of my thesis more live music venues have been closed, sold or put on the market (such as The Lansdowne Hotel in Chippendale, Good God Small Club in Sydney, the Oxford Arts Factory in Darlinghurst and the Newtown Social Club in Newtown) and previously popular festivals such as Homebake, Big Day Out and Soundwave have all shut down.
3 exit. The fleeting, transient qualities of live music seemed to amplify, and intensify, and exploring these very bodily experiences took on a more immediate importance for me.
Of course, plenty of scholarship around live music existed prior to me beginning my thesis. Research into youth-oriented live music events had explored feelings of belonging and community (Cummings 2007), questions of identity (Bennett 2000), sub-cultures and neo-tribes (Bennett 1999, Cummings 2007), debates surrounding authenticity and genre (Auslander 1999), as well as the sociological and economic significance of live music (Frith 2007). However, these accounts did not position the feeling of being an attendee at a live music event, and the embodied experiences of liveness, as their central focus. The more recent work of Rosemary Overell (2014) directly considers the embodied experiences of audience members at live music events, and will be discussed further through the following chapter in relation to affect. However, Overell (2014, p.25) focuses specifically on grindcore events, which she describes as occupying a ‘small world of extreme metal.’ My work focuses more broadly upon youth-oriented live music events.
‘Youth-oriented live music events’ is a broad category that could have been divided or restricted in a number of ways. Focusing upon a particular genre of music would be perhaps the most obvious way to streamline or limit my field of study. However, I decided early in my project not to use the concept of genre to demarcate my research for two main reasons. Firstly, genre is a highly dynamic and fluid concept meaning different things to different people. In addition, genres of music are also dynamic shifting in relation to time and place. Therefore, drawing clear distinctions around live
4 music events based on genre can be a difficult, and at times impossible, task. Popular festivals that I have attended such as Big Day Out and Splendour in the Grass often feature performers from a wide variety of genres and even a single venue-based event can feature performances in a variety of genres, or performers who slip and slide between genres. Secondly, I did not want to exclude potential participants from my study and in doing so exclude and ignore certain embodied experiences as different types of music produce or contribute to different bodily involvements. Embodied practices that are common or accepted at punk, metal and hard core shows, for example moshing, death circles or death walls, would be uncommon and generally unacceptable at a hip hop or indie rock show. Importantly, Overell (2014) explains that, although grindcore was the main musical focus of the participants in her study, their enjoyment and interest of music was not restricted to this genre and they discussed ‘multiple sites of musically based identification.’ Anderson’s (2006) suggestion that the social worlds being studied by ethnographers often involve amorphous groups comprised of largely unconnected individuals that share a characteristic or experience, is relevant to my work and sample.
My own experiences of live music have occurred at both festivals and single- headliner events, moreover, during interviews most participants discussed attending both types of events.2 Indeed, participant discussion slipped so frequently between the two types of events that any attempt to separate the discussion would be problematic.
In addition, several participants would compare experiences at different types of events to make a certain point or emphasise a particular experience. Although I am focusing on both types of events it must be acknowledged that within the humanities
2 Only two participants said that they had not attended festivals but both said they would like to.
5 and social sciences there exist a number of scholarly texts that focus specifically on
Australian festivals. These texts cover various types of festivals such as classical music festivals (Waitt and Duffy 2010), Indie music festivals (Cummings 2010), a
Jazz festival (Curtis 2010), an Indigenous Dreaming festival (Slater, 2007), rural festivals (Gorman-Murray 2009; Duffy et al. 2011; Gibson and Connell 2011) and multicultural festivals (Duffy 2014). These works focus on a range of topics including tourism (Waitt and Duffy 2010), community and belonging (Curtis 2010; Duffy 2014;
Mair and Duffy 2015) commercialisation and corporate sponsorship (Cummings
2010) and sustainability (Cummings 2014).
Significantly, some of these works examine aspects of embodied experience. For example, Duffy et al. (2011, p.17) explore bodily rhythms at rural festivals in the twin towns of Daylesford-Hepburn Springs located in Victoria, Australia. In that work,
Duffy et al. (2011, p.17) focus on a Swiss-Italian Festa and ChillOut, a lesbian and gay festival, and demonstrate that the ‘rhythmic qualities of sound’ are central ‘in forging body-space relationships.’ The embodied experiences of the unfolding dynamic rhythms of the two rural events produce a space of communal identity. Waitt and Duffy (2010) use sound diaries at a classical music festival on the New South
Wales South Coast to reveal significant non-visual aspects of festivals as tourism events that are often ignored. They demonstrate the connections between people and place, and the feelings of belonging and community that are produced through the experience of music (Waitt and Duffy 2010). And Duffy (2014) explores the emotional ecology of festivals to argue that the emotional and affective experiences of listening at festivals are central in the emergent formation of identity, social connection or disconnection.
6 All of these works demonstrate the significance of embodied experience to the ongoing configuration of festivals within Australia and the growing academic interest in this area. However, through the varied aims and content of these works, particularly relating to listening practices, sound and feelings of belonging and community, these works differ from my own. With my specific focus on youth-oriented live music events and the experience of liveness as an entangled embodiment, I hope to add another element and perspective to the growing body of literature that explores these events.
From my specific perspective, the embodied experience of liveness was not only an interesting and significant aspect of youth-oriented live music events, but an embodied experience that encouraged, and indeed required, the exploration of both body and the environment and how they mingle and merge. As I embarked upon and progressed further into my studies, this focus also forced me to consider and reconsider my methodological approach as my theoretical focus increasingly seeped into and influenced my research practices and vice-versa, as my methodological approach shaped and reshaped my theoretical focus.
This continual theoretical and methodological reshaping was stimulated and progressed most notably through the concept of entanglement, which is discussed specifically by Karen Barad (2007) in conjunction with the related concepts of diffraction and intra-action. These three concepts will each be examined further through this introductory chapter and indeed utilised throughout the thesis as a whole.
However, here it is important to acknowledge that, through the course of my research, these concepts became central to my understanding of the embodied experiences of
7 live music and also my particular understanding of liveness. Incorporating, at least in part, a Baradian approach, and the concepts of entanglement, diffraction and intra- action, reconfigured my understanding of the research process and the ways data is conceptualised, generated, explored and analysed. This approach emphasised the continually shifting relations that occur between the human, nonhuman and more- than-human, and combined with other theoretical and methodological concerns to form and re-form my understanding of liveness.
Liveness is a complex concept that relates to a diverse range of experiences and involves a necessary tension or connection between technological mediation and live performance. The complexity of this concept will be outlined and discussed later in this chapter. This work focuses specifically upon the embodied experiences of youth- oriented live music events and as such concentrates on a particular form of liveness: that which is generated through a temporal and spatial co-presence with performers, audience and all the technological and non-technological things and forces that produce these events. Within this focus the experience of liveliness, as an aspect of liveness, emerged as particularly significant to my consideration of embodiment and entanglement. The term liveliness is used here and throughout the thesis to describe an experience of an emotional force or affective pull that stems from an attentiveness to the constant shifts and flows that occur in and between bodies, things and forces. I would suggest that liveliness always accompanies the varied forms of liveness, and that the experience of liveness acts as a trigger for the experience of liveliness.
However, in the very particular, transient and energetic environments of youth- oriented live music events the dynamism of the body, the environment and their
8 entanglement is emphasised, intensified or foregrounded. At such events the experience of liveliness, as an element of liveness, can be heightened.
Researching live music
Research is not a clear, linear, stable or static endeavour. Rather, it is a dynamic, messy and at times, frustrating process that moves and bends in different directions.
Through the course of my research my understanding of, and approach to, my methodology shifted significantly. Chapter 2 provides a detailed description of these shifts; however, here it is important to provide a brief account of the methods I utilised. Given the aim of my research, to provide an in-depth study of the lived, embodied experiences of young people at youth-oriented live music events, I employed a qualitative approach, using an ethnography of mixed methods, including semi-structured interviews and participant observation.
At the outset of my research, though my overall ideas were informed by my own experiences, in terms of data collection I pursued the experiences of other young people. Initially I believed that interviews would provide all the information I needed to explore the embodied experiences of live music events and so would be my main source of data. From this perspective, data was something to be uncovered and collected and conducting semi-structured interviews would allow me to directly discuss the topics and questions that my participants and I considered to be important.
I believed interviewing would allow me to accurately “reflect” the embodied experiences of youth.
9 With this in my mind, I aimed to recruit between twenty and thirty young people who wished to be interviewed about their experiences at live music events. I conducted recruitment for interviews in a number of ways and through all methods of recruitment the option to participate in person or online was given. I hung posters with information about my research around universities, including the Western Sydney
University (WSU) campuses in Penrith, Bankstown and Parramatta, as well as at
Sydney University and the University of Technology, Sydney. These universities were selected as they have a high and concentrated population of eighteen to thirty year olds, and I had hoped that including these different universities could produce a sample that was, at least somewhat, demographically varied. However, only WSU students responded to on-campus advertisements. Recruitment was also conducted through radio and email newsletters; an announcement about my research was made by a WSU academic on FBi radio (a youth-oriented, independent, alternative Sydney radio station), and information about my research was also posted on the
Bombshellzine newsletter (a weekly email newsletter from the Australian based website of the same name that focuses upon punk, rock and hardcore music). 3
Finally, snowball sampling was utilised. This form of recruitment was most useful, due to its time efficiency, and it also enabled me to target specific participants. Other methods of recruitment had produced a sample that had many more male participants, and snowball sampling allowed me to specifically target females. However, snowball sampling is often considered to be somewhat limiting as participants are usually socially connected and from the same general geographical location. This was true for
3 The WSU Ethics Committee did not want me to individually approach potential participants at live music events and another viable option for recruitment at events was not established.
10 part of my sample. Almost all participants recruited through snowball sampling have, at some point, lived in the Blue Mountains, and are all either directly or indirectly connected to me socially. Moreover, the participants gained through snowball sampling were predominantly aged between twenty-five and twenty-eight years. This meant that my sample was more concentrated around this narrow age bracket, rather than being spread evenly across the eighteen to thirty-year-old age bracket. However, participants recruited through this method had a diverse range of experiences at live music events and their experiences differed significantly to my own in terms of the styles of music events they had attended, their level of involvement with music, the frequency with which they attended events, and the venues they frequented.
This thesis considers young people’s embodied experiences of youth-oriented live music events, though does so only from the audience perspective. Five participants had some experience performing at live music events, and one participant had some experience with sound engineering at live events. During interviews I asked a few questions of each of these participants about their experiences as a performer or technical staff member, however, I was primarily focused on audience experience and did not pursue questions on non-audience experiences in any great depth. The embodied experiences of audience members at live music events are highly diverse, yet the specificities of the embodied experiences of attendees differ significantly to that of performers or staff. Whereas performers and technical staff predominantly occupy the stage and backstage areas, attendees share a specific audience space and are generally barred from other areas. The way attendees use their shared space, the conditions within that space, their positioning and movements, and their temporal relationship with that space, are all highly specific to the experience of the audience.
11 Moreover, within the audience space attendees are exposed to environmental elements
(either natural–for example, hot air, sun and rain–or man-made) that performers and technical staff are either not exposed to at all, or are only exposed to for short periods of time (such as during a performance). Audience members also attend these events recreationally, whilst the attendance of performance and technical staff is in a professional capacity. To consider the experiences of performers or staff members, which vary so significantly from that of attendees, was simply beyond the scope of this study.
It is important to note here that my sample of participants is not representative of the diversity that is present at youth-oriented live music events. Indeed, I would identify my sample of interview participants as predominately white, cisgender, middle-class youth. My research does not consider matters of class, ethnicity, sexuality, levels of education, or other social factors, and because of this I did not collect this information from participants; however, I now believe this was a mistake. Although it was not my intention to focus upon these factors, they are surely significant to attendance at, and participation in, youth-oriented live music events and the ways these events are experienced. A lack of diversity within my sample has undoubtedly affected the data produced through my research and indeed the very nature, shape and structure of my thesis. A much larger project could properly explore the data produced in relation to the sample. I do not have the means to explore the ramifications of my limited sample in this thesis; however, it is crucial to acknowledge that this work is restricted by and indicative of this sample, the types of bodies that participated, and the particular embodied experiences that are considered.
12 Interviewing
I conducted twenty-two semi-structured individual interviews. Fifteen of these were conducted face-to-face and seven were conducted online. Eight females participated and fourteen males. A sample group that is comprised of an equal number of males and females was desired and pursued, though not achieved. Participants ranged in age from eighteen to thirty. Basic information about participants, including age and occupation, can be found in Appendix A. All face-to-face interviews were sound recorded and transcribed. These interviews generally lasted between forty-five minutes and an hour, although many participants continued to discuss their experiences of live music events after the “formal” interview had finished and I had stopped recording. In these cases I asked participants if I could write about what they said after the interview and in each case they agreed and I took notes on what was said.
When participants opted for an online interview they were then given the choice between Skype and Facebook Messenger. All participants wanting to be interviewed online chose to participate via Facebook Messenger. 4 These interviews generally took between forty-five minutes and an hour and a half.
There are clear disadvantages to interviewing participants in this way; all visual and acoustic cues are excluded from the interview, only the words remain as each simply types messages to the other, without seeing or hearing the other person. In this way, online interviews could be understood as producing data that is not as rich as a traditional face-to-face interview. However, I do believe there are certain
4 Since I completed online interviews I was made aware of the ethics concerning digital research, which indicates that interviews should not be conducted through social media sites, such as Facebook Messenger, due to issues relating to the ownership of content.
13 benefits to online interviews. These interviews allow for participation by individuals who may be geographically isolated from the researcher, for example,
Max lived in Terrigal at the time of his online interview. Individuals who may be time poor, shy or uncomfortable around strangers, or even individuals who have safety concerns about meeting with strangers, could all feel more comfortable participating online rather than in person.
In the interviews, participants were asked about their physical and emotional experiences of live music spaces. An interview schedule was created before interviews were conducted. A sample interview schedule is attached as Appendix
B. The interview schedule was at first determined mostly by my previous experiences at live music events, as well as my literature review and awareness of topics relating to live music that are frequently discussed in the media; for example, the use of phones at events. The interview schedule was then altered between interviews to reflect significant themes as they emerged, or matters of interest that arose through participant observation, or to re-work questions that had been misunderstood or had generated poor responses from participants in previous interviews. For example, initial questions regarding clothing and style were dropped, and additional questions relating to emotional experiences were added as my focus became increasingly concentrated upon the physical, emotional and affective experiences of attendees. Of course, given the semi-structured nature of the interviews, questions were also added, skipped or pursued during individual interviews, depending on participant responses. An example of this occurred during Lewis’s interview, as he discussed a significant experience repeatedly through his interview, and so, I asked Lewis additional questions about the
14 experience to allow for further discussion. This example is examined in detail in
Chapter 6.
I assumed that most, if not all participants, would be unfamiliar with concepts such as embodiment, affect and entanglement that are central to my thesis. These terms were not used through interviews and common language that can be easily understood was adopted through the process. Some of the topics discussed with participants included what type of music they listen to, when and how; what venues they attend most often or enjoy the most; what they enjoy about the experience of live music events; how they use their bodies within a crowd (for example dancing, crowd surfing and so on); the way they feel as part of a crowd and whether they experience feelings of connection or disconnection; how the experiences of indoor and outdoor venues vary; how weather and other environmental factors contribute to or influence their experience; the experiences they find unpleasant; and how they experience the limitations of their bodies (for example pain and exhaustion).
Participant responses were of course wide-ranging and diverse, often relating to deeply individual experiences, though at times, responses from different participants paralleled each other. Due to the length of the interviews, the range of topics covered and the number of participants, some of the material produced through the interviews cannot be explored here. The thesis is instead structured around those topics that generated the most discussion and elicited the most interest and emotion from participants. The topics of technological usage and
15 understandings of ‘live’, the weather (particularly the experience of heat), the atmosphere at live music events, and emotional experiences and memories, all emerged through interviews as significant, either from the amount of discussion around each topic, or the way particular participants discussed it.
Some topics of discussion, which initially seemed important to the embodied experience of youth-oriented live music events, failed to produce any significant material during interviews and as such are not discussed in any detail through this thesis. For example, in each interview every participant was asked about dancing, moshing and other bodily activities they may engage in at live music events.
Abby, Lewis and Ada all discussed experiences of mosh pits, death walls and death circles, and these experiences, and the way participants spoke about them, are explored through Chapter 6. However, participant discussion of dancing was generally awkward, halting and minimal. I believe this was, in part, due to the setting of the interviews. In the brightly lit, professional and learning spaces of the university campus (where most interviews were conducted) discussion of dancing felt out of place and proved difficult to talk about, occasionally participants would try to demonstrate a type of dancing, though such demonstrations were always brief. Interviewing attendees at a live music event about their dancing would surely generate very different responses.
In addition, recreational drug use was discussed during each interview, however, I believe the nature of that discussion restricted participant responses. As part of the process of institutional ethical review the WSU Human Research Ethics
16 Committee raised concerns about any discussion of drug use during my interviews and as a result the question I asked about drug use at events had to be very specifically worded, and prior to every interview each participant was required to read an information sheet which informed them that I had a ‘legal obligation to report participation in indictable offences’, such as ‘drug-trafficking and serious assault.’ A copy of this information sheet can be found in Appendix C and the question about drug use is in the interview schedule in Appendix B (on p.318).
Various factors including the advice of the committee, my resulting discomfort discussing drug use, the wording of the question, the interview setting, and the inclusion of the text about indictable offenses on the information sheet, impeded discussions of recreational drug use, so these were generally minimal and vague.
Through the process of conducting interviews, then transcribing, and analysing the material, memories of my own experiences were triggered and amplified. I began to think more deeply about my own experiences, whether they aligned with, or differed from participant responses, but I also began to think about how my own experiences could add to my analyses and perhaps most importantly could add an embodied element to my writing. It was at that point that I began to consider including an autoethnographic component in my work. This shift forced me to reconsider the way I understood and analysed the process of interviews and the material they generated, as well as the practice and purpose of participant observation.
17 Observation/participation
Participant observation or participation (as I later came to understand it, and will discuss through Chapter 2) was employed at first to inform and support data gained through interviewing. However, as I began to engage with autoethnography, my participation as an attendee at live music took on increased significance. Participation in these events allowed me to examine, explore and interrogate my own embodied experiences, and by doing so, add essential depth and detail to my analysis of interview material, as well as my theoretical development of the concepts of liveness and entanglement. The concepts of embodiment, entanglement and liveness demanded that as a researcher I actively and critically engaged with, and explored, my own embodied entanglement within the lively and enlivening process of research.
Participation was conducted at a range of live music events, including festivals and also venue-based events with a single headliner. I attended a number of annual festivals held in New South Wales, including Big Day Out, Splendour in the Grass,
Soundwave and Laneway festival. These festivals varied in key ways, including location, duration, music featured and expected audience, as well as the season they are held in and the weather conditions experienced. I also attended venue-based events within Sydney at the Metro Theatre, Olympic Park, Hordern Pavilion, Oxford
Arts Factory, Annandale Hotel, Good God Small Club and Newtown Social Club.
These varied venues were chosen to enable participation in a range of live music events in a range of settings. Further information regarding these venues and festivals is provided in Appendix D. As my understanding of my research and my methodology shifted, I also began to consider the entire research process as involving participation. The ways in which this affected my position as a researcher and my approach to interviews, and writing up, are explored through Chapter 2, which
18 focuses upon my methodology, and Chapter 6, which considers how affective movements that occur during interviews make meaning.
Defining liveness
Academic accounts that focus upon live music events and the conceptualisation of live music are trans-disciplinary and highly diverse in terms of their focus, content and aims (Auslander 1999; Bennett 1999; Bennett 2000; Cummings 2007; Frith 2007;
Waitt and Duffy 2010; Overell 2014). There is not the scope here to provide a comprehensive summary of these accounts. Moreover, within these accounts the body is often either ignored or only briefly acknowledged. The previously mentioned work of Waitt and Duffy (2010), on a classical music festival, centres on embodied experience, though focuses mostly on listening practices. The field of study that focuses more specifically upon the concept of liveness is significantly smaller, and embodied accounts of liveness are rare. Paul Sanden (2013) provides the most comprehensive and recent account of liveness, and although his focus differs significantly to mine, his discussion of liveness is useful in establishing a foundational, and expandable definition of the concept.
As discussed by Sanden (2013), liveness is a complex and fluid concept: ideas and understandings of liveness are bound to shifting cultural factors, historical contexts and our ever-changing and evolving relationship with media and digital technologies.
In regards to music, definitions of liveness are highly dependent upon understandings of the term ‘live’, which remain debated, and which have often involved a reductive and oppositional binary between the live and the recorded (Thornton 1995, Sanden
2013, Auslander 2008,). The relationship between liveness and technology is complex
19 and will be explored further through Chapter 3. Here, however, it is important to note that, through his work, Sanden (2013) begins to dismantle this oppositional binary with the recognition of the interconnectedness of live music and technological mediation and suggests that liveness should always be understood as always involving a dynamism. Sanden (2013) writes that liveness should not be understood as a static ontological state devoid of electronic mediation. Instead, liveness entails human presence in conjunction with dynamic networks of technological communication.
Indeed, communication between performers and audiences, which may be real or imagined, is central to Sanden’s (2013) understanding of liveness.
Sanden (2013) differentiates between aspects, and forms of liveness and considers liveness in terms of the temporal, the spatial, the corporeal, the virtual, and the electronic, as well as liveness in relation to notions of authenticity. Importantly,
Sanden (2013, p.12) argues that rather than experiences fitting neatly into these various categories, ‘networks of liveness’ occur. Sanden (2013, p.12) explains that these networks involve
various combinations of perceptual and conceptual relationships, not only
between performance and mediatization (or more broadly, between human and
machine) but also between different characteristics of performance, such as
interactivity, corporeality, and temporality.
This notion of ‘networks of liveness’ begins to open up and extend this area of enquiry and importantly draws attention to the multifaceted and complex nature of live experience.
20 Sanden’s (2013, p.12) work is significant and wide-ranging; however, as he notes, his account cannot fully capture the ‘diversity of nuance’ experienced through liveness and as a result gaps remain. The content and focus of my work varies significantly to that of Sanden (2013). Whereas Sanden examines what constitutes live music, different forms of liveness, and the complexity of these various forms, I focus specifically upon liveness as an embodied entanglement at youth-oriented live music events. My work aims to further contribute to the notion of liveness and continue to develop liveness as a dynamic concept, but also to develop and extend the concept of entanglement, and explore the potentialities of this concept in relation to research as an embodied entanglement.
Significantly, in Sanden’s (2013) consideration of liveness, the level of communication, between audience and performer varies and can be actual or imagined. For example, in his exploration of corporeal liveness, Sanden (2013) focuses upon particular moments in recorded music during which the corporeality of the performer is emphasised. Sanden (2013, p.55) discusses the recordings of pianist
Glenn Gould, which contain ‘traces of corporeality’ that are easily perceived by the audience. These include the sound of Gould’s body playing the piano, his foot on the pedal, his breathing, and his chair creaking as his body sways.
In contrast, the form of liveness I have focused upon requires a spatial and temporal co-presence, both with the performer/s and audience, yet is not simply reducible to that co-presence. Instead, I argue that liveness involves a complex process of being, becoming and passing in which bodies, environment, things, and forces, entangle.
Moreover, my thesis focuses specifically upon the embodied experiences of young
21 people at youth-oriented live music events. Whereas Sanden’s account of liveness demonstrates the diversity, fluidity and multiplicity of this concept, my work seeks to explore the intricacies and particularities of the embodied aspects of liveness.
My understanding of liveness is indebted to the work of Sanden (2013), which was one of the only recent, sustained and in-depth accounts of this concept. Sanden’s work on liveness expanded my own thinking about this concept, provided a solid foundation from which to begin my consideration and confirmed the significance of liveness as a topic of research.
Youths and youth-oriented live music events
Within Australia, attendance at, and participation in, live music events involves young people aged between eighteen and twenty-four (or ‘youth’) more than any other age group (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009).5 The concept of youth is central to this work, which considers the experiences of young people aged between eighteen and thirty. However, not all conceptualisations of youth treat age as the defining variable. Drawing upon the work of Bennett and Kahn-Harris, Cummings
(2007, p.12) considers youth to be ‘an ideological category or a “state of mind”’, and as such, her study of indie music festivals in Australia includes participants aged from eighteen to fifty years. In contrast, I believe the specificities of one’s biological age entangle with other particularities such as physical capacities, emotional engagements, social relations and cultural factors, to actively produce and enable youth as a fluid and transient aspect of one’s embodiment. Like gender and ethnicity,
5 A 2009 study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that popular music concerts were the most commonly attended form of live music in Australia and that individuals aged between eighteen and twenty-four years attended these concerts more commonly than any other age group, with forty per cent of individuals within this group attending a popular music concert during the surveyed year.
22 the experience of youth occurs in relation to certain physical attributes, the way in which those attributes are socially and culturally constructed, and the way in which these constructions are understood and embodied by the individual.
Valentine, Skelton and Chambers (1998, p.4) rightly describe youth as a ‘slippery concept’, with ‘multiple and fluid’ definitions which vary historically and culturally.
According to Bucholtz (2002), the category of youth is not clearly defined within much research that considers aspects of youth culture. In her work, Bucholtz (2002) differentiates the categories of adolescence and youth and urges a scholarly shift toward considerations of the latter. Whereas the concept of adolescence often focuses on how the young body and mind ‘are shaped for adult futures’, Bucholtz (2002, p.532) asserts that the concept of youth ‘foregrounds age, not as a trajectory, but as identity’. Here identity is considered ‘agentive, flexible and ever-changing – but no more for youth than people of any age’ (Bucholtz 2002, p.532). Bucholtz’s (2002, p.532) understanding of youth focuses upon ‘the here and now of young people’s experience, the social and cultural practices through which they shape their worlds.’
The ‘here and now’ of youth experience is central to my work, with a particular focus on their embodied practices, and the way the specificities of these practices contribute to the experience and understanding of liveness.
Many live music venues and music festivals are clearly oriented toward youth through a range of details, including the styles of music and artists featured, the imagery and language used in promotional material, event sponsors, as well as the overall aesthetic and layout of the venues and festivals. For example, festival posters often incorporate bright colours and imagery that clearly connotes youth and childhood, many events
23 are sponsored by Triple J, a government-funded ‘national youth broadcaster for young
Australians’ (ABC 2016), as well as various alcohol companies, and the layout of venues often includes a designated area for a mosh pit, crowd barriers to prevent crushing and minimal seating. These factors contrast with live music events that generally have older attendees. For example, A Day On the Green, which has been described as ‘Big Day Out for grown ups’ generally features older performers, such as
Blondie and John Farnham, it features a reserved seating section, and is currently sponsored by an insurance company and a super fund (adayonthegreen.com 2017).
Chapter Structure
Structuring a thesis is a not a simple task; the tangled and often circular nature of the research process and the material produced means that organising that material into a coherent narrative is an ongoing challenge. The significant shifts that occurred in my theoretical and methodological understanding, and how these are entwined, made structuring and ordering the chapters of this thesis particularly difficult. The chapters have been ordered in a way that highlights and reflects on those shifts by providing a gradually more complex conceptualisation of the embodied experience of youth-oriented live music events, liveness as an entangled phenomena and research as a lively and entangled process.
The thesis starts by providing a preliminary outline, discussion and synthesis of the relevant theories of the body and its entanglement with its environment, which are then developed throughout the thesis. Next, the methodological shifts that occurred through the research process and the challenges associated with these shifts are addressed. These first two chapters provide the theoretical and
24 methodological framework for the thesis and are followed by the analysis chapters, which begin with a consideration of the concept of liveness. This concept is bound to dynamic technological relations, things and networks (Sanden
2013). As such, the technosomatic experience of attendees is central to the experience of liveness. The ways in which attendees understand, engage with and negotiate technologies at live music events underlies the very experience of the event and so must be considered at the beginning of my analysis. The chapters that follow then consider particular aspects of embodied experiences at live music events, and in the final chapter the specific aspects of the research process and the ways they entangle and enmesh with the production of meaning are explored.
The concepts of embodiment and entanglement are central to my understanding of liveness, and from the outset of my research have formed the basis of my conceptual framework. In Chapter 1 the theoretical foundations that have informed my research are outlined. The foundational understanding of the body and its entanglement with the environment developed in Chapter 1 is extended throughout my thesis in relation to the specificities of the experience of liveness. I suggest that the core concepts of embodiment and entanglement mesh with one another, and with other key concepts, such as intra-action and affect, to produce an understanding of body and environment that allows for the complexity and dynamism of the experience of liveness.
Using the works of Drew Leder (1990) and Tim Ingold (2000; 2006; 2011a; 2011b;
2011c), I outline my understanding of embodiment and entanglement, which involve the ongoing and emergent engagement of the body as a whole with its environment. I understand entanglement here and throughout my work as involving the complex,
25 messy and multifaceted entwinement of feelings, things and forces. Barad’s (2007) discussion of entanglement sharpens and clarifies my understanding of the ways bodies, environments, things and forces entwine and provides a theoretical frame from which to explore liveness as an entangled embodied experience through the thesis. Entangled entities are at once distinct, yet indissolubly linked and meshed, not simply co-dependent, but instead co-constituted. The entanglement of body and environment is coloured and conditioned by affect. I will discuss affect in Chapter 1 in relation to Ben Anderson’s (2014) understanding of affect as intensities and forces that become attached to people, things and places. At live music events affects texture the experience of liveness, amplifying or diminishing it.
As my research progressed, the significance of the concept of entanglement shifted, not only in terms of my theoretical framework, but also in relation to my methodological approach. In Chapter 2, I outline how my methodological approach unfolded and altered throughout the course of my research. I trace my methodological development, which began with a rather traditional understanding of research and the role and position of the researcher. However, as I entered the field these traditional understandings of research quickly proved ineffective and at times overly simplistic when dealing with embodied experience and in particular that of liveness.
Various theoretical understandings of research combined with my experiences in the field to reconfigure my understanding of the research process and my position within my research. Ethnographic and autoethnographic approaches drew my attention to and emphasised my own embodied experience, not simply as a lens
26 through which to observe others, but as a rich source of experience. The concept of the active interview, and the co-constitution of meaning (Holstein and Gubrium
2004), highlighted the active role of participants within the research process.
Moreover, the significance and agency of the nonhuman (Barad 2007, Whatmore
2003) pushed my attention toward the things and forces that shaped, disrupted or amplified various aspects of my research experience. Barad’s (2007) concepts of intra-action and diffraction, the ways they relate to entanglement, and Alecia
Youngblood Jackson and Lisa Mazzei’s (2011) use of Barad’s work to interrogate the research process, were particularly important in my rethinking of the way that
I used and understood the material produced through interviews and participation.
This shift in focus, away from simply collecting data that accurately reflects experiences, toward an attentiveness to emerging entanglements, encouraged an attunement to the liveliness of the research process. This liveliness fills, ruptures and permeates embodied experience, but is often ignored or removed from accounts of the research process. Extending understandings of liveness as an entangled embodiment also highlights research as an entangled practice.
Using Sanden’s (2013) discussion of the emergence of the term ‘live’, I demonstrate how the oppositional binary between technology and liveness remains embedded within contemporary experiences of live music in Chapter 3. Dismantling the reductive binary that often limits and restricts discussions of liveness to considerations of technology is an essential step in extending and expanding the meanings of liveness and moving toward a conceptualisation of liveness in which the entanglement of body and environment are central.
27 Contemporary live music events are enabled by and always exist in an entanglement with technology and Chapter 3 examines understandings and experiences of liveness in relation to technology. Using Leder’s (1990) discussion of incorporation and Ingrid
Richardson’s (2010) concept of ‘technosomatic involvement’, I argue that the ways in which smartphones and digital screens are incorporated into, and engaged with, in everyday life shifts during live music events. Participants discussed actively and purposefully negotiating or re-negotiating their body-technic relationship at live music events. Those bodily negotiations had the potential to alter, disrupt or amplify the flow of affect and emotional engagement at these events. By drawing on Mike
Michael’s (2012) discussion of actor-network theory (ANT) and co(a)gents, I suggest that the specificities of live music events combine with historical traditions, cultural understandings, physical properties, and other things and forces to produce a particular understanding of smartphones and the act of video recording at live music events, which is understood as disrupting or diminishing the experience of liveness.
Heat is a common experience at live music events, as bodies crush tightly together, and at outdoor events the heat of the sun beats down on attendees. Chapter 4 focuses upon the embodied experience of heat, which relates most obviously to cutaneous contact with the weather, but also opens up the body beyond the “classic five” senses and allows for the discussion of multisensory embodiment. The embodied experience of heat is multifaceted and is considered in three ways. Firstly, using the work of
Ingold (2011a) on weather-worlds and Phillip Vannini and Jonathon Taggart (2014) on heat as an affective force, I consider heat as an element of the weather experienced through the touch of the skin. Secondly, informed by Mark Paterson (2005; 2007;
2009), Caroline Potter (2008) and Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson and Helen Owton
28 (2015), I explore heat as an internal force. Lastly, using Leder’s (1990) discussion of the corporeal depths I discuss heat as a quality in air registered through the respiratory system.
At live music events, cutaneous contact can be intense and often uncontrollable, particularly at outdoor events as the weather presses upon and permeates the body, As discussed by Ingold, the weather is a dynamic aspect of our environment that is generally ignored in accounts that consider the body-environment engagement.
Drawing from the work of Vannini and Taggart (2014), I suggest that the experience of heat triggers, or is involved in, the configuration of affective experience. The embodied experience of liveness entwines body and environment in various ways.
Through that interconnectedness, the attendee can actively attune to the affectivity that emerges from, imbues, and constantly shifts within the mutual and ongoing formation of body and world.
The embodied experience of heat does not simply linger on the skin, but moves beyond touch and our cutaneous connection to our environment. Heat can be understood and experienced as an energy force generated within the body, informing and contributing to embodied ways of knowing, being and feeling. This experience of heat, as an internally felt force, draws attention to heat as energising and enlivening.
But heat is also a quality of the air experienced in the corporeal depths. The experience of heat opens up areas of the body, such as the respiratory system, which are often ignored in academic accounts of embodiment. From the surface to the depths, the body senses and interacts with its environment and these interactions shape and fill the embodied experience of liveness.
29 In Chapter 5 I extend my examination of the body as a whole and its entanglement with the environment as contributing to and producing the embodied experience of liveness, through a consideration of atmosphere and the specific conditions, things and feelings that create a felt atmosphere. In this chapter, I focus on my experiences of moving through the muddy grounds of Splendour in the Grass and the particularities of the event that create, alter and intensify atmosphere. As Anderson
(2014) suggests, atmospheres envelop people and things and may be forcefully felt or may be imperceptible. Ingold (2012) demonstrates the complementarity between aesthetic and meteorological definitions of atmosphere and in doing so combines weather and affect in his understanding of the term. The experience of atmosphere can create moments of intensity or force. In Chapter 5 I extend the work of Allen-
Collinson and Owton (2015) on intense embodiment, to suggest that the experience of liveness produces or enables moments of intense entanglement. In these moments, in which bodies are alive to the world and attuned to the atmosphere, a heightened awareness of body, environment and their entwinement momentarily shifts into one’s focus. For Barad (2007), entanglement is produced and enabled by an ongoing intra- activity, which involves bodies, things, feelings and forces. I argue that affective atmospheres form an element or force within that intra-activity. Considering the dynamism of the environment, and specifically the weather-world, highlights the embodied experience of liveness as one entangled with a world in flux.
At live music events, the liveliness of the world is felt. At outdoor events the constant movement and dynamism of the world is experienced through our multisensorial entanglement with the environment; however, movement constitutes, shapes and fills all experience. The interview environment, in which bodies, ideas, memories, feelings
30 and forces combine and coalesce, involves a particular and shifting affective charge.
In Chapter 6 I argue that affective movements and an attunement to these movements are central to understanding and researching the embodied experience of liveness. I use Barad’s (2007) discussion of diffraction and Megan Watkins (2011) work on tears, to focus on the moments of movement and tension that occurred through three interviews. Considering these interviews in relation to the affective and atmospheric movements or shifts that occurred through the course of each interview emphasises the interview as an unfolding co-production and focuses upon the embodied experience of the interview.
Interviews involve an active remembering, through which memories are not simply described, but intra-actively enlivened in situ. This active, entangled remembering also imbues how that interview is remembered, analysed and written about by the researcher. By focusing upon affective movements or moments of being moved within an interview and after an interview, I argue that meaning and significance beyond the transcript can be produced. By embracing, exploring and attending to the shifting entanglements that produce and enable the experience of liveness, the liveliness of the research process emerges.
31 Chapter 1: Entangling theory and theories of entanglement
Introduction
Live music events are enabled by and experienced through the entangling of bodies and things. The concepts of embodiment and entanglement sit at the very core of my understanding of liveness. In this chapter I outline the theoretical framework that structures and supports my research on liveness and demonstrate the ways in which the core concepts of embodiment and entanglement weave together and combine with other concepts that have been important in shaping and extending my thesis argument.
The works of Leder (1990), Ingold (2006; 2011a), Barad (2007) and Anderson (2014) have contributed most significantly to the development of my theoretical framework and elements of their works that have strengthened and furthered my understanding of embodiment, entanglement and liveness are introduced and discussed throughout this chapter.
The term ‘embodiment’ refers to the understanding that all experience is produced, known, and lived, through the body. Mascia-Lees (2011, p.2) explains that embodiment is a ‘way of inhabiting the world’ that involves ‘the senses, emotions, and affect’, which ‘are the essence of our embodied materialities and socialities.’ As
Shilling (2005, p.16) suggests, theories of embodiment were advanced and extended, in part, through the phenomenological concept of the ‘lived body’. Leder (1990, p.5) explains that the concept of the lived body, or ‘Leib’ as it is originally termed in
German, is distinguished from the physical body, or ‘Korper’, and refers to the body as it is lived and experienced. The notion of the lived body recognises the situatedness
32 of the body, which always exists and functions within and because of its surrounds; the lived body therefore, is always a body-in-the-world.
The concept of embodiment was of fundamental importance to my research and this chapter begins with a discussion of embodiment, which extends the definition provided here and outlines the particular understanding of corporeality developed by
Leder (1990) and Ingold (2000). The ways in which these two authors understand the body and its engagement with the world are examined through this chapter and progressed through the thesis. The senses are commonly understood as mediating and shaping the relationship between body and world and for both Leder (1990) and
Ingold (2000, 2006), the senses are always involved in our ongoing and active engagement with the world. Three core ideas shape my understanding of the senses and will be discussed in this chapter and then employed throughout my work. Firstly, the senses are always interconnected with each other and the body as a whole; secondly, the senses function as an aspect of our active engagement in the world; and thirdly, that engagement emerges through unfolding and dynamic entanglements, and as such produces different forms of sense experience.
Leder’s (1990) discussion of the corporeal depths, which moved my research beyond a consideration of the five senses, is then explored. This discussion draws attention to embodied experiences that may be triggered or enabled at live music events and that have the potential to physically and emotionally reconfigure one’s engagement with the space. I then outline Allen-Collinson and Owton’s (2015) concept of ‘intense embodiment’, which draws from Leder’s work, and is used to describe experiences of intensity that push one’s corporeality into a heightened focus. In turn, I extend this
33 idea by arguing that through the experience of liveness, not only is one’s embodied experience heightened, but so too is the experience of body and environment as entangled entities. Bodies are always entangled with their environment and through moments of intense entanglement, such as that triggered by the experience of liveness, that entanglement is forcefully felt.
I then develop my discussion of entanglement using Leder’s (1990) work on ‘one body’ and the process of absorption. Through this process the openness of one’s body to the world is felt. Moving beyond Leder’s work, I suggest that through the experience of liveness and becoming absorbed in one’s environment, one can become attuned to aspects of that entanglement. Attunement involves a focused embodied attention to the shifting and subtle. This form of embodied attention may arise during moments of intense entanglement and draws attention in this moment to the liveliness of the world-in-formation. Using Ingold’s (2011a) discussion of animacy and the meshwork, I outline how western thought has separated and concealed the constant entwining of body and environment and I argue that the experience of liveness momentarily ruptures this felt separation and forcefully draws attention to the dynamic unfolding of body and environment. We are not just in the world, always and already enmeshed, but instead, in and of the world, always being and becoming through our ongoing entanglements.
These ideas of entanglement are specifically developed through the work of Barad. In the process of my thesis I came to Barad’s (2007) work relatively late, and did not fully grasp its significance in relation to entanglement until I engaged with the work of Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei (2011). The way this engagement unfolded and
34 the ways it altered my research approach will be discussed in detail through the following chapter. However, in this chapter it is important to introduce the theoretical contribution Barad’s (2007) work has made to my understanding of entanglement, embodiment and liveness. To do this, I will outline Barad’s concepts of entanglement, intra-action and diffraction and create the foundations for these concepts to be further developed in the next chapter. Leder, Ingold and Barad do not use each others works; however, there are important connections in the ideas they each discuss relating to the emerging entanglement between body and environment and these points of will be examined in this chapter.
Finally, I will discuss Anderson’s (2014) theory of affect to suggest that the embodied experience of liveness involves constantly shifting and unfolding embodied entanglements that are always coloured and shaped, in part, by affect. Affect can be understood as an intensity, energy or force that flows, pulses or surges through life entangling bodies, things and environment (Seigworth and Gregg 2010; Anderson
2014; Vannini and Taggart 2014). The specificities of the affects that entangle with body and environment in live music spaces, and the ways they imbue and shape the experience of liveness will be examined and discussed through each chapter of the thesis. In this chapter, the aspects of Anderson’s (2014) theory of affect that are significant to my research will be introduced and examined.
Before moving into the body of this chapter it is important to quickly explain my usage of various terms throughout the thesis. When utilising the concept of entanglement to consider the engagement between body and environment using terms such as ‘surrounds’, or phrases like ‘that, which is other’ to describe one’s
35 environment are clearly inadequate and problematic. Both of these descriptions are somewhat contradictory to the understanding of the body used and developed in my work. They imply a distinct entity simply surrounded by an outside and other environment, which is of course inaccurate. The wording ‘its surrounds’ also seems to position the body and environment hierarchically. The environment becomes reduced to just matter that surrounds the body. In addition, the term ‘world’ seems too expansive and seems to lack the intimacy involved in an entanglement. As such, I have tried to limit my use of these terms throughout my thesis. When such terms are used, particularly in this chapter, it is generally to reflect the terms used by particular theorists in their understandings of body and environment. In my writing I most commonly follow Ingold’s lead and use the term ‘environment’ to describe that which we inhabit and move through. Our environment enables, constitutes and sustains our bodies; it is not separate, but instead part of us, and our experience, constantly flowing in and out, in a perpetual and shifting entanglement. Moreover, throughout my work, in discussing entanglements, I often write ‘body’, ‘environment’ and
‘things’, however, this is not meant to imply these are separable entities, but instead to stress each particular category. The body is of course always entangled with the environment, which is of course always shaped, filled and structured by things.
Embodiment and the lived body
During the 1980s, in the humanities and social sciences, the body became ‘one of the most popular and contested areas of academic study’ (Shilling 2007, p.2). According to Turner (1994, p.vii), what began with a ‘small trickle of books’ soon turned into an
‘explosion of publications’, as interest in the body intensified and diversified. The concept of embodiment emerged in opposition to the Cartesian split between mind
36 and body, and as Leder (1990, p.5) explains, these theoretical developments provided
‘a potential mode of escape from cognitive habits of dualism deeply entrenched in our culture.’ Theorists using and developing the concept of embodiment began to unravel these intertwined dualisms, including that of mind/body, nature/culture, subject/object
(Shilling 2003).
According to Leder (1990), Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived body is one of the most comprehensive challenges to Cartesian thought, and foundational in many considerations of embodiment. Merleau-Ponty (2002) understands the mind and body as inextricably linked. He asserts that ‘I have no means of knowing the human body other than that of living it… I am my body, at least wholly to the extent that I possess experience’ (Merleau-Ponty 2002, p.231). For Merleau-Ponty (2002), all knowledge is produced through experience and all experience is embodied. However, the body is not an isolated entity it always exists within, and because of, its environment.
Leder (1990, p.5) explains that the body, as described by Merleau-Ponty, ‘is never just an object in the world but that very medium whereby our world comes into being.’ Discussing the work of Merleau-Ponty, Ingold (2000, p.169) argues that knowledge of the body ‘is given by the existential condition of our total bodily immersion, from the start, in an environment.’ For Merleau-Ponty, body and world are ceaselessly woven together, bound to an ongoing process. He writes,
Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the
visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it
inwardly, and with it forms a system (Merleau-Ponty 2002, p.235).
37 The body is only known through its constant interaction with the world, and the world is only known through the body that constantly interacts within and with it. Merleau-
Ponty (2002, p.xii) articulates this in his assertion that ‘there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.’
This understanding of body and environment as co-emergent is significant to Ingold’s work, which stems from these phenomenological foundations. For Ingold (2000, p.168),
From a phenomenological standpoint…the world emerges with its properties
alongside the emergence of the perceiver in person … Since the person is a
being-in-the-world, the coming-into-being of the person is part and parcel of
the process of coming-into-being of the world.
Ingold (1998 cited by Pink 2015, p.27) suggests that ‘the body is the human organism, as the process of embodiment is one and the same as the development of that organism in its environment.’ The ethnographer Sarah Pink (2015, p.27) suggests that by emphasising embodiment as a process, Ingold contributed significantly to theories of embodiment. Indeed, Ingold’s discussion of embodiment as an ongoing and unfolding process always involving the environment is significant to my understanding of embodiment, entanglement and liveness and is returned to throughout this chapter.
The body, always entwined with its environment, is known and felt through the constant flow of experience; however, as Leder (1990) suggests, the lived experience of the body also always involves a series of absences. Indeed, Leder (1990) believes that the enduring power of Cartesian thought within our culture is linked to the
38 experience of bodily absence. Leder (1990, p.3) explains that ‘the body has intrinsic tendencies toward self-concealment’ that can be ‘exaggerated by linguistic and technological extensions.’ According to Leder (1990), most of the body, its parts and the way in which they function, are always absent from one’s attention. As such, ‘the lived body can never be a fully explicit thing’ (Leder 1990, p.17). The complexity of the sensing, perceiving body is never fully or consciously experienced; rather, certain aspects of our body’s functioning are absent from our attention or recede from it, as others come forward in a constant shifting of focus.
Drawing upon the work of Polanyi, Leder (1990, p.18) explains that, as we perceive things within our environment, our attention is often focused toward that thing, rather than the part of the body that perceives or senses it. Leder (1990, p.22) states that ‘the body conceals itself precisely in the act of revealing what is Other’. As the perceiving, sensing and thinking capacities of the body extend outward toward aspects of one’s environment, the body itself can become experienced as something of a ‘nullpoint’ in the perceptual field (Leder 1990, p.14). Many bodily functions that allow for sensing and perceiving, for example ‘the contraction of my eye muscles’, can never be brought into ‘explicit consciousness’ (Leder 1990, p.16). However, other feelings, sensations or perceptions may occupy a ‘marginal presence’ in one’s focus (Leder
1990, p.16). Leder (1990, p.16) explains that one may be aware of these particular sensations ‘in an obscure fashion’ and could attend to them by purposefully shifting one’s focus toward them; alternatively, certain experiences can powerfully pull attention toward a particular region or function of the body. Some circumstances, incidental or purposeful, shift one’s attention ‘to reside in the body here-and-now’
39 (Leder 1990, p.19). Embodied experience continually oscillates within a vast and varied experiential field always structured by both the body and its surrounds.
Importantly, in Leder’s work the term absence does not imply a void or emptiness; instead, it acknowledges and describes the intertwining regions, functions and systems of the body that mostly evade embodied attention and focus. The body is, of course,
‘whereby we are located and defined;’ however, Leder (1990, p.21) argues that our sensing and perceiving capabilities project embodied experience outward. One’s experience or attention is always locatable within the body and never separate from it, and focus always shifts to or from the body-in-the-world. Leder (1990, p.19) argues that this movement of attention away from the body toward the body-in-the-world is the primary experience of embodiment in western cultures.
For Leder (1990), the experience of absence is enabled predominantly through our bodily structure and the process or phenomenon of ‘ecstasis’. Leder’s (1990, p.22) understanding of the body as experienced through a series of absences is due primarily to the ‘ecstatic nature of corporeality.’ According to Leder (1990, p.2), certain parts of the body and its functioning are experienced as absent, because one’s embodied focus is ‘perpetually outside… caught up in a multitude of involvements with other people, with nature, with a sacred domain.’ Drawing from the work of
Heidegger, Leder (1990, pp.21-22) explains that the term ‘ecstasis’ refers to ‘that which stands out’ and describes ‘the very nature of the body… to project outward.’
However, within this outward projection the body is not really a nullpoint.
40 As Leder (1990, pp.22-24) writes, the body is never ‘eradicated from the experiential world;’ instead, this outward projection always occurs within the ‘ineradicable presence of the body-as-a-whole.’ Ecstasis and absence are considered by Leder
(1990) to be entwined phenomena that are bound to the sensing capacities of the body. Comprised of the organs and systems that cluster at or near the body’s surface and informing the “classic five” senses, as well as the system of muscles, tendons and joints that allow for movement, the ecstatic body is constantly caught up in our active engagement with the world. The process or phenomenon of ecstasis always functions in conjunction with the ‘recessive’ body and the ‘dys-appearing’ body, concepts that I will return to later in this chapter. Now however, I will turn my attention toward the senses, which are the central element of many theorisations of embodiment
Sensory perception and the corporeal depths
Along with the increased academic attention on the body, a burgeoning interest in the senses developed; indeed, Howes (2005a, p.4) described this growing interest as a
‘sensual revolution’. Sense experience has been investigated, interrogated, and for many it is understood as central to all experience, mediating ‘the relationship between self and society, mind and body, idea and object’ (Bull et al. 2006, cited in Allen-
Collinson and Owton 2015, p.250). The five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste provided a point of access through which to explore embodiment during interviews. To discuss the five senses during interviews I included questions relating to various embodied experiences such as the view during performances, lighting and visual effects, sound quality and acoustic experiences, the touch of various factors such as the weather and other attendees and the food that participants ate during the
41 event. Although no questions related specifically to smell, some participants also spoke about various smells at events, including sweat, the toilet area, cigarette smoke and the food stalls. Including such questions encouraged discussion of the body in terms that participants could relate to. Participants in my research were unlikely to be aware of the concept of embodiment, as it is understood through the humanities and social sciences; however, they are ‘modern western subjects’ and so, as Pink (2015, p.60) suggests, they ‘understand the world through the five-sense sensorium.’ As interest in the senses has grown within the humanities and social sciences, sense experience has been considered and interrogated, not just theoretically, but also in terms of research practices.
Pink (2015, p.3) explains that sense experience is considered ‘fundamental to how we learn about, understand and represent other people’s lives’. However, a significant development to emerge from socio-cultural investigations into the senses has been the dislodging and dismantling of entrenched understandings that identified the ‘classic five’ senses as natural or universal (Classen 2005, Howes 2010, Allen-Collinson and
Owton 2015). Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.251) assert that the conceptualisation of sense experience as bound and limited to sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch is ‘culturally’ (and temporally) specific.’ As Pink (2015) suggests, alternative understandings of the sensing regions of the body exist in non-western cultures, and so modern western researchers must always be aware that the model of the five senses is only one amongst others. Moreover, as the five-sense model is not universal, Pink (2015) asserts, there is ‘no reason it should dictate the sensory categories’ used in research. According to Paterson (2007, p.20), contemporary studies understand there to be between eight and twenty-one different senses.
42 However, he suggests that ‘the taxonomy of the senses might literally be a senseless enterprise, since it is clear the whole body is implicated in perceiving’ the world
(Paterson 2007, p.21). This assertion by Paterson that the body as a whole perceives the world is a key element in my understanding of embodiment.
Pink (2015) suggests that this understanding of the senses as interconnected has recently gained importance within the social sciences and is often termed multisensorality. This idea that the senses are all interconnected and function as part of the body as a whole is even acknowledged in works that focus more specifically on one sensing region. For example, in Duffy’s (2014, p.242) work on the emotional ecology of festivals, she concentrates on listening practices and the sonic elements of the festival space, yet Duffy acknowledges listening does not just occur through the ears but ‘around and through our entire bodies.’ My understanding of the body and its entanglement with the environment is guided by the notion that the senses are interconnected; however, as discussed by Pink (2015) definitions around the term
‘multisensorality’ are debated and used in a wide variety of theoretical disciplines. As such, I do not intend to extend or develop the concept of multisensorality and my work on the senses is not bound to this term. Instead, I utilise the works of Leder and
Ingold to theoretically frame my understanding of the senses as enmeshed.
Both Leder and Ingold argue that the sensing regions and capacities of the body, and the experiences they produce, are enmeshed with each other and the body as a whole.
These two theorists provide a detailed account of the sensing capacities of the body and locate those capacities within a conceptualisation of body and world that is cohesively entwined. Leder (1990, p.24) argues that the use of any organ or part of the
43 body, sensory or otherwise, never occurs separately, as the body as a whole always
‘provides the background that supports and enables the point of corporeal focus’
(Leder 1990, p.24). The following description demonstrates Leder’s understanding of the senses always working within an interconnected system. Leder (1990, p.24) explains:
When I gaze at a landscape I dwell most fully in my eyes. Yet this is only
possible because my back muscles hold my spine erect, my neck muscles
adjust my head into the proper position for viewing. My feet, my legs, my
arms, all lend their support. My other perceptual senses flesh out the scene I
witness with sound and warmth, even if my attention is centred on visual
characteristics.
Leder (1990) explains that the senses do not operate in isolation; they function as part of a sensory system, combining, overlapping and interacting, and this system functions within and as part of the entire system that constitutes the body as a whole.
Furthermore, Leder (1990, p.23) argues that sense experience does not unfold along neatly divided conceptual categories, but as a ‘ceaseless stream’ of perceptions and sensations generated through our ongoing engagement with the world.
Leder’s (1990) discussion of the senses combining and connecting bears clear similarities to aspects of Ingold’s (2000) discussion of the senses as functioning synergistically. The similarities between Leder’s and Ingold’s approaches to the senses are unsurprising as the foundations of their ideas are present in the work of
Merleau-Ponty. According to Merleau-Ponty (2002, p.369) through the ‘unity and identity of the body as a synergic totality’ any sensation or perception is not experienced, or understood in isolation, but ‘with the whole of the present or possible
44 phenomenal body.’ Through this understanding the faculties of the senses are not distinct but instead, are facets of the same action, that of the organism perceiving and sensing its environment.
Like Leder (1990), Ingold draws on the works of Merleau-Ponty, but also on psychologist James Gibson, who pioneered the ecological approach to perception.
According to Ingold (2011a, p.11), Gibson is a ‘hard-nosed, matter-of-fact-realist’ and although his work is seemingly removed from a phenomenological approach, Ingold uses it along with that of Merleau-Ponty to demonstrate that the body is a system that synergistically and constantly weaves together, and links sense perception in action.
Ingold (2000, p.268) asserts that the senses ‘should not be understood as separate keyboards for the registration of sensation but of organs of the body as a whole, in whose movement within an environment, the activity of perception consists.’ The senses are always interconnected and that interconnection always exists in and through, our engagement with the world. Despite the synergism of the senses and the body as a whole, discussion of embodied experience sometimes requires a more focused account of one or two of the senses. As Ingold (2011a) explains, this does not suggest those sensory modalities are somehow separated from each other.
Another point of alignment between the works of Leder and Ingold relates to movement, as both theorists consider movement to be essential in perception and so, central to sense experience. Leder (1990, p.17) argues that perception and movement are always entwined and so, only ever theoretically separated. As such, he states, ‘the classical distinction between perception and movement is in fact highly artificial’, only separating ‘in reflection what is always united in lived experience’ (Leder 1990,
45 p.17). Leder (1990) divides the body’s muscles between that system of muscles, tendons and joints that allows for movement and is situated within the ecstatic or surface body, and the muscle of the viscera, which functions, for example, in the digestive and cardiovascular systems. Like Leder, I understand movement to be inextricably entwined with sense experience; movement and the systems that move the body are always actively engaged in the body’s ongoing state of being-in-the- world.
In a similar vein, Ingold understands perception as bound to movement. Ingold
(2011a, p.11) asserts that ‘perception is fundamentally about movement’ (emphasis in original) and that this is the ‘key insight’ he gained from the work of Gibson. Ingold
(2011a, p.11) uses and extends Gibson’s idea that ‘perception is the achievement not of a mind in a body, but of the whole organism as it moves about in its environment.’
Ingold draws upon the work of Merleau-Ponty to distinguish his own understanding of perception and movement from that of Gibson. Ingold’s (2011a, p.11) understanding of movement progresses beyond the somewhat ‘rigid’ and ‘insentient’ relationship between body and world proposed by Gibson, toward an understanding of the world inspired by the work of Merleau-Ponty, in which the world is sentient and the body and world are open. Ingold’s (2011a, p.12) understanding of movement involves:
not a casting about the hard surfaces of a world in which everything is already
laid out, but an issuing along with things in the very processes of their
generation; not the trans-port (carrying across) of completed being, but the
pro-duction (bringing forth) of perpetual becoming.
46 For Ingold (2011a) the body does not simply move across a pre-existing world; rather, the body and world emerge through their ongoing entangled movement. The body and environment are not two independent entities, but always enmeshed and emerging through constant movement.
Despite the similarities between the approaches of Leder and Ingold regarding the senses, when first reading these two works I believed there to be a key difference in their core understandings of the body in relation to the senses and culture. I initially believed Leder (1990) and Ingold held opposing views concerning the role of culture in the experience of the senses, with Leder acknowledging it and Ingold disputing it.
However, as I continued to read the two works my understanding shifted and I would now suggest that although the works of the two differ in terms of content and focus, the core ideas around the body and the senses align, though the language used by each writer and their points of emphasis vary.
Leder understands the body as providing particular potentialities that are utilised, emphasised, contested, ignored or altered in relation to a range of factors and forces that include cultural specificities. He states: ‘cultural variations are always played out upon the keyboard of possibilities presented by our corporeal structure’ (Leder 1990, p.3). Importantly, Leder (1990, p.3) considers ‘our corporeal structure’ essential in allowing for cultural specificities, amongst other things, to generate, influence or direct experience. Ingold (2011b) also recognises this common corporeal structure, although he disputes or de-emphasises the role of culture. Ingold (2011b, p.323) asserts that ‘the world we inhabit is a continuous one, of relations and processes, and not primordially divided into mutually unintelligible domains of symbolic
47 representation’. He goes on to explain that his argument is that ‘differences are emergent within the unfolding of these relations and processes, rather than superimposed by ‘culture’ upon a common bedrock of ‘nature’ (Ingold 2011b, p.323).
Ingold (2011a) understands experience as differing between people, times and places but stresses that these differences are not reducible to culture. He suggests that ‘our human potential for perception is common, but each of us perceives along different pathways of sensation, following different processes of education of our somatic attention’ (Ingold 2011a, p.69). In Ingold’s (2011a) account, differences in how people perceive their environment are accentuated as emergent and relational.
Leder puts more emphasis on the role of culture, whilst Ingold minimizes it. However, when Leder’s other statements on culture are considered I would suggest that what he is describing is very similar to Ingold’s (2011a, p.69) notion of ‘processes of education of our somatic attention.’ For example, when discussing the different ways the body is understood and used between cultures Leder (1990, p.29) writes,
these variations are only possible within, and are limited by the common
structure of the human body. Its sensory organs, its forward directedness, its
muscular capacities, are prearticulations upon which all cultures must build.
The final section of this statement by Leder is significant as it acknowledges that the shared structure of the human body is a starting point, which is built upon.
In further developing this point, Leder (1990, p.43) goes on to discuss cultural variations and gives the example of a trained yogi noting that ‘the awareness and control over the inner body exhibited by trained yogis has far surpassed what used to be thought possible in the West.’ I would argue, and I believe this aligns with Leder’s
48 work, that becoming a trained yogi involves not just cultural factors but a continual relational and unfolding process that involves the entwining of particular knowledge, actions and embodied practices. In Ingold’s (2011a) approach to the body, we share a common potential for perception, but the way we perceive involves ongoing emergence through unfolding relations between various factors including bodies, actions, learnt skills and environmental factors. I suggest that the process of becoming and being a trained yogi is an example of this process.
Despite their differing use of and emphasis upon the term culture, both theorists acknowledge the capacities and limits of embodiment and the ways in which these capacities and limits can be accentuated, pushed or exaggerated by various factors, which are not limited to cultural means. I consider that the ways in which we understand, experience and negotiate our bodies to be not simply given, nor innate, but instead the result of a complex and dynamic entanglement, which involves, though is not limited to, one’s culture. One’s culture does not act as a filter, directly or simply determining one’s embodiment, instead it forms a thread within a complex web that entangles to produce and enable embodied experience as an unfolding, relational process.
The understanding of the senses that I have developed through my engagement with
Leder’s and Ingold’s works forms only one conceptualisation of the body and environment and the role, structure and experience of the senses. Ingold’s (2000) discussion of the interconnectedness of the senses has garnered criticism, especially from Howes (2011), and this criticism is particularly worth noting here, as Ingold’s response to it extends and clarifies his discussion of the senses and this has enabled
49 me to extend and clarify my own understanding. In his critique, Howes (2011) equates Ingold’s discussion of the synergy between the senses with the senses being indistinguishable. Howes (2011, p.319) suggests that in Ingold’s work, the senses are understood as ‘basically the same and all engaged in the same actions.’ On the contrary, Ingold’s (2011b) insists, the senses are an aspect of our embodied engagement with the world and, as he explains, these engagements are not identical.
Ingold (2011b p.325) asserts that sense experiences are diverse ‘aspects of action – ways of attentively going forth in the world’. Moreover, as Ingold (2011b) suggests, the senses are often engaged simultaneously in different actions.
Leder similarly believes that one’s corporeal focus is often not singular, but multiple and varied. Leder (1990, p.25) explains that during a single activity ‘there may be several corporeal foci drawn together. Furthermore, the general corporeal field may include several perceptual or actional gestalts coexisting and exerting mutual pulls.’
Despite having a point of focus, the body always operates as, and within, a ‘field of experience’ (emphasis added, Leder 1990, p.24). For Leder (1990, p.165-166), sensory experiences are not merely ‘data internal to consciousness, but neither are they “out there” somewhere. They are part of a rich body-world chiasm that eludes dualistic characterisations.’ Similarly, Ingold (2011b, p.325) writes that the senses are not transmitters relaying information back to the mind; they are ‘mode[s] ‘of active engagement with the world.’ As Leder (1990, p.21) argues, ‘The lived body is thus first and foremost not a located thing but a path of access, a being-in-the-world.’
Ingold’s response to Howes emphasises that the senses are simultaneously distinct, yet indissolubly linked and he stresses the importance of understanding the senses as always involved in the continual action of the body and world mutually unfolding.
50 Ingold’s response to Howes also worked to draw my attention toward this important aspect of Leder’s discussion, in which the senses always function, and one’s embodied focus always shifts within an experiential field. This understanding of the body and world allows for the complexity that is necessary to considerations of embodiment, entanglement and liveness.
Importantly, Leder’s understanding of the body explicitly moves beyond the senses and demonstrates how one’s experiential field can, at times, include the corporeal depths, which he describes through his discussion of the recessive body. Though we are largely unconscious of its workings, the recessive body is host to the ‘visceral functions’ that sustain human life. Leder (1990, p.37) asserts that the recessive body is constituted by diverse systems of organs, each of which is characterised by ‘different ways of withdrawing and surfacing to consciousness’. The body is always both ecstatic and recessive, at one and the same time involving an extension outward into the world and a receding back into often ‘unexperienceable depths’ (Leder 1990, p.53).
The organs and systems, located within the recessive body, are considered by Leder
(1990) to be largely unknown, occupying a largely unconscious periphery. Leder
(1990, p.53) explains that our corporeal depths are mostly characterised by spatial ambiguity – ‘They are part of the body we do not use to perceive or act upon the world in a direct sense’ – and a spatiotemporal discontinuity, which belong to a mode of disappearance. Though the recessive body generally falls away from attention and will, some parts of the recessive body can surface occasionally through sensation
(Leder 1990). For example, the heart, stomach and lungs can be pulled into our
51 awareness, through various bodily functions, types of engagement with the world or concentrated corporeal focus. In moments of excitement, as a band is about to take the stage for example, one’s heart may pound quickly, one’s stomach may bubble with excitement and one’s breath may shorten or become more shallow. With his discussion of the recessive body, Leder (1990) opens up the often ignored corporeal depths for further analysis. Leder provides a more fully fleshed out understanding of the body: one that is not limited to the senses. Opening up the corporeal depths adds a necessary complexity to conceptualisations of the body and draws attention to aspects of embodiment that are often ignored but can be highly significant to both to the experience of liveness and also to embodied experience more generally.
Considerations of the corporeal depths rarely feature in embodied accounts from the humanities or social sciences. Although the recessive body is experienced mostly as absent, Leder (1990) discusses bodily dysfunctions as one way in which these parts of the body can shift into focus. For example, experiences of pain trigger what Leder
(1990, p. 73) terms an ‘affective call’ and seize ‘one’s attention with [a] gnawing distasteful quality’. In this moment, an area of the body that is positioned in the background of one’s consciousness through everyday activities is pulled forward as one’s focus shifts toward it. The part of the body in pain appears through a moment of dysfunction; it ‘dys-appears’ (Leder 1990, p. 84). According to Leder (1990, p.71), this moment of dys-appearance triggers ‘sensory intensification’ as ‘a region of the body that may have previously given forth little in the way of sensory stimuli suddenly speaks up.’ These experiences demonstrate the ways the corporeal depths are entangled with, and influenced by, the environment and also how these sensations
52 can reconfigure our embodied experience, shifting our emotional engagement with the world.
This notion of dys-appearance is expanded upon by Allen-Collinson and Owton
(2015, p.247), who develop the concept of ‘intense embodiment’ to describe moments that can occur through heightened physical activity, such as when running or boxing, during which an intense experience of one’s corporeality is triggered. Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) demonstrate that dys-appearance is not necessarily triggered through dysfunction, but can also occur through a positive experience. Drawing on the works of Leder (1990) and Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) it is possible to see how the body dys-appears during moments of rupture or disruption and through that experience of disruption one’s corporeal focus shifts and varies. The experiences of pain discussed by Leder and the intense embodiment discussed by Allen-Collinson and Owton each disrupt the everyday, more mundane experience of the body.
Live music events, particularly outdoor festivals provide a disruption from the everyday life and as such provide fertile grounds for the experience of bodily dys- appearance. For many, particularly those living and working indoors, the mundane routines of everyday life unfold in ways that push one’s corporeal focus outward toward the task at hand. The body recedes from attention as one’s practical engagement with the world holds one’s attention. Moreover, in indoor spaces sensory neutrality is often pursued; for example, lighting is bright, though not glaring, air conditioning is not too hot or cold, the ground is smooth and predictable and outdoor noise is minimised. In such conditions, the sensory experiences generated are comfortable and stable; the sensing regions of the body and that which they are
53 sensing can easily recede into the background of one’s focus. The experience of liveness exceeds the everyday and produces an embodied experience, or moments of embodied experience in which the body, or aspects of one’s embodiment are pulled powerfully into one’s attention creating moments of intense embodiment. However, I would suggest here that the experience of liveness also demonstrates the potential to extend this notion of intense embodiment.
Through moments of intensity the body shifts into one’s attention; however, the environment, or elements of it, can also be powerfully pulled into one’s focus. This intense engagement is not between body and environment, as two separate entities, but enmeshed simultaneously in their entangling. I argue that the experience of liveness triggers, not just an intense embodiment, but moments of intense entanglement. The embodied experience of liveness is an entangled phenomenon; one’s attention is not simply with the body or the environment but with the entangling of both.
The body as open and enmeshed
At its core, entanglement involves openness. Entangled entities cannot be closed off or separable; instead, they are interconnected, enmeshed and woven together through their mutual openness. According to Leder (1990), the sensing capacities of the body and the process of ecstasis open the body to the world and vice versa. Leder (1990, p.158) explains that ‘as a subject, I do not inhabit a private theatre of consciousness but am ecstatically intertwined, one body with the world.’ For Leder (1990, p.30), the lived body is neither static nor complete; instead, it is open to the world and through
54 that openness bound to a process of transformation. Leder (1990, p.30) argues that the body is not ‘fixed over time, or even confined by the physical boundaries of the flesh’. The fluidity of the lived body suggests that it is continually engaged in ‘ebbs and flows, now absorbing things, now casting them back onto shore’ (Leder 1990, p.35). The openness of the body’s boundaries allows the body to incorporate things from one’s world and through this process of incorporation, parts of the body
‘expressly mesh with the world’ (Leder 1990, p.34)
To examine the meshing of body and world, Leder (1990, p.157) explores the convergences between phenomenology and the Neo-Confucian concept of ‘ch’I’, which relates to both the material and spiritual and can be described as vital or material force, or ‘matter-energy’. Leder (1990, p.156) believes that the body and world mutually open to each other and ‘form one body’. This process of forming ‘one body’ involves the ‘embodied unity of all things’ (Leder 1990, p.156). In making this claim, Leder (1990, p.157) acknowledges that he is ‘assert[ing] something about the fundamental structure of the universe as well as the place within it of human beings.’
Importantly, this assertion should not be understood as erasing or minimising differences between bodies and ways of experiencing or understanding embodiment.
Leder (1990, p.162) suggests that, ‘to be embodied is to inhabit a particular place and time, to have a unique history, physiology, and perceptual perspective. Our bodies mark us off as unmistakably different even as they open us up to interconnection.’
Leder (1990) does not diminish individual experience, but understands that experience as always entangled with the world and the other bodies, things and environments that fill it.
55 Leder (1990) discusses the principle of one body, in regards to a variety of embodied phenomena. One aspect of Leder’s (1990, p.165) discussion of one body involves his understanding of a process he terms ‘absorption’. The process of absorption involves the body opening to the world, but also moments in which that openness is felt. My understanding of entanglement is informed, extended and refined through my engagement with Leder’s discussion of absorption. In Leder’s work, absorption is not only a process or phenomenon, but instead, a way of being that requires a specific and focused form of engagement with the world. Leder suggests (1990, p.165) that as entities open to the world, bodies can become ‘absorbed in our world’. This absorption occurs during moments when ‘beauty or significance’ rush in, and we awaken to the world. In these moments we are ‘swallowed into a larger body’ of the world, and aspects of that world are ‘swallowed into our embodiment’ and the body is transformed through the process (Leder 1990, p.165). Leder (1990, p.165) describes this phenomenon or process as involving a ‘bidirectional incorporation.’
The body and world are intimately entwined, made from the same matter, each sustaining and imprinting upon the other; however, this entwinement, experienced as absorption in Leder’s account, is not always felt. Leder (1990) describes walking on a forest path to demonstrate that this experience of absorption is not automatic or guaranteed; rather, absorption occurs when one consciously opens one’s body to the world, or shifts one’s corporeal focus toward their body’s openness. As Leder (1990) walks the forest path, he initially pays little attention to his surrounds. In this moment when he is only ‘dimly aware’ of his surrounds, he explains that ‘the landscape neither penetrates into me, nor I into it’ (Leder 1990, p.165).
56 As he continues along the path, however, the rhythms of his walking combine with the sounds, sights, smells and feel of his surrounds to gradually increase his awareness, intensify his embodied focus and begin the bidirectional process of absorption. In this moment, Leder (1990, p.165) explains that he ‘open[s] feelingly such that the world can penetrate my senses, my muscles, my consciousness.’ I would suggest that Leder’s (1990) notion of absorption describes a moment of felt entanglement. The body is always and already entangled with its environment and with all matter of things, however, that entanglement can become felt and experienced through a particular embodied engagement. One’s embodied focus does not only shift, but in certain moments, through certain engagements, it becomes strengthened or intensified.
Leder’s notion of absorption has shaped my discussion of attunement; however, I use attunement to articulate a broader range of experiences that move beyond a bidirectional process and involve an active engagement, in which one purposefully and intensely focuses on elements within their entanglement. Through my thesis I argue that attendees at live music events can become attuned to aspects of their environment and that attunement can produce or enable moments of intensity through which one’s felt entanglement is amplified. Moments of intense entanglement allow one to become attuned.
Leder (1990) discusses absorption in relation to moments of beauty and significance, I would differentiate the experience of attunement by giving it a broader definition.
Moments of attunement, as I use the term, do not necessarily involve things or moments that are beautiful or significant but instead moments or experiences of
57 focused bodily attention. For example, a fisherman might be absorbed in his environment, but attuned to the minute shifts in the tension of his line. Or an attendee may be absorbed in the action and excitement of a live music event, including the pounding music, the buzzing atmosphere and the lively crowd, but may be attuned to much smaller, or more subtle shifts such as the splintering and shifting of atmosphere that occurs when another attendee becomes aggressive or overly inebriated or the slight cracks or changing tones in a performer’s voice and the way they trigger physical and emotional reactions. Attunement involves an engaged embodiment that can focus upon the shifting, the minute and the subtle moments and instances that can intensify or diminish one’s absorption or, in my own words, one’s felt entanglement.
The idea that the body is open to its environment and through this openness entangled, is also central for Ingold. At the very foundations of Ingold’s (2011a) work is the understanding that we inhabit a sentient world. Drawing from the writings of
Merleau-Ponty, Ingold (2011a, p.12) argues that the lived body is ‘primordially and irrevocably stitched into the fabric of the world.’ For Ingold (2011a), life unfolds through an open body and environment that are sentient and bound to an ongoing generation. Ingold (2011a, p.12) writes:
To be sentient, to the contrary, is to open up to a world, to yield to its
embrace, and to resonate in one’s inner being to its illuminations and
reverberations. Bathed in light, submerged in sound and rapt in feeling, the
sentient body, at once both perceiver and producer, traces the paths of the
world’s becoming in the very course of contributing to its ongoing renewal.
Ingold (2011a) explores and develops these ideas through his discussion of animacy and he aims to re-animate western thought. Ingold (2011a) explains that animism is
58 often used to describe a belief system through which life is assigned to objects.
However, Ingold (2006, p.10) argues that animacy is not a system of beliefs, but a way of being-in-the-world, that provides a ‘dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds… continually and reciprocally bring one and another into existence.’ According to Ingold (2011a, p.63), this way of being ‘is alive and open to a world in continuous birth.’
The logic that dominates western thought and separates bodies, things, and environment ignores the interconnectedness that Ingold emphasises; the constant entwining that is always and already present in every moment of being. Within an animic ontology, Ingold (2011a, p.63) explains, ‘beings do not propel themselves across a ready-made world but rather issue forth through a world-in-formation, along the lines of their relationships.’ Ingold (2011a, p.63) describes these entangling lines of interconnected ‘movement and growth’ as ‘the meshwork.’ The body exists and unfolds in a relational field, constituted ‘not of interconnected points but interwoven lines, not a network but a meshwork.’ Ingold’s (2006) discussion of the animate and his concept of meshwork both contribute to my understanding of entanglement and build upon the idea of the body as open to its environment.
Again, the central concepts and ideas of Ingold and Leder seem to align, however, the focus and point of emphasis in each work varies and as such Ingold provides an account of the body as open which is different to that of Leder. The concept of entanglement always involves both body and environment. Although Leder discusses the environment as open and unfolding with the body, the focus of his work is primarily upon the body as a dynamic entity, open and extending to the world.
59 Ingold’s work differs, in that the environment is given much more attention. Ingold explores the significance of the environment, and specific aspects of the environment, as lively and involved in a mutual unfolding between body and environment. The lines of movement along which both the body and environment grow, generate and enmesh are central for Ingold.
I understand Leder as focusing upon the body and world as open and forming one body, which involves a unity and entwinement of all things. Ingold, on the other hand, emphasises an openness between body and world, which involves the sentience or animacy of all things, that is, the liveliness of our world and body in formation.
Through this point of difference, the work of Ingold provides another necessary element in my understanding of entanglement. Leder’s consideration of the corporeal depths fleshes out the body, and Ingold’s examination of aspects of the environment provides a fuller, more detailed understanding of the environment and, in turn, a more detailed theoretical foundation for my understanding of entanglement. Using the works of both Leder and Ingold provides me with a necessarily complex framework, that allows for body, environment and their entanglement to be explored through the thesis, without disregarding or minimising the role of either in the experience of liveness. Through the work of Leder, and particularly Ingold, the relationship between body and environment is extended beyond the idea of being-in-the-world toward the idea of being-in-and-of-the-world. The body emerges in, with and through its unfolding environment. Throughout my work the body and environment are never considered in isolation or as static entities; rather, the dynamic intertwinement of all things is explored.
60 Entanglement and intra-actively being and becoming
Barad’s (2007) discussion of entanglement, and specifically the way she theorises knowing and being provided an argument that allowed me to extend and expand my understanding and usage of this concept. Unlike Leder (1990) and Ingold (2006,
2011a), Barad (2007) focuses specifically upon the concept of entanglement and the related concepts of intra-action and diffraction. In many ways these concepts overlap with the arguments presented by Ingold and Leder. Indeed, Barad does not introduce ideas that are wholly different from those of Ingold and Leder. Barad’s focus on entanglement and her concept of intra-action intersect with Leder’s discussion of one- body and particularly with Ingold’s notion of the meshwork. Through her specific focus Barad’s (2007) work has contributed to my understanding of entanglement, enabling me to clarify and strengthen my usage of this concept and, as a consequence, my understanding of embodiment and liveness. Moreover, Youngblood Jackson and
Mazzei’s (2011) use of Barad in their work on diffraction and the research process forced me to reconsider my own research practices through an entangled perspective.
This shift in my perspective also highlighted aspects of Ingold’s work that resonate with this approach.
Entanglement is central to Barad’s (2007, p.ix) understanding of existence, which she asserts ‘is not an individual affair’. Instead, she argues, beings ‘emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating’ (Barad 2007, p.ix). Barad (2007, p.ix) explains that ‘to be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence’. This idea, though articulated differently, aligns with Ingold’s discussion of all kinds of beings reciprocally bringing each another into existence. In both accounts, the individual
61 only comes into being through their entangled emergence. This emergence is a continual and ongoing reconfiguration; it does not happen ‘once and for all’ and is not determined by ‘some external measure of space and time’ (Barad 2007, pix). Instead,
‘space and time, like matter and meaning, come into existence, are iteratively reconfigured through each intra-action’ (Barad 2007, pix).
Barad’s (2007) term intra-action differs from interaction in that it does not involve separate agencies that are formed prior to their interaction, but instead entangled agencies emerging through their intra-action (Barad 2007, p.ix). Individuals never exist as separate, contained or independent entities; they are intra-actively configured and reconfigured through a continual process of becoming. Again Barad’s work develops similar ideas to those of Ingold; indeed, Ingold’s understanding of body and environment could be described as intra-active. Barad (2007) asserts that there is nothing prior to entanglement. Barad (2007, p.170) elaborates this idea, explaining,
Bodies do not simply take their places in the world. They are not simply
situated in, or located in, particular environments. Rather, “environments” and
“bodies” are intra-actively co-constituted. Bodies (“human,” “environmental,”
or otherwise) are integral “parts” of, or dynamic reconfigurings of, what is.
The body and environment are always imbued with a dynamism, constantly bound to an ongoing process of becoming, and entanglements are similarly dynamic. Barad
(2007, p.74) explains that this dynamism is significant to the multiplicity and specificity of entanglements, which shift and alter at different rates, moving and flowing in particular patterns. At live music events, attendees are involved in a number of physical, social, cultural, emotional and affective entanglements that shift and involve body and environment. The specificities of these entanglements
62 contribute to, enable and structure, the experience of liveness and these are focused upon throughout my work.
Barad’s development of the concept of diffraction most clearly separates her work from that of Ingold. According to Barad (2007), the term diffraction refers to the process through which waves bend and spread when encountering an obstruction, and the process of attending to the movement of these energies and forces. In terms of entanglements, diffraction is significant both theoretically and practically and indeed blurs the distinction between these two categories. Barad’s usage of the term diffraction will be considered in more detail in relation to my methodology in the following chapter, however, here it is important to note that the use of the term diffraction by Barad (2007) and subsequently by Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei
(2011), relates to entanglement, liveness and the liveliness of the world.
A diffractive approach to the study of liveness as an entangled phenomenon draws attention to the movement and shifts of energies, forces and varying intensities. It diffuses agency between all things, human and nonhuman, and by doing so it opens up each element of the research process to interrogation. A diffractive approach allows for the complexities, subtleties and dynamism of liveness to be explored. The liveliness of the engagement between body and world is highlighted. Indeed, Barad (2007, p.235) acknowledges this liveliness when she writes:
There is a vitality to intra-activity, a liveliness, not in the sense of a new
form of vitalism, but rather in terms of a new sense of aliveness. The
63 world’s effervescence, its exuberant creativeness can never be contained or
suspended.
Here Barad’s (2007) work resonates with Ingold’s discussion of the animate and becoming aware of or focused upon the aliveness of the world. For both Barad and
Ingold, this liveliness is significant not only to ways of being but also ways of knowing. As Svane (2014) discusses, an important element of Barad’s work concerns her discussion of being-in-the-world and being-of-the-world. Knowing and being entangle as ontology and epistemology combine in what Barad (2007, p.409) refers to as an ‘onto-epistemological approach’ to the study of the intertwined practices of knowing and being. This approach is a key element of
Barad’s (2007) work and has been further developed by various theorists such as
Youngblood and Mazzei (2011); however, Ingold also suggests a similar idea.
In his rethinking of the animate, Ingold (2011a, p.75) argues that ‘Knowing must be reconnected with being, epistemology with ontology, thought with life.’ Ingold
(2011a, p.75) discusses the potential of an‘animistic openness to the world’ in regards to scientific knowledge practices. The generation of knowledge in science usually depends on the researchers positioning themselves as above and separate to that which they study; instead, to be open to the world one studies is to be placed firmly within it and to acknowledge and learn from that position.
This argument can also be applied to research such as mine that sits within the humanities. Ingold (2011a, p.75) asserts that practices of generating knowledge must be built on a ‘foundation of openness rather than closure, engagement rather than detachment. And this means regaining the sense of astonishment.’ I interpret Ingold’s
64 discussion of a sense of astonishment as relating to the liveliness of the world and our attunement to it. Ingold (2011a) uses the term astonishment in his discussion of re- animating western thought to describe an experience or feeling that is entwined with our way of being and knowing. Ingold (2011a, p.64) asserts that within an animic ontology people embrace the world with a perpetual astonishment, which ‘allows them at every moment to respond to the flux of the world with care, judgement and sensitivity.’ For Ingold astonishment is not a feeling or experience of surprise, it is a way of being and knowing through which one is attuned to the liveliness of the world.
The points of similarity between the works of Ingold and Barad, and the moments during which they overlap or resonate with each other are important to acknowledge and explore as they demonstrate and emphasise that the concept of entanglement is not simply or only contained within theoretical arguments but provides a more comprehensive way of knowing, being and doing.
The significance of ‘liveliness’ to a project focused upon liveness seems obvious; however, when starting out it was not one of my main concerns, theoretically or practically. As the theories of Ingold and Barad entwined and meshed with my experiences of live events, the process of researching, and the ways I was thinking about the concept of liveness, my attention was drawn more and more toward the liveliness of my research. Being open to the liveliness of the process and experience of researching liveness allowed me to attend to the shifts and movements in both the material I was generating and my understanding of that material. I became more focused on moments of intensity and tension in my experiences at live events and during interviews and these moments, when I was most affected, or a participant was most engaged and animated, moved into the centre of my research. I began to
65 consider not just what was said, or what was experienced, but how it was said and how my engagement with participants and live music events, unfolded, shifted and intensified. The distinction between knowing and being blurred as I moved my attention toward the lively experience of liveness and what it means to consider research as an embodied and entangled practice.
Liveness as an affective force
Affect textures and colours every entanglement, and so is an essential element in my consideration of the embodied experience of liveness. As discussed by Anderson
(2014), there is no single or simple theory of affect; rather, it is used differently across and within different literatures. Moreover, Anderson (2014, p.4) suggests that the depth and breadth of affect theory has perhaps extended and expanded to the point where reviewing all elements of this theory is ‘probably now impossible’. According to Lorimer (2008, cited by Vannini 2015, p.5), different theorists of affect understand this concept as ‘properties, competencies, modalities, energies, attunements, arrangements and intensities of differing texture, temporality, velocity and spatiality that act on bodies, are produced through and transmitted by bodies.’ Seigworth and
Gregg (2010) suggest that affect emerges from a field imbued by messy, muddy connections and disconnections, in which straightforward conceptualisations collapse in favour of those that blur boundaries, accentuate tensions and highlight subtleties.
Anderson’s approach to affect provides a useful theoretical framework that has informed both my general discussion of affect as well as my more specific focus on affective atmospheres, which I explore later in the thesis. Anderson’s (2014) work on affect is influenced primarily by Massumi, Deleuze and Sedgwick. Drawing from the
66 work of Sedgwick, Anderson (2014, p.6) explains that affects course through life, like
‘free radicals’, attaching to ‘almost anything’ including, though not limited to, people, places, thoughts, feelings and other things. Through that attachment, affects can permanently intensify or alter meaning (Anderson, 2014). In Anderson’s (2014) account there is a dynamism and intensity that imbues affective life and affective life is not limited or restricted to a singular or contained realm, such as the political, economic, cultural or social. Rather, affect ‘cuts across the separate domains we habitually organise the world into’ (Anderson 2014, p.6). As Anderson (2014, p.6) explains, ‘affects are constantly infusing embodied practices, resonating with discourses, coalescing around images, becoming part of institutions… catalysing political communities, and being known and intervened in, amongst much else.’
Following Anderson (2014), I interpret affect as an intensity or force, infusing experience with a constant dynamism. Affects rush, pulse or flow through life, producing, texturing or intensifying entanglements. Affects have an ambiguous, transient, ephemeral and ungraspable nature. Bodies actively unfold in entangled doings that are affectively shaped, understood and experienced. Anderson (2014, p.4) suggests that there are ‘three ways of encountering and understanding affect’: as an
‘object-target’, as a ‘bodily capacity’, and as a ‘collective condition’. Through the thesis I focus on affect as a bodily capacity and as a collective condition.
In describing affect as a bodily capacity, Anderson states (2014, p.10), ‘Affect pertains to capacities rather than existing properties of the body… Because capacities are dependent on other bodies, they can never be exhaustively specified in advance’.
Anderson (2014) suggests that affects are not predetermined or individually
67 contained, but instead unfolding and relational. Anderson (2014, p.105) states that a body’s affective charge always ‘carries traces of other bodies and both reflects and contributes to, some form of complex, changing, relational field.’ Importantly,
Anderson (2014, p.11) explains that identifying an entity’s relational constitution is only a starting point and reveals ‘nothing specific about different affects and what they do’. Considering the ways in which affects ‘emerge from and express specific relational configurations, whilst also themselves becoming elements within those formations’ is one way to move beyond this starting point (Anderson 2014, p.11).
Liveliness functions both as an affective force, which characterises the experience of liveness, and as an expression of the relations that constitute liveness. At live music events, through the entangling of environment and bodies, and the specificities of that entanglement, open bodies can become affectively attuned to the dynamism of the live experience. That attunement can shape, temper or amplify moments of intense entanglement and these moments are formed and re-formed intra-actively as the liveliness and force of affect is amplified and felt through the embodied experience of liveness.
The relationality of affect moves it beyond the bodily capacities of humans and reveals affect as a collective condition. According to Anderson (2014), affects are collective, emerging from and mediated through interactions or engagements.
However, more than this, collective affects form the ‘complex conditions for other processes, events and relations. Affects become the environment within which people dwell’ (Anderson 2014, p.105). Seigworth and Gregg (2010, p.2) suggest a similar idea, stating that, ‘affect is persistent proof of a body’s never less than ongoing
68 immersion in and among the world’s obstinacies and rhythms’. The constant and continuing entangling of body and world shifts, structures and is patterned by affect.
Anderson (2014, p.106) suggests that collective affects, which are ‘perhaps more fragile and transient than other more obviously material conditions of life’, are ever- present, constituting ‘part of the background of life and living.’ Although affects are constantly woven through everyday life, as collective conditions, they have an ambiguous existence (Anderson 2014). I understand Anderson’s discussion of this ambiguity as relating to the capacity of affects to be collectively produced and individually experienced. Indeed, according to Anderson (2014), affects always involve a series of tensions; they occupy a position in-between, they are at one and the same time distinct and indistinct, palpable and ephemeral, complete and incomplete.
In one room the atmosphere may hit one person with force and be imperceptible to another.
My discussion of affect, informed by the work of Anderson, functions to fill in and colour the concept of liveness as an embodied entanglement. Affects, as Anderson
(2014, p.137) suggests, give encounters with people, environment and things a particular feel. That feeling and the constant shifting and reconfiguring of that feeling is central to the embodied experience of liveness. The buzz as you enter an event, the mixture of excitement and panic as attendees frantically rush toward the stage, the anticipation when performers are about to appear, the frenzied energy of the moshpit, the relieved jubilation when a scorching day becomes a cool night, the crackling in the air as a performer pauses mid-song, the rumbling energy of a restless crowd, are the lively, intense and transient feelings that constitute liveness. Affects permeate live music spaces, emanating from, amplified by, and sticking to, the entangling bodies,
69 environment and things. In the specificities and particularities of youth-oriented live music events affects move, develop, diminish and attach in ways that differ to everyday life and so are felt and attuned to differently. This affective attunement textures, intensifies and structures the embodied experience of liveness.
Overell (2014) directly considered affect in relation to the embodied experiences of audience members at live music events in her study of grindcore. According to
Overell (2014, p.16), ‘grindcore is a generic offshoot of heavy metal.’ However, many of the participants in her research believed that ‘grindcore was a rejection of what they deemed mainstream or commercial metal’ (Overell 2014, p.16). Using the works of Deleuze and Guattari, Overell (2014) considers affect as an embodied intensity and argues that at grindcore live music events, audience members experience intense visceral sensations that exceed neat or simple representation. My understanding of affect and the embodied experience of live music matches Overell’s in this regard. However, the focus of Overell’s (2014, p.) work differs significantly to mine as she concentrates upon the experience of ‘brutal belonging’ as an affective experience. The word ‘brutal’ has specific meanings and usages within the grindcore scene and as Overell (2014, p.) explains, the experience of ‘brutal belonging’ relates to the specificities of grindcore music and attendee experiences at these live events.
I use the concept of affect alongside the works of Barad, Ingold and Leder to argue that liveness is a unique and transient embodied experience that always involves the entangling of bodies, environment, forces, thoughts and feelings. The embodied experience of liveness is constituted by a series of shifting specificities that press upon, permeate and alter each body in differing ways. Moreover, the ways in which
70 those experiences are understood and spoken about through the process of research are equally embedded with shifting affects, and those affects equally entangled with bodies and environment.
Conclusion
The experience of liveness involves the entangling of body, environment and all the things, forces, and feelings that fill, shape, and constitute that environment. The concept of embodiment is central to my understanding of liveness, and through the process of completing this thesis, the liveliness of the entangled body and world have become central to my understanding of embodiment. The works of Leder (1990) and
Ingold (2000, 2006, 2011a, 2011b) provide a conceptual framework for analysing the body as bound to its environment and understand the senses as reaching outward into the world as part of our active and ongoing engagement with it. Open bodies mesh with the world, incorporating things and transforming through that openness. Body and environment are involved in a mutual unfolding, and as Barad (2007) explains, each entity exists only through its entanglement.
In live music spaces, the pace and form of this unfolding is amplified and intensified as bodies move, dance, sing, drink and cheer inside cramped theatres with sticky floors, under flashing lights, in thrashing moshpits, under the scorching summer sun, through fields of mud, in the chill of the night and so on. Bodies and environment are always entangled; through that entanglement all life unfolds. The experience of liveness involves moments of intensity in which body, environment, and their entangling are felt and attuned to. Those moments are explored through this thesis and structured by the theoretical framework outlined here that meshes understandings of
71 body, environment and entanglement. Working with these concepts of embodiment and entanglement necessarily triggers methodological questions and concerns. The methodological implications of the concept of entanglement were touched upon in this chapter through these implications will now be focused upon and more fully explored in the next chapter.
72 Chapter 2: Methodological Entanglements
Introduction
As I progressed with my research, the entangled nature of the embodied experiences of young people at youth-oriented live music events, the messiness, specificities and intricacies of the data generated, as well as development of the theoretical framework, required a rethinking of my methodological approach. This chapter maps my methodological progression and by doing so, demonstrates the way in which the core ideas and concepts, developed through my theoretical framework, transformed my methodological understanding and revealed the research process as an entangled intra-action. The work of Barad (2007), which I came to late in my research, focuses on research as an entangled process and has been particularly significant in forcing me to rethink my approach to participant observation, interviewing and indeed my research as a whole. However, it is important to acknowledge that I understood the methodological implications of
Barad’s work initially through my reading of Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei
(2011) and Mazzei (2014) who demonstrate the practicalities and particularities of a diffractive approach.
To trace the methodological progression and shifts that occurred throughout the process of completing this thesis, I begin this chapter by detailing my initial understandings of research and how this influenced my early work in the field, particularly when conducting participant observation. I then outline my decision to include an autoethnographic component in my research and how this led me to reconsider the methods I was using, my position within my research and the ways
73 in which data is generated. By utilising John Wylie’s (2005) concepts of affinity and distanciation I argue that, over the course of my research I experienced a shifting embodied engagement that exceeded the notions of insider or outsider research. Actively attending to these shifts moved me toward an understanding of research as a lively and enlivening practice.
I then discuss the ways in which my understanding of the interview process developed as various theoretical perspectives, including that of Holstein and
Gubrium (2004), as well as Whatmore (2003), meshed with my own experiences.
The idea that interviews are co-constituted by the researcher and participant, in addition to nonhuman things and forces, aligned with my understanding of entanglement. As my understanding of this concept continually developed its relevance extended to all aspects of my project. Indeed, I soon came to understand the writing up process as an intertwined practice, bound to shifting emotions and affects that intra-actively form and re-form through each encounter between myself and others both human and nonhuman in the field, in interviews and in analysis. Considering entanglement from a methodological perspective has allowed me to extend my understanding of liveness and the liveliness involved in researching embodied experiences. Through this chapter I demonstrate the liveliness involved in the research process and the importance of exploring one’s embodied entwinement within that process.
74 Gathering acorns and digging for gold
Traditional understandings of qualitative research suggest that the answers to one’s research questions already exist, somewhere out in the field; one must simply uncover or collect those answers (Whatmore 2003, Holstein and Gubrium
1995). Whatmore (2003, p.89) describes such understandings as the ‘rodent model of data collection.’ The data exists in the field, like little acorns, just needing to be gathered. Researchers, like squirrels, simply need to go and find those acorns, collect and store them, to be ‘feasted on at a later date’ (Whatmore 2003, p.89).
Similarly, Holstein and Gubrium (1995, p.144) argue that the researcher is often understood as similar to a ‘prospector’, conducting ‘a search-and-discovery mission, with the interviewer bent on finding what is already there inside variably cooperative respondents.’ As in Whatmore’s (2003) account, the information already exists and simply needs to be uncovered and gathered. Initially, implicitly at least, this was my understanding of the research process, particularly in regards to participant observation.
Given the aim of my research, to provide an in-depth study of the lived, embodied experiences of young people at youth-oriented live music events, I began my research utilising a qualitative approach and employing an ethnography of mixed methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The uses and definitions of the term ethnography have shifted throughout history and continue to do so as this form of research gains popularity. Ethnography has foundations in both anthropology and sociology (Van Maanen 2011) and aims to convey ‘the lived experience of culture members as well as the meaning systems and other social structures underpinning the culture or community’ (Kozinets cited
75 by Paechter 2012, p.72). Contemporary understandings and uses of ethnography do not involve any universal or standardized practices; instead, ethnographic approaches vary with the specific requirements of individual research projects
(Pink 2015). As Pink (2015) explains, participant observation and ethnographic interviews are commonly used in conjunction with other research techniques that can be adapted in situ to address the needs of the research.
My initial understanding of participant observation was that it involved ‘ongoing and intensive observing, listening and speaking’ (McCormack Steinmetz 1991, p.44) and that the aim was to foster an ‘immersion in a culture.’ This immersion was intended to produce rich and detailed descriptions of an event, activity or group studied from an insider’s perspective that can be analysed and explored critically (Fetterman 1989, p.45). Spradley (cited by McCormack Steinmetz 1991, p.44) suggests that participant observation is a distinct form of observation that
‘demands a shift in attention.’ Participant observers purposefully and continually make themselves ‘explicitly aware of things others take for granted’ and engage in a continual process of introspection (emphasis in original, Spradley cited by
McCormack Steinmetz 1991, p.44).
I believed that utilising this method would be fairly simple and straightforward; in the field, at live music events, there was a wealth of information relating to embodied experiences, just waiting to be tapped into. All I needed to do was attend those events and through consistent, careful and considered observation of what was happening at the event I would glean the necessary data. Indeed, I thought I would be mostly observing what was happening around me, not to me.
76 Despite my focus on embodiment and lived experience, the bodies and experiences of others seemed more significant than my own, more interesting and the focus of my research. The data was all “out there”, obtainable and somewhat separate from me. It was with this understanding that I entered the field as a participant observer. I planned to conduct participant observations from mid 2012 to 2015 at several different live music events, including both festivals and venues.
These venues were chosen to enable the observation of a range of live music events in a range of settings. My attendance at festivals involved between eight and twelve hours at each festival site with the exception of Splendour in the Grass, which is a three-day event. Even for venue-based events, I was usually in the venue between three and five hours, depending on how many support bands I watched perform.
During these long periods of time I, like the other attendees, was exposed to an experiential environment that is rich and distinct, dynamic and intense: music flows, pulsates or rages; excited chatter, applause and cheering fills the air; lights flash, strobe and roam; the smell of sweat and beer is constant and mixed regularly with cigarette smoke or fried food; feet and leg muscles ache from hours of standing on concrete, slip and slide over mud or relax sprawled across grass; skin burns under the sun or brushes against the sweaty bodies of others. The wealth of embodied experiences, combined with the duration of the events, was at first overwhelming. When first entering the field, as Silverman (2006) has explained, everything can seem interesting and interconnected and the relevance or significance of the data collected can be uncertain. However, as Silverman (2006) warns, unanticipated yet significant data may be missed if key categories and
77 concepts are too rigidly defined early in the research project. At first, when at events I would scribble furiously onto notepads, or type manically into my phone, trying to capture everything and my observations were wide-ranging and undetailed. My attention flitted quickly from one thing to another. The following excerpt from my early field notes demonstrates this.
Loud chatter, crowded in station, some pushing, most not, but enthusiastic/energetic
Long walk to get in, police patrolling with dogs, people against fences being searched, all males. Some thrown out. Bins overflowing with alcohol and water bottles near gates. Scalpers around 40 y.o. stands out in young crowd.
Promo people, free energy drinks.
People running in, dancing, some music heard outside, bass notes.
Discussing bands, timetable, friends to meet.
Bindis, elaborate makeup, girls with clothes like costumes very different to norm.
Males in female hats.
Buff bods displayed, sweat, stink.
Big archway, bright, bold lettering – like carnival.
Field notes produced at Big Day Out, Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush, 18th of
January 2013.
In an attempt to limit or direct my focus during live music events and produce more detailed descriptions, whilst maintaining a relatively loose framework for observation, I determined key categories to consider. These key categories were split between observations of my own bodily experiences as well the actions of
78 other attendees. Relating to my own embodiment, I decided to pay attention to the varied physical and emotional states that arose throughout the course of events and the varied stimuli that triggered these experiences. I planned to consider various aspects of experience including what was seen, heard, smelt, tasted and felt, as well as, muscular and spatial awareness, my engagement with technology, and shifts in the natural environment including the weather, temperature, and the transition from day to night. Despite these focus points in the early stages of observation, I considered my own embodiment as simply a lens through which I would experience what was going on out in the field. I was mistakenly focusing too much on the observation and very little on my experience as a participant.
In observing the actions of other attendees, I considered the way particular movements (for example, clapping, dancing, moshing) spread through a crowd; the way in which individuals and groups behaved between crowd spaces; the ways in which bodies were presented in live music spaces (for example, clothing, costuming, adornments); the ways different bodies were treated within these spaces (for example females, compared to males, able bodies compared to disabled bodies); the use of technology by members of the crowd; shifts in the natural environment and how attendees responded to these shifts; and how the type of music being performed effected crowd behaviour.
Initially, I believed that by observing the movements, actions and behaviours of groups and individuals within the crowds I would gain insights into youths’ embodied experiences of liveness and live music events. When I started my participant observation, like a little squirrel, I directed my attention outward,
79 looking for those acorns amongst the crowds. Despite agreeing with the theoretical arguments that refute the concept of the researcher as occupying an objective position, simply reporting back the “facts” of what is seen and heard, in practice
(at least at first), I inadvertently tried to assume this position. I thought of the data as separate to me and collectable. I tried to throw my attention outward toward the bodies of others, but my descriptions were lacking.
According to Anderson (2006), when using ethnography, descriptions should be thick and rich with detail. In contrast, most of the material I produced through early participant observation was vague, providing only superficial descriptions of
“out there” that were not utilised beyond the initial stage of note taking. The palpable particularities of the experience were missing from my notes; there was nothing that suggested the feel of the event or even any specifics about the festival
I was attending. By focusing outward I had missed those things that produce, fill and flesh out the experience of live music events. For example, I had ignored the way my excitement was intensified by the compounding memories of many years walking the same path into that festival and the feeling of familiarity and connection that comes from repeated attendance at an event. The stomach-fizzing anticipation at seeing certain artists and hearing certain songs and the way that excitement seems to buzz like an electric current on the surface of the skin, heightened by the bass notes pumping from inside the gates. I missed the way these experiences mix and tangle with a repressed trepidation that always accompanied my attendance at Big Day Out, dreading the exhausting trip home when my legs ache from the weight of the day, and my ears ringing from the twelve-hour acoustic onslaught, as well as the late night toilet experience that
80 usually involves dodging someone’s vomit or other bodily matter. By searching for acorns “out there” I was missing the very thing my research was supposed to focus on – embodied experience – and the very essence of what it feels like to experience a live music event.
During events in which I was a fan of the performer/s, I had been making an effort to enjoy the experience and be “in the moment” without making mental notes or thinking about my research, yet these performances often created the strongest emotional engagement and so were amongst some of the easiest moments to recall in detail when writing notes after the event. Even now years later, I can still vividly recall these memories and continue to get a shiver up my spine or goose bumps on my arms when I listen to certain songs that are entangled in those memories. Similarly, moments of discomfort also created strong embodied memories.
I began to realise (not just theoretically, but also in practice), that the experiences I wanted to focus on were those that had an impact, either positive or negative: not what happens at a live music event, but what the event feels like. I did not want to write, and in fact could not write, as if I was simply an observer, somehow separated from the live environment. Furthermore, through the practice of interviewing participants, then transcribing and analysing the material produced, I began thinking about my own experiences more deeply, comparing and contrasting them to the experiences of participants and as my consideration of embodied experiences meshed with my theoretical engagements I became
81 increasingly aware that those experiences exceeded the material I was producing.
It was at that time that I began to consider autoethnography.
Autoethnography and participation
Autoethnography is a particular form of ethnography focused upon producing an
‘emotional resonance with the reader’ through ‘narrative fidelity to and compelling description of subjective emotional experiences’ (Anderson 2006, p.
377). Lively debates surround the practice and concept of autoethnography and pertain predominantly to definition, style, aims and intent (Anderson 2006,
Atkinson 2006, Ellis and Bochner 2006, Dumitrica 2010). Of relevance to my work is the specific and intense focus upon the researcher’s embodiment that is employed through autoethnography. Within autoethnographic accounts, the experiences of ‘the researcher/author’ are the subject of the research (Dumitrica
2010, p.19). The autoethnographer ‘reflexively examine[s] their own feelings, meanings and understandings of the social world’, as the personal is connected to the cultural, the social and the political (Dumitrica 2010, p.19).
The researcher is positioned within the research as the core and origin of the work.
The data does not exist out in the field, complete and independent of the research, needing to be collected, but instead are created by the researcher through their multifaceted and dynamic engagement with the event, group or phenomena they are researching and with the research process. The researcher cannot be separated out from their research; instead, their positioning within the process is constant and must be clear. As Kuntz and Presnall (2012, p.734) assert, ‘the privilege of the researcher to remain a spectator (and a disembodied spectator at that) reinscribes
82 the very inequitable power formations in which critical qualitative inquiry seeks to intervene.’ Autoethnography seeks to clearly and consistently locate the researcher amidst that which they study as an active force. In this method, the researcher’s body is not a lens through which to see the world but instead an active element within that world.
Engaging with autoethnographic works allowed me to consider and theoretically frame my own experiences and understand that my research was emerging and becoming through those embodied experiences. My experiences could not be separated from my data or employed only as a lens or filter through which to see what was going on “out there”. The live experience and the liveliness of that experience were too complex to be captured by my initially simplistic understanding of research. Deciding to include an autoethnographic component in my research forced me to reconsider my understanding of my methods and my position within my research and live music spaces, as well as the very core of my research: that is, the notion of embodiment and what it means to conduct embodied research. Although the initial theoretical catalyst for this process was autoethnography, as various texts (such as Pink 2015, Barad 2007 and Ingold
2011a) and experiences continued to entangle with my thoughts and practices, I began to move beyond the idea of autoethnography and the method I had previously understood and practiced as participant observation, I now understood and practiced as participation. I was interwoven in the environment I was studying; I was an active and engaged participant.
83 The works of Pink (2015) and Ingold (2011a) each supported and clarified this idea.
As Ingold (2011a, p. 75) explains, ‘all observation depends on participation – that is, on a close coupling, in perception and action, between the observer and those aspects of the world that are the focus of attention.’ Pink (2015) suggests that the practice of sensory participation is an alternative approach to observation in that it emphasises the multisensory and emplaced participation of the researcher. According to Pink
(2015, p.97-98), this form of participation focuses on one’s own embodied experiences to produce ‘experience-based empathetic understandings of what others might be experiencing and knowing.’ Pink (2015) recognises this method is similar to autoethnography. However, by reframing observation as participation, the researcher is acknowledged and emphasised as always actively involved. Pink’s (2015) discussion of participation is similar to the method of ‘participant sensing’ utilised by
Wood, Duffy and Smith (2007). Through their usage of ‘participant sensing’, Wood,
Duffy and Smith (2007, p.878) recognise and use their position as sensing, feeling and involved participants ‘to gain partial insight into what is becoming.’ Through my work I follow Pink’s lead and use the simpler term participation. This is not to dismiss the idea of participant sensing, but instead to acknowledge and accept that all participation always involves the sensing, feeling, thinking body as an entangled entity. Engaging in, or pursuing, participation rather than participant observation firmly recognises and explores the embodied entanglement of the researcher within their research.
Encountering Barad’s (2007) approach to research, both in her work as well as through that of Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei (2011), allowed me to further this notion that I was not the subject of an autoethnography, but a participant
84 within an entanglement. Whereas autoethnographic accounts aim to close the divide between the researcher and researched, a Baradian approach, informed by the concepts of entanglement, diffraction and intra-action, goes further than this. It does not just seek to show the position of the researcher within the research but to flatten the divide between the two. The researcher is not elevated or separated from the world they are researching but firmly enmeshed with it. This approach problematizes any divide between knowing and being. Research emerges out of unfolding entanglements that always involve the human and the nonhuman. All factors and beings, not just the human, that contribute to and shape the research process are examined. These entwinements continually and intra-actively form and re-form and this constant movement and tension is the very essence of research, not something to be ignored or dismissed but rather something that must be explored and developed. A diffractive approach attends to this tension and focuses upon the emergent multiplicities of engagements and moments of difference that arise through the research process. Difference and tension are not erased but considered in relation to the things, actions and forces that shape and structure them. As Davies (2014) suggests, a diffractive approach attunes to and responds to, not what is already known, but what is unfolding and the new and open ways we can experience our emergent engagements. With this in mind, I began to more actively interrogate my position within my research and dominant understandings of that positioning.
Shifting positions, affinities and distanciations
At the outset of my research I identified myself as an insider. I considered myself to be part of the group I was studying, and an insider within the spaces I would be
85 entering, for two main reasons. For the length of my research, I would be within the target age group (eighteen to thirty years old) and I have attended both venue- based live music and festivals as a fan since I was sixteen years old. My understanding of live music events was heavily informed by my previous experiences within these spaces, and these experiences inevitably influenced my study, particularly in its early stages. I understood that entering the field not simply as a fan, but also as a researcher, would shift my engagement at events.
However, as my experiences at live music events became woven with my theoretical engagements, my self-identification as an insider within the (broad) group that I was studying shifted toward a more complex and nuanced approach.
The concepts of insider and outsider are central to ethnographic studies. Paechter
(2009, p.74) suggests that traditionally within ethnography the researcher was understood as occupying the position of an outsider ‘who journeys to another culture and attempts to capture its essential features through participation’.
However, Paechter (2009) asserts that over the last thirty years there has been a shift toward studies in which the researcher is considered to be an insider.
Ethnography now commonly involves the researcher studying a group that they identify with, or have been a member of. Indeed, insider status within the group being studied is often considered a primary feature of ethnography (Anderson
2006).
As I started to attend live music events as a researcher and to identify as an insider, I felt it necessary to broaden my musical experiences and attend events and performances I had previously avoided (due to either a lack of interest or a lack of
86 funds). I also believed that different events could produce varied embodied experiences; I wanted to enter a live music space feeling like an outsider. So, to broaden my own experiential horizons, I began to enter live music spaces I believed I would experience, at least somewhat, as an outsider. On a Saturday evening in June
2012 I attended a Lady Gaga concert at Olympic Park in Sydney. It would be the first performance by such a widely popular and commercially successful pop artist I had ever attended.
It was dusk when we arrived at Olympic Park and the space seemed completely transformed from the last time I had been there for Big Day Out. I recognised the buildings and stadiums, but the remembered festival space didn’t match the current scenery. I had walked up the same path in January, illuminated by the bright summer sun, toward the festival’s archway, filled with the type of excitement that buzzes in my stomach and pulses energy through my veins.
Instead, this evening I felt a somewhat nervous energy, a bit out of place and a bit unsure of what would unfold. As people wearing outfits made famous by Lady
Gaga, including coke cans rolled into their hair, platinum blonde wigs, huge sunglasses, and even a Kermit the frog-covered outfit hurried past me, I began questioning my choice to see such an eccentric artist as my first experience of the mainstream pop world. Even though I did not feel excited to be seeing Lady Gaga,
I could feel the excitement humming and crackling in the air like an electric current. Hurried footsteps, quick chatter, laughter and bright faces with gleaming eyes surrounded me.
87 As people moved around me on the path, mostly females in their teens and twenties, I realized this was probably the first all ages event I had attended in a while. Young girls, probably around ten to twelve years old, excitedly skipped beside their parents (almost exclusively mothers), chattering nonstop with friends.
I pictured some of Lady Gaga’s highly sexualized film clips and wondered if this would be an appropriate event for children. Inside, the voices of two males boomed from the female bathrooms. Two men, muscular and tall, stood in front of the mirrors in drag, re-applying lipstick and adjusting their vibrant costumes.
Girls (in their late teens and twenties) buzzed around the pair, complimenting their glittery, feathery false lashes, inquiring about their costumes and posing for selfies. As the men left the bathrooms they were continually stopped in the crowd, more selfies, more compliments.
In the arena, energy and excitement of the crowd was even more palpable as fans milled around the bar and even more around the merchandise stands. As Lady
Gaga took the stage and screams filled the stadium (rather than the cheers and applause common at a rock concert), I had a very visceral reaction, in which I felt a divide between myself and the screaming bodies that surrounded me. I felt as though the contents of my head tensed and shrank away from its edges as the noise stabbed at my ears. The rhythm of my breathing quickened a little. ‘Why are they screaming? Will this happen all night? What is wrong with these people?!’ I yelled internally. I tried to relax my face, which had unintentionally assumed a grimace, complete with furrowed brow and pursed lips, and edged away from the screaming mass, resting my back against the nearby side wall of the stadium floor,
88 and knowing this small separation would do little to minimise the acoustic assault, but still feeling a bit calmer.
Developed from field notes produced at Lady Gaga, Allphones Arena Sydney, 23rd of June 2012.
As expected, at the Lady Gaga concert I did not feel like an insider; my lack of fandom, the crowd behaviour (especially the screaming) and the highly varied ages of attendees made me feel somewhat distanced from the group. However, my previous knowledge of the event space and fond memories of live music within that space produced moments of felt closeness, as did the familiar atmosphere of excitement and anticipation that buzzed in the air. Through experiences such as these early on in the field, I started to understand that within live music spaces I would not necessarily feel like either an insider or outsider and that my position as a researcher would not remain stable and concrete, but instead would shift throughout my research and even throughout a single event.
This shifting position was not simply an idea that I identified later whilst sitting in front of my laptop; it was an embodied experience produced through the very specific entangling of my research, my memories, my experiences at each event, and the particularities of those events. A researcher’s position is not something just to be identified or written about but something that is felt, emotionally, affectively and physically. At Lady Gaga the affective force and energy that vibrated thought the air, the sound of the screaming and the feeling it produced inside my head, the relief and solidity of the wall, all contributed to shifts in my felt positioning as a researcher. Dwyer and Buckle (2009) argue that researchers
89 can never fully occupy either the insider or outsider position and so it is overly simplistic and problematic to present these concepts dualistically. According to
Dwyer and Buckle (2009, p.60), the insider/outsider dichotomy unnecessarily restricts and narrows ‘the range of understanding and experience.’ They argue that
‘holding membership in a group does not denote complete sameness within that group. Likewise, not being a member of a group does not denote complete difference’ (Dwyer and Buckle 2009, p.60). At the Lady Gaga concert I did not feel like an insider, but I did not feel completely like an outsider.
Drawing upon the work of Aoki, Dwyer and Buckle (2009, p.60) argue that the dualistic terms of insider and outsider can be ‘bridged or brought together to join with a hyphen.’ Within this term – insider-outsider – the hyphen acts not as a path from one to the other ‘but as a dwelling place for people… a third space, a space between, a space of paradox, ambiguity, and ambivalence, as well as conjunction and disjunction’ (Dwyer and Buckle 2009, p.60). This suggestion aligns with
Fife’s (2005, p.71) claims that the ethnographer occupies a unique position both inside and outside the researched culture, group or phenomenon. The insider- outsider is always marked out as different due to their purposeful, reflexive, specific and often prolonged engagement with the group or activity.
Dwyer and Buckle (2009, p.60) focus on the space between the concepts of insider and outsider to challenge dichotomous understandings and draw attention to the
‘fluidity and multilayered complexity of human experience’. They argue that qualitative researchers can assume this space in-between and find a way to be both inside and outside. Dwyer and Buckle (2009, p.62), assert that this in between
90 positioning is essential to overcome the ‘persistent tendency to frame complex issues as a struggle between two opposing sides’ and they suggest that we should
‘abandon these constructed dichotomies.’ Instead, we must ‘embrace and explore the complexity and richness of the space between entrenched perspectives’
(Dwyer and Buckle 2009, p.62).
The insider-outsider positioning, discussed and utilised by Dwyer and Buckle
(2009), is useful particularly for research projects such as theirs that focus upon clearly bounded groups. For example, Dwyer and Buckle studied white parents of children adopted from Asia. Within this group, the concept of the researcher as an insider-outsider provides a necessary third space: an in-between that allows for the complexity, fluidity and multiplicity of the researcher’s position or status. I would likewise position myself in this in-between. However, through my experience researching a very broad and dynamic group, I found a further complexity to this third space, the insider-outsider positioning is characterised by a shifting embodied engagement, which must be interrogated and explored. This is not to reject the notion of the hyphenated ‘insider-outsider’, but instead to extend the conceptual discussion through exploration of the embodied experience of this third space. The concepts of affinity and distanciation, as developed by Wylie (2005), describe this shifting embodied engagement or disengagement. This embodied experience necessarily involves an unfolding and dynamic emotionality and affectivity. The concepts of affinity and distanciation may be used to develop and complicate understanding of the researcher’s position and also to emphasise and strengthen the understanding of research as an embodied entanglement.
91 Wylie’s (2005) work, which examines a single day’s walking on a coastal path in
England, details a variety of affinities and distanciations as he explores relations of self, landscape, subject and world. The terms affinity and distanciation are not explicitly defined by Wylie (2005); however, he does describe them as multiple, varied and emergent within the context of one’s affective and performative surrounds. I understand these terms as describing fluid and multiple emotional and affective spatialities and attunements. Affinity and distanciation describe dynamic and felt closeness or distance. Unlike the overly simplistic concepts of connection and disconnection, affinity and distanciation align with the concept of entanglement. The researcher is always and already interlaced in a shifting web of relations. A researcher’s position within their research is always shifting in colour, tone and intensity and involves varying degrees of closeness, harmony or discord.
One is never completely disconnected, but instead always enmeshed. As demonstrated through my field notes from Lady Gaga, my experience as a youth, and a fan, studying embodied experiences of youth-oriented live music events, involved a constant oscillation between moments of affinity and distanciation, both with the group I was researching and with my research.
Within always shifting entanglements, affinity and distanciation describe the constant potential for movement and affective shifts. More than simply describing movement, affinity and distanciation are movement. Affinity and distanciation are forms of becoming. The terms represent and describe a constant state of flux and even though the experiences of affinity and distanciation are unstable and at times vague, they are also definite and palpable. Drawing from Wylie’s (2005) work, I suggest that attending or attuning to moments of affinity or distanciation locates and re-locates,
92 configures and re-configures, the researcher within the continually oscillating affective emergences that structure and direct research. The terms affinity and distanciation draw attention to the affectivity of one’s entwinement within one’s research and by doing so move us toward understanding research as a lively and enlivening practice.
In the bathrooms at the Lady Gaga concert, I cannot say I felt like an insider. I have very little knowledge of drag culture and have had very limited exposure to it, mostly only through the media, rather than first hand experience. However, this moment forms one of my strongest memories from that event and remembering it continues to affect me as it did on the night. Experiencing this moment in which two drag queens were not just tolerated within a female bathroom, but openly celebrated and admired, produced a feeling of joy and hopefulness. At the time of my fieldwork, the live music spaces that I attended were amongst the most popular within New South Wales, having consistently high attendance numbers. These spaces overwhelmingly adhere to heteronormative values. Displays of heterosexuality and dominant forms of femininity and masculinity are overwhelmingly the norm, in spite of the events often having a progressive feel and steps being taken by organisers and artists to create an inclusive community
(for example, LGBTQI artists are included on line-ups and performers often speak out about issues such as marriage equality). So experiencing this space that Lady
Gaga and her fans had opened up, or chiselled out within mainstream culture, in which non-normative gendered performance was celebrated, produced a strong positive affectivity.
93 I am not an insider in either group (Gaga fans or drag queens), nor was I an insider in the moment (I did not know the people involved or contribute to the conversation), yet I experienced a moment of affinity: a moment in which I did not feel like an insider, outsider, or something in between, but instead had a felt appreciation for these groups that created a strong and positive memory. Affinity and distanciation shift focus away from the position of the researcher toward the felt experience of the researcher. These concepts do not describe positions on a spectrum, or bounded categories, but instead involve felt shifting intensities.
The embodied experiences of affinity or distanciation are not always easy to describe and not always easy to identify. In some circumstances, a feeling of distanciation can hit with force. For example, when Lady Gaga’s fans screamed feverishly, I felt overwhelmed. My corporeal focus swung quickly and intensely from the sound to the feeling in my head, to my breathing, to my body’s position in relation to the crowd. My body, from the surface to the depths, felt inundated by my surrounds. I felt agitated and had a clear and strong urge to get out of the space
I was in. On the other hand, the experience in the bathroom is much harder to pinpoint. The feeling of affinity was strong, but difficult to describe. However, this difficulty around description does not erase the significance of the moment or the feeling. Becoming attuned to the affective movements that emerge and unfold through the research process, and the influence those movements have on one’s research, is essential. As such, researchers dealing with embodied entanglements, must at times deal with the uncertain, the ungraspable and the transient. For
94 Vannini (2015) these qualities are often the focus of non-representationalists.6
According to Vannini (2015), non-representational theory seeks to move beyond the confines of representation and in doing so tends to pursue the fleeting, the transient, and the more-than-human. Vannini (2015, p.7) asserts that non-representationalists aim to ‘to give us a sense of the ephemeral, the fleeting and the not-quite-graspable’, to animate the inanimate and ‘to be on the move… constantly doing something meaningful.’ With my focus upon the embodied experience of liveness, a topic bound to the fleeting, transient, and not-quite-graspable, and through the theorists I engage with, my work has a theoretical and methodological orientation toward non- representational theory. Although not positioning my work within a strictly nonrepresentational paradigm, elements of my work overlap and connect with some of the core ideas pursued by non-representationalists.
Vannini (2015, p.3) suggests the ‘eclectic character’ of non-representational theory makes it difficult to summarise or succinctly define. However, as the name would suggest, a core tenet of non-representational theory relates to a desire to ‘do away with the repetitions, the structures, the orders, the givens and the identities of representation’ (Vannini 2015, p.6). According to Vannini (2015) non- representational theory does not dismiss representation, ‘but pursues it in parallel with differentiation.’ With its aims and focus on the ephemeral and ungraspable, Vannini
(2015, p.7) suggests that non-representational theory, perhaps ‘wants the impossible’;
6 The work of Vannini on non-representational methodologies was published relatively late in the course of my research and as such it is not featured extensively in my thesis, but it is important to acknowledge here as many of the ideas examined in Vannini’s work are relevant to my work and enable methodological approaches that can further explore embodied entanglements. Non-representational methodologies, as discussed by Vannini (2015), have the potential to open up the research process, reconfigure understandings of data, and reposition the notion of research and the researcher within our culture.
95 it is never complete and is ‘destined to fail’. Rather than considering this pursuit as involving an inevitable failure, non-representationalists could instead understand their work as always necessarily and purposefully incomplete.
I acknowledge the inevitability and necessity of incompleteness in my study of liveness as an entangled embodied experience, and understand this incompleteness as an important element of my approach. Entanglements always involve moving, and meshing parts, that continually emerge, diminish, form and re-form. They are complex, multiple and dynamic and so these entwinements can never be fully fleshed out. Moreover, the ways that the live environment permeates, presses upon and meshes with the bodies of attendees is dependent upon the specificities of each person and the ways they experience the event. To explore these entwinements always involves incompleteness; however, this incompleteness is not problematic, but a symptom of the ongoing and emergent complexity of these interwoven relations.
Rather than considering the pursuit of liveness and entanglements as involving an inevitable failure, I acknowledge the inevitability and necessity of incompleteness in my study of liveness as an entwined embodied experience.
Active bodies and the co-constitution of the interview
Interviewing is a hugely popular method of research and the term ‘interview society’ (Silverman 2006, p.202) is often used to describe the widespread use of interviews, which spans ‘academic disciplines as well as myriad professions’
(Holstein and Gubrium 2004, p.150). The rodent or prospector conceptualisations of research commonly assume that, through skilful questioning in an interview,
“correct” answers can be uncovered and that these answers are definite and
96 unchanging. However, with the shift in understandings of research processes and practices, there has been an increased awareness of, and interest in, the ‘in situ activeness of interviews’ (Holstein and Gubrium 2004, p.151). Holstein and
Gubrium (2004, p.150) use the term ‘active interview’ to describe an understanding of interviewing that they differentiate from more conventional models.
The term active interview refers to the way in which meaning ‘is actively and communicatively assembled in the interview encounter. According to Holstein and
Gubrium (1995), participants ‘are not so much repositories of knowledge — treasuries of information awaiting excavation — as they are constructors of knowledge in collaboration with interviewers.’ For Holstein and Gubrium (1995), the active interview is not a special type of interview, as all interviews are in fact active interviews, as both parties in the interview are always and inevitably active.
The interview is an engaged process; meaning and knowledge are not uncovered or elicited ‘by apt questioning, nor simply transported through respondent replies;
[they are] assembled in the interview encounter’ (Holstein and Gubrium 2004, p.151). Interview participants are not passive objects of study, but are ‘deeply and unavoidably implicated in creating meanings… participants are not so much elicitors and repositories of experiential knowledge as they are constructors of experiential information’ (Holstein and Gubrium 2004, p.151). In this understanding the interviewer and interviewee assemble and generate the interview; meaning is actively co-constructed.
97 Considering the interview as co-constituted by the researcher and participant not only draws attention to the participant as an active and contributing agent, but also forces the researcher to examine and explore their role as co-creator in the process. Just as my experiences of participant observation, and then participation, forced me to reconsider my positioning within my research and how I understood the process of research, conducting interviews forced another rethinking. The data did not already exist “out there” within the participant, instead, the data and indeed the interview itself, were coproduced through a combined engagement. For example, when I asked Peter about his most memorable experiences at live music events, either positive or negative, at first he sat in thought. I described another participant’s response in which that participant had spoken about tearing up during a performance. Peter thought a little longer before joking about a popstar’s performance he had attended and then after another slight hesitation, began to describe a particularly meaningful experience he had at a live music event with an ex-partner. This example is discussed in more detail through Chapter 6; however, it is important to note here that Peter did not simply have a pre-formed idea that was uncovered through my question. Instead, our mutual involvement, and indeed, my discussion of a previous engagement with another participant, triggered Peter’s memory and shaped the subsequent discussion.
Holstein and Gubrium (2004, p.150) suggest that some disciplines consider interviews to be ‘dispassionate, passive instrument[s] for obtaining information’ and as such, interview strategy and technique is often focused upon minimizing the interviewer’s role in an attempt to establish a neutral setting. However, as
98 Holstein and Gubrium (2004, p.150) suggest, ‘No matter how hard interviewers try to restrain their presence in the interview exchange… these are interactional accomplishments rather than neutral communicative grounds’. As a researcher, I was not simply uncovering answers within the interview space, just a tool through which the data can be collected. Rather, my participants and I were actively involved in the process of coproducing meaning. Whether in person or online, an interviewer cannot exist in the shadows of the research, their contribution and influence unseen, but instead must be a visible and active element in the research.
The interviewer is always actively entangled in the interview, an embodied actor in a mutual unfolding. The interview is not simply a social engagement constituted by, and filled with, what is said. As Pink (2015, p.76) suggests, ‘talk’ has performative qualities and emphasising and highlighting the performative nature of talk also draws attention to the ‘embodied nature of the interview.’ Pink (2015, p.74) explains that interviews have ‘material and sensorial components’. To only focus upon what was said ignores or dismisses much of the material coproduced during the interview and the lived experience of the interview is lost.
Pink (2015, p.76) asserts that interviews are always ‘social, sensorial and affective encounters.’ Bodies, talk, time, intensities, technologies, furniture, temperature, lighting and all the other aspects of the interview environment combine, mesh or clash to enable and produce the embodied experience of the interview as a shifting entanglement. Within interviews, researchers should not simply interview the participant but also pay attention to their embodied participation in the interview.
99 Indeed, Pink (2015, p.76) notes that ‘the similarities between participant observation and interviewing have been stressed in recent methodological discussions’. The importance of the body and the affectivity of the interview will be considered in greater depth in Chapter 6, in which I argue that examining the affective shifts experienced through the interview is crucial in understanding the experience of liveness and also acknowledging and exploring research as an entangled process.
Interviews conducted online, particularly those over Messenger, are perhaps more prone to be mistaken for what Holstein and Gubrium (2004, p.150) describe as
‘neutral communicative grounds’. The lack of a spatial co-presence during online interviews means all shared visual and audio cues are removed from the exchange.
However, there remains a temporal co-presence; the researcher and participant of course still interact. Through this interaction, emotions can be expressed, hidden or falsified through the use, or non-use, of emojis and textual expressions or abbreviations (e.g. haha, lol). In this way the co-constitution of the interview is not restricted to human participants; rather, things such as technology and means of communication contribute to the generation of data. Participants and researchers also interact with their individual surrounds. This can produce a somewhat fractured or disjointed co-presence, in which unknown elements can shape and direct the discussion in unknown ways. For example, during Tom’s online interview, he provided me with an article relevant to our discussion and said he’d be right back. After several minutes he returned and apologized for his absence, during which he had gone to sing his brother ‘Happy Birthday’ and have cake. The medium through which the interview is conducted can contribute to, shape or
100 structure the participant’s ideas about the kind of communication taking place (an interview) and in turn can shape and structure the way they communicate.
The online interview and the particular co-presence it engenders cannot be ignored or glossed over as a neutral setting but instead involves complex entanglements that must be considered and navigated. Of course face-to-face interviews can suffer equally from such unknowns. Toward the end of Eric’s interview he seemed restless and fidgety, providing short answers and glancing repeatedly toward his phone and my sheet of questions. He soon revealed he was supposed to be
‘meeting a mate for a run’ so needed to wrap up the interview. Had I known about
Eric’s plan before starting the interview, I probably would have dropped some questions or skipped quickly past others. It is important to recognise that, through the interview, participants also experience shifting involvements and intensities.
Considering the interview as an active coproduction recognises the diffusion and spread of agency, influence and feeling between the active participants. This understanding aligned with my developing conceptualisation of research as an entangled endeavour. Examining the interview as an active coproduction led me to examine and interrogate my role within the interview space and also within the research process as a whole. Not only is the interview co-constituted, but so too is the research process. Past experiences, future expectations, theoretical arguments, observations, participant responses, setting, timing and interactions all enmesh as active elements: a web of interconnected, interwoven ideas, feelings, memories and experiences, at certain moments in certain places tangling tightly and at others untangling, holding only loose connections. Through the process of writing and re-
101 writing the thesis these entwinements and the elements of them, which I had overlooked, became increasingly apparent.
Writing as an entangled process
‘Writing up’ is an element of the research process, which has traditionally been understood as separate to the research process, simple and straightforward
(Bingham 2003). However, over the last decades a shift has occurred within the social sciences and humanities. According to Bingham (2003), alternative approaches have emerged that allow for increased complexity and a more detailed and nuanced account of the research process and the place of writing within it.
Consideration of some of these approaches has allowed me to shift my focus to reiterate the significance of the body, emotion, and affect to all aspects of the research process and to consider the significance of the nonhuman in my research.
This shift was triggered by my engagement with Barad’s (2007) work and, in particular, the concepts of diffraction, intra-action and entanglement. From the outset of my research, the notion of entanglement was a core concept. However, rather late in the research process, engagement with Barad’s work (2007) forced me to reconsider this concept and my usage of it. Barad’s (2007) discussion, which is intertwined with the concepts of diffraction and intra-action, emerged not simply as a way to understand and discuss the embodied experiences of live music events, but also a methodological tool or process. This methodological entwinement led me to reconsider and reshape my research as an enmeshed embodied pursuit.
102 According to Bingham (2003, p.148), writing up is often assumed to be simple and straightforward; indeed, he suggests that a model of unproblematic transparency forms the ‘standard discourse of writing up in the social sciences.’
Much like the rodent model of data collection, the writing process is understood as following a clear trajectory. Bingham (2003) suggests that researchers are expected to provide a clean and tidy account of their fieldwork. The exclusion and erasure of anything messy is required, as only the clear trajectory through the research process should be shown (Bingham 2003). This understanding has been developed and perpetuated through the history of the social sciences and remains embedded in dominant understandings of research (Bingham 2003). One would simply complete the research and then write up what was done, a transparent record of the process. As with other traditional understandings of research, the practical exercise of writing up rarely follows this path. Instead, the experience of writing often involves the messy, complicated, shifting and contradictory
(Bingham 2003). This common notion, that all messiness should be removed during writing, first occurred in my work through the use of transcripts.
When conducting my face-to-face interviews, I took some notes on what was being said (in case of any technical difficulties with recordings on my phone), but also took as many notes as possible on any physical or emotional displays. Words such as ‘annoyed’, ‘laughing’, ‘tears’, ‘awkward’, ‘uncertain’, ‘hand movement like a wave’, ‘hand movement to demonstrate size’, ‘leaning back in chair’ were scrawled all over my pages, accompanying my other notes. When transcribing, I would look back over what I had written during the interview and incorporate
103 these notes where possible. With my focus on embodiment, I envisaged these bodily details as being significant.
In addition, I found that, through the process of transcribing, listening and re- listening to the sound recordings, trying to discern every mumble, taking note of every pause and then materializing it all through typing, I developed a strong familiarity with the interview data. Not just what was said, but through this focused listening and my notes, I could envisage the interview, how the participant answered the question, the tone in their voice, the enjoyment at recounting treasured memories, their hand gestures, their awkward pauses and so on. My experience mirrored that of Gray (2003, p.5), who found that the act of transcribing lodged the interview material in her memory and allowed for details to be ‘vividly recalled through listening.’
Although I felt that the nonverbal details of the interviews –the embodied intricacies –were an important aspect of my research, I did not immediately know how to incorporate them into my writing. Instead, I tidied up material from transcriptions when including it in my writing. My focus was entirely with what was said. As Ezzy (2010, p.163) suggests, common practices, which involve
‘recording the audible spoken parts of the interview, and analysing textual transcriptions’, tend to omit the ‘emotional, embodied performed aspects of the interview.’ This practice of tidying up did not produce writing that was neat and clean; instead, I experienced regular bouts of frustration. Bits and pieces of interviews and observations were similar, there were definite and identifiable threads connecting ideas, observations, theories, and participant responses, but
104 they would not piece together perfectly. My chapter plans, based upon my thematic analysis, were reworked and rewritten, yet the intricacies and complexities of the data and also the theoretical analysis were being discarded or removed as I tried to fit everything together smoothly.
I began to think about that content I was cutting out, the complicating factors, and quickly realised the significance they held. Expectations, hand gestures, laughter, the way I asked a question, nervousness, pauses, hesitations and repetitions, all influenced and contributed to the shape and direction of the research. But more than this, more than the interactions between the participants and me, there were the interactions between me, participants and all the other things that shape and structure the interview or observation. The space, the weather, the temperature, the time of day, the atmosphere, the pair of shoes, the uncomfortable chair all become woven together as they combine, at times, collide, to produce live music events, embodied experience and the research process.
The non-human is central to experience and inseparable from the human. As discussed in the introduction, the body does not exist in a vacuum and in fact, neither does the research process; rather, this process, like embodied experience is constituted by the human, the non-human, forces, feelings and things. Bodies, places and things ‘exert a palpable pressure on our meaning-making, our identities, and our engagement in social institutions’ (Kuntz and Presnall 2012, p734) and as such must be considered and explored through the research process.
This understanding of the research process has become more widespread in recent years and is disrupting and adding a necessary complexity to dominant
105 understandings of research. For Anderson (2006), the inclusion of the non-human is a core component of some forms of autoethnography. This form of research involves an acknowledgement of a co-constitution or ‘reciprocal influence’ between the researcher and their surrounds, both human and non-human
(Anderson 2006, p.382).
Whatmore, drawing on Stengers (cited by Whatmore 2003), develops a more- than-human approach to research methods. Whatmore (2003) suggests that, rather than simply collecting data, materials are generated through a process of co- fabrication. Whatmore’s (2003) usage of the term co-fabrication seems to align with that of co-constitution and the active interview; however, Whatmore (2003) specifically outlines her divergence from that conceptualisation. Co-fabrication focuses upon the human and more-than-human equally. For Whatmore (2003, p.90), the research process generates materials through a co-fabrication that involves ‘a process of knowledge production that is always, and unavoidably, an intervention in the world in which all those (human and non-humans) enjoined in it can and do affect each other’ (emphasis in original).
Whatmore’s (2003) discussion of the distribution of energy in the production of knowledge emphasises the significance of all things working together. During the research process, human and non-human things assemble, and that assembling affects how the research unfolds (Whatmore 2003). According to Whatmore,
(2003, p.91) through this unfolding ‘all manner of entities… exceed their mobilization as compliant data and complicate the taken-for-granted distinctions between social subjects and material objects reproduced through scientific
106 divisions of labour’. Whatmore’s (2003) work provides a useful challenge to what she describes as rodent models of data collection and, through her emphasis upon the co-fabrication of materials, has certain resonances with the work of Barad
(2007) relating to entanglement and intra-action. Barad’s (2007) emphasis upon things continuously emerging through their entangling is important to consider in regards to the writing up process and indeed the research process as a whole.
Drawing from the work of Lorimer, Vannini (2015) suggests that the chapters in his work are ‘events in the trajectory of thinking’ for the authors involved. This idea also resonates here; writing up is not the end of the process, it is another element of an active, emerging and shifting entanglement.
Toward an entangled methodology
For Barad (2007), research is the direct result of the entanglement of the researcher and phenomena they study; there is no separation between the researcher and the research. The subject and object do not pre-exist, but emerge through intra-action. Barad (2007, p.33) asserts that intra-action refers to the
mutual constitution of entangled agencies. That is, in contrast to the usual
“interaction,” which assumes that there are separate individual agencies
that precede their interaction… distinct agencies do not precede, but rather
emerge through, their intra-action.
Barad (2007) uses agential realism as her ontoepistemological framework, which ascribes agency to humans and matter. Barad (2007, p.224) understands matter ‘as a dynamic and shifting entanglement of relations, rather than the property of things.’ Agency is not something that can be possessed; instead it is an enactment,
107 ‘distributed over human and nonhuman forms’ and emerging through intra-action
(Barad 2007, p.117). Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei (2011) suggest that the habit of qualitative researchers to make meaning based exclusively on what is said through the narrative accounts of participants can result in a failure to recognise or consider how the knowledge of participants and researchers is coproduced through their intra-action. As in Whatmore’s (2003) account, Barad (2007) considers this co-constitution to occur not simply between humans, but all entities, forces and elements, human and non-human, living and non-living. To study this entanglement, or to study from within it, Barad (2007) employs a diffractive methodology.
Diffraction as a phenomenon is unique to wave behaviour and relates to ‘the way waves combine when they overlap and the apparent bending and spreading out of waves when they encounter obstruction’ (Barad 2007, p.28). For Barad (2014, p.168) diffraction is a ‘lively affair’ that involves attending to the movement of energies and forces. A diffractive methodology involves the examination and exploration, not of some essential meaning, but the dynamic and emerging processes and practices through which meaning is made. A diffractive methodology employs a performative rather than representationalist model and requires an understanding of the world from within and as part of that world.
Performative approaches question the very foundations of representationalism and move away from questioning the links between descriptions and reality, toward a focus on actions and practices (Barad 2007). Barad’s (2003) use of performativity is focused, in part, on highlighting matter as an active and agentive participant within the world’s becoming. Knowledge and experience are produced through
108 multiple and shifting practices of engagement between the human and nonhuman, that is the entangled intra-activity of the world. Barad’s notion of a diffractive methodology extends the idea of research as a coproduction and researchers as intertwined. The significance of all matter is recognised and through constantly emerging and shifting entanglements meaning is intra-actively co-constituted.
If I had utilised a diffractive approach from the outset of my project it would have taken on a very different shape. For example, I would have done fewer interviews with fewer participants, in an attempt to concentrate on participants whose discussion was particularly detailed and interesting. I would have conducted follow up interviews in order to focus and expand on specific aspects of the material being coproduced. In addition, the focus of my questions may have shifted, and perhaps the ways I collected, recorded, and even understood the concept of, data would have differed. When I was creating my research plan, I believed the answers were all “out there”, already existing within participants and at live music events to be gathered and then simply represented. I decided to recruit a larger number of participants and direct my questions toward specific topics. I believed that the more interviews I conducted, the more likely I would be able to uncover the necessary responses. If I had initially adopted a focus on co- constitution and the interview as an intra-action, I would have aimed my research practices, not at trying to uncover certain responses, but instead toward creating meaning with participants. I would have altered my questions and actions within interviews to try and allow participants to speak more freely and in greater detail.
109 A diffractive approach simultaneously draws attention to and emphasizes the role of all active elements, not just the researcher and participants, but all that shapes, fills and entangles within the research space: a space that incorporates the literature, past experiences, writing, interviewing, participating, thoughts, feelings, intensities and forces. Within this understanding the researcher is not clearly centered, and neither are the participants, or the group or activity being studied.
Rather, the research is understood as an interlaced web of dynamic entities, forces and feelings. Agency is dispersed within that web and one is not positioned as inside or outside the group being studied but entwined with them and all other things that shape and direct understanding. Moments of affinity and distanciation, which may occur with or from an interview participant, the performance of a song at a live music event, theoretical concepts, the physical act of writing, the topic being discussed in an interview, memories that are triggered, one’s section of the crowd, and so forth, flow through this shifting entanglement and the research as a process is always in a state of being and becoming.
Barad’s discussion of entanglement forced me to reconsider and reconceptualise my research, to look toward, explore and scrutinize the gaps left by other approaches. Thinking about diffraction in this way led me to question the material
I had produced and reconsider my analysis of it. As a result, I revisited the interview material as well as my field notes and reshaped my understanding of it particularly in regards to liveliness and affective movements. For example, in
Abby’s interview her initial enthusiasm when discussing live music was replaced with a more negative perspective as the interview concluded. Initially I dismissed
110 the shift in Abby’s responses and focused on other aspects of her interview.
However, as I began to consider this shift in relation to the interconnected concepts of diffraction, intra-action and entanglement, I realised the significance of the specificities and details of Abby’s interview. When reviewing Abby’s transcript and my notes from her interview, I began to focus on moments when affective movements occurred. The questions I asked, the experiences we discussed, how the discussion unfolded, Abby’s demeanour including the changes in her tone of voice and posture, all contributed to a particular affective experience that influenced Abby’s negative response. Moreover, my own more experiences at live music events were contributing to my initial dismissiveness of her negativity.
This example is examined in detail in Chapter 6; however, it is important to note that by considering this interview through the frame provided by diffraction I was forced to disperse my attention and consider all of the contributing and entwining forces, intensities, feelings and things that intra-actively produced meaning in the interview and my analysis of it.
In her discussion of diffraction, Barad (2007) emphasises the importance of attending to specificities and differences in ideas, even intricate, minute details.
Although I took note of as many details as possible through interviews, it was not until later in the research process that I engaged with these details. In Abby’s interview, the shifts that occurred, both in the questions I was asking and the ways she was answering them, were so subtle that it was only after the interview, when I could review and remember the whole experience that I was able to identify and connect those shifts. A diffractive approach recognises patterns of difference and
111 interaction are marked from within, and as part of, an entangled state. Rather than collapsing details into one another, patterns of thinking, differences and parallels are put in conversation with each other.
In my first analysis of Abby’s interview, I considered her later responses to be inconsistent with her earlier discussion. However, by attending to the details, which involved examining and interrogating the seeming contradictions in her responses, the moments of tension and difference, and the patterns of interaction, particularly the ways I directed the conversation toward certain experiences, I produced a more nuanced account of that intra-action. Producing such accounts demonstrates the multiplicity and complexity involved in the experience of liveness, and the entangled nature of embodiment more broadly. A diffractive approach draws attention to differences as well as interactions and interferences.
The way each participant spoke about their experiences, the questions they were responding to, all the particulars of each interview, my reactions and so on, became woven together to shape or disrupt the affective atmosphere of the interview, the discussion that unfolded through the interview, and also the way I remembered, understood, and wrote about that experience.
The theoretical frames I attach to that experience, or view that experience through, and the differences, distanciations or affinities between and within that theory add another thread to the entanglement. Following this approach I have come to understand that differences and tensions are not problematic, but instead are the essence of experience. As such, these moments take on significance and must be
112 addressed in conversation with each other. Intricacies, subtleties, contradictions and multiplicities constitute, shift and steady embodied experience and should not be erased but considered in relation to one another. Just as obstructions in a river bend and alter the flow of water, changing its direction, pace and power, so too do bodies, environment, things and forces continually influence one another and alter one’s movement through the world. In the unfolding process of being and becoming, difference and tension constantly trigger movement, adjustment and reconfiguration.
Harmonies and dissonances between theoretical frames, concepts and experiences must be sought out, explored and interrogated to provide new and important insights into meaning making. This process is engaged with throughout the thesis as insights from a particular theorist are considered through the concepts and frames provided by others and through participant responses and my own experiences. For example, in the following chapter (Chapter 3), participant discussions of their technological engagements are considered in relation to
Leder’s work on incorporation, which is extended through Richardson’s concept of technosomatic involvement. This concept is then developed using Michael’s work on co(a)gents to consider liveness from a Baradian perspective, as intra- actively produced. Participant discussion is teased apart and explored through theoretical concepts that are put in conversation with each other; that is, the insights and specificities of each work are not simply fused together, but used to push each idea further forward or outward, thus extending and developing the central concept of liveness. Barad (2007, p.29) asserts that, ‘a diffractive
113 methodology is respectful of the entanglement of ideas and other materials.’ A diffractive methodology gives the researcher a framework to examine that intertwinement.
As I came to Barad’s work late in the development of my thesis I was unable to re- do or alter the ways in which I had utilised my research methods. Instead, I used
Barad’s work and the concept of diffraction to re-analyse and interrogate my approach to writing up. This is demonstrated in the structure of the thesis, with my entanglement in the research process becoming clearer in each subsequent chapter.
The final chapter (Chapter 6), which was developed from start to finish with this different approach, most clearly demonstrates my entanglement in the intra-active production of knowledge using the concept of diffraction to analyse the interview.
In that chapter I engage with the interview material, not focusing solely or primarily on the transcript and what was said, but instead diffusing my focus and considering how things were said, the interactions between myself, the participant, the interview space, expectations, my memories of live events and previous interviews, moments of tension, the affective movements and the shifting emotional engagement. I draw attention to the details, subtleties, and dynamism that shapes and directs the interview. However, in Chapter 6 I continue to use the term interview, rather than the Baradian ‘intraview’ as I believe it would be somewhat problematic to retrospectively apply the term. Those interactions were conducted as traditional semi-structured interviews, I attempted to minimise my influence and occupy the role of a somewhat separate researcher.
114 It is important here to outline Barad’s discussion of diffraction as an alternative to reflection in research, and also to clarify and indeed differentiate my understanding on this matter from that of Barad. In Barad’s (2007, p.71) work, the
‘phenomenon of diffraction’ forms an ‘overarching trope’ and draws upon
Haraway’s work on diffraction in relation to a critique of reflexivity. Haraway proposes diffraction as an alternative metaphor to that of reflection (Barad 2007).
Haraway believes that reflexivity is based upon a separation between the researcher and the researched, and that the gap between the knower and the known cannot be bridged (Barad 2007). Furthermore, Barad (2007, p.87) asserts that reflexivity
is based on the belief that practices of representing have no effect on the
objects of investigation and that we have a kind of access to
representations that we don’t have to the objects themselves… reflexivity
is nothing more than iterative mimesis: even in its attempts to put the
investigative subject back into the picture, reflexivity does nothing more
than mirror mirroring.
I believe Haraway and Barad are perhaps overly critical of the practice of reflexivity and do not acknowledge the hugely varied ways that reflexivity is used.
Reflexivity is a core component of ethnographic methodologies. According to
Gray (2003, p.21), reflexivity involves questioning ‘the theoretical and other assumptions of the project. A reflexive researcher actively interrogates its research categories… in light of the data being generated.’ To achieve this, Gray (2003) suggests that a researcher must engage in a range of continual dialogues with the research subjects, colleagues, different theoretical frameworks and perspectives, as
115 well as their own written work. The reflexive researcher must reflect upon ‘what
[they] are doing, what kinds of knowledges are being produced, which concepts are too rigid and which frameworks hide more than they reveal’ (Gray 2003, p.22).
If employed simply, without critical thought, engagement and interrogation, reflexivity can be vulnerable to the critiques put forward by Barad and Haraway.
Like all aspects of qualitative research, reflexivity is practised in diverse ways by a broad field of researchers. Inevitably some of these researchers provide weaker examples of this process, though many others provide strong examples of a reflexive approach that do not fall into Barad’s critique. For example, Pearce
(2010, p.1) provides an in-depth reflection of her experiences producing an autoethnographic account of researching ‘motherloss’, whilst dealing with her grief for the death of her own mother. She details choices she made regarding how she positioned herself in relation to her participants, the information she gave or withheld in terms of her own experience of grief, and questions how beneficial or detrimental these choices were. Within this example the researcher is not a separate entity, simply mirroring sameness; rather, she is actively engaged with and visible within the research process.
I believe it is not necessary, or necessarily productive, to use diffraction as a tool to undermine or replace reflexivity. Many scholars continue to use reflexive models in ways that critically examine and interrogate their research and their position within that research. I would move away from the critiques of Barad and
116 Haraway in this regard and suggest that thoughtful, critical and careful reflexive approaches are not diametrically opposite to diffractive approaches and indeed diffraction used poorly could still produce poor research. However, I argue that for some research projects such as mine using a diffractive model is useful, as it explicitly and specifically draws attention to moments of tension, difference and movement and focuses equally on the human, non-human and more-than-human.
It was through Barad’s (2007) work and her discussions of diffraction, intra-action and entanglement that I began to think more deeply about these moments and issues within my research.
A focus upon diffraction shifted my attention toward certain aspects of my research that I overlooked when initially using a reflexive approach. Diffraction requires the researcher to pay particular attention to entanglements and in turn the interactions that shape them. Moreover, diffraction always involves movement, shifting energies and forces, and as such opens up the research process, allowing for and encouraging the consideration of affect and emotion. I will use diffraction as a methodological insight through which all things, human and nonhuman, are considered and examined, particularly in my analysis of interviews in Chapter 6, but also in discussing my own experiences in Chapter 5. As demonstrated by
Kuntz and Presnall (2012), Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei (2011) and Mazzei
(2014), who each use Barad’s work, a diffractive approach to the generation and analysis of data can open up that data, drawing attention to the details, interactions and dynamism.
117 Barad’s work, and these authors who use Barad, provide a theoretical framework and practical example of how a diffractive methodology can create meaning not otherwise possible. According to Mazzei (2014, p.742), research narratives are often reduced ‘to a series of thematic groupings that do little to produce different thought’. As Youngblood Jackson and Mazzei (2011, p.12) suggest, a focus on the macro ‘might cause us to miss the texture, the contradictions, the tensions, and entangled becomings’. Exploring the intricacies, multiplicities and shifts that occur through interviews, as well as through the writing up process, and the way they occur, opens up the generated data to examine not only the concept of liveness but also the felt liveliness of embodied experience and the research process. As Kuntz and Presnall (2012, p.732) suggest, ‘rather than simply a tool of inquiry’, the interview can be understood ‘as a wholly engaged encounter, a means for making accessible the multiple intersections of material context that collude in productive formations of meaning.’ This understanding can be extended beyond the interview to envelop research as an entire process. The body, environment, things, forces and their entangling must be opened up and examined through the ongoing process of research.
In her discussion of interviews as social, sensorial and affective, Pink (2015, p.75) explains that reconfiguring the interview in a way that draws attention to body and environment ‘opens up possibilities for understanding how and what we might learn about other people’s worlds.’ Also discussing interviews as an embodied practice, O’Reilly (2005, cited by Pink 2015, p.75) suggests that ‘the key is to be flexible, and to be aware at every stage about why you are using that approach.’
These assertions can also be extended beyond the scope of the interview and be
118 considered in regards to research as a whole process. Participations (rather than observations), interviewing, delving into various theories and writing up are all entangled, embodied experiences. At each moment in the research process the researcher should be aware of their entangling in that process and by doing so attune to the lively aspects of research and research as an enlivening.
Conclusion
Like many qualitative projects, mine has not followed a clear or linear trajectory.
Through the process of researching the embodied experiences of live music events, my understanding of this process has shifted from the embedded traditional and dominant models of research toward an entangled methodology.
Through my work I employ an ethnographic approach that utilises diffraction, intra-action and entanglement as core concepts, but also as processes through which to explore, analyse and generate data. The human, nonhuman, more-than- human and all that these encompass – bodies, theory, data, emotion and affect – combine, coalesce and at times clash, to create my understanding of liveness.
Young people’s experiences of liveness at youth-oriented live music events can allow for an attunement to the liveliness of the world and that liveliness is characterised by constant movement and dynamism. As such, my research needed a methodological approach sensitive to and focused upon this dynamism.
Although my engagement with Barad’s (2007) work occurred relatively late in my research, her discussion and use of entanglement has opened up my understanding of liveness, and also my understanding of methodologies and research. This opening up forced me to revisit and reconsider the data collected, the ways in
119 which I use this data, its entanglement with me and other entities and indeed the very definition of data. Through my work I demonstrate research as an entwined process, characterised by movement and affective flows that can enrich the data produced. By extending and expanding upon notions of liveness and research as an entangled practice, I hope to demonstrate the liveliness of the research process: a liveliness that structures, fills and fleshes out embodied experience, but is often overlooked or removed from research.
120 Chapter 3: The technological entanglements of liveness
The house lights that had been illuminating Sydney’s Metro Theatre faded into darkness and the crowd cheered in anticipation at the well-known signal. The band was about to emerge. DJ Morgs, one third of Australian hip-hop group
Thundamentals, entered the stage and the cheers became louder. He took his position behind the mixing desk, centered at the back of the stage, and his hands began to flick between his laptop and other electronic equipment illuminated by tiny lights. A deep bass note rumbled through the speakers, sounding like a foghorn. Some other sounds rustled vaguely through the space, sounding similar to rain on a tin roof and rolling thunder, but were almost entirely drowned out by the cheering crowd. The foghorn continued to blast through the theatre intermittently with a long sustained note, followed by two shorter notes. The slow and steady rhythm of the foghorn was juxtaposed against the increasingly frenzied cheers of the crowd. Hundreds of eyes scanned the wings, looking for the two remaining performers. Before long, the bodies of MC Tuka and MC Jewson burst onto the stage. Hands holding phones rose momentarily into the air and audience members quickly snapped photographs. The voices of the two MCs galloped over the lyrics of their plosive rap, ‘Riders of the storm. And I ain’t gonna quite yet. Writings on the wall for you name-dropping dickheads…’ The foghorn slipped into the background of the auditory arrangement, a drumbeat kicked in, triggered by a flick of DJ Morgs’ finger and the crowd settled into the song, moving and dancing to the music.
Developed from field notes produced at Thundamentals, Metro Theatre, George St.
Sydney, 24th of May 2014.
121 Introduction
During the Thundamentals performance, recorded and live material was blended and mixed with computer-generated sounds, human voices, and instruments that were hit, beat or strummed. In the audience, attendees photographed and recorded their experience from their own unique position and perspective. If they wished, they could also publish and share that material online. For many attendees, including me, these technological possibilities did not exist when we began attending live music events.
The technological landscape has altered immensely and rapidly and these changes have permeated and transformed live music spaces. In the rapidly changing musico- technological environment, the ways in which technological things mesh and entangle with bodies are central to experiences and understandings of liveness.
Live music events involve unique environments, shaped and structured by distinct and transient temporal and spatial qualities. Attendees at these events share a particular temporal and spatial co-presence with the performers and the rest of the crowd, at the same time as having a specific and individual experience of their entanglement within that environment. However, at live music events, bodies and environment do not simply entangle in that very moment, or in a way that isolates that moment. Rather, bodies and environment enmesh with memories, expectations, ideas, objects, and more. The embodied experience of liveness always involves the temporary entangling of things, forces, ideas and energies. Technology and the discourse that surrounds the specificities of technologies at live music events, ravels and unravels contributing to and permeating the embodied experience of liveness as attendees engage and disengage with technological things, and the varied understandings and experiences of those things.
122 This chapter explores the relationship between technology and liveness in relation to smartphones and digital cameras, as well as stage screens (the large visual screens positioned beside or behind the stage at large venues). This focus extends discussions of the embodied experience of liveness and demonstrates the complex and at times contradictory nature of this experience. To begin this chapter, I utilise the work of
Sanden (2013) to outline the development of the term ‘live’, which has always involved a level of technological mediation. Then, by considering participant discussion in relation to contemporary discourse surrounding liveness and handheld devices, I will examine the ways traditional understandings of live music continue to permeate contemporary experiences of liveness.
I then utilise Leder’s (1990) work to argue that digital screens, particularly those of smartphones, become incorporated into young people’s experiential fields. From
Leder’s (1990) perspective one’s corporeality is not limited to the physical bounds of the body, but extends outward to incorporates things, which are drawn into one’s experiential field altering and expanding the body’s capacities and experiences.
During live music events these technologies remain incorporated in one’s embodiment; however, their meaning and usage are transformed through the entangled experience of liveness. Using Richardson’s (2010a)’s concept of technosomatic involvement, which describes the bodily, technological, environmental, cultural and historical specificities that imbue and shape each technological engagement, I extend my discussion of liveness by suggesting that attendees actively negotiate and reconfigure their body-technic engagement during live music events. These shifting technosomatic involvements have the potential to shift the emotional engagement of attendees. By using Michael’s (2012) discussion of
123 co(a)gents I then demonstrate that through the complex interconnectedness of various entities, things, discourses and forces, recording attendees can become highly salient obstructions that diminish the embodied experience of the live music for others. I argue that by purposefully negotiating their usage of technologies during live performances, participants are actively involved in the co-production of liveness.
I then move on to discuss the particular technosomatic involvement of digital photography, which allows attendees to maintain their embodied focus upon the performance. I argue that technological engagements that maintain or align with the experience of liveness are more commonly accepted and used by participants. By examining a participant’s engagement with stage screens, in addition to my own experiences with this technology, I demonstrate the potential of these devices to reconfigure the affectivity of the space and to trigger, or allow for, an embodied attunement to the liveliness of the event. The multifaceted, messy, and at times, contradictory, entanglement of liveness and technological things, underpins my understanding of liveness as an embodied experience.
It is important to note that in this chapter I do not discuss the use of social media at live music events. In each interview I asked participants whether or not they used social media before, during or after events. Each participant said they did not generally use social media during live music events. These responses drew attention to the relatively homogenous nature of my sample. Most of the participants in my research discussed high levels of involvement and interest in live music; most were dedicated and discerning attendees aware of the various debates surrounding technological engagement at live music events. Such attendees are perhaps less likely
124 to use social media during performances. However, this trend in my small sample does not necessarily translate to actual audience engagement with social media.
Furthermore, most of my participants were between twenty-five and thirty years old, rather than evenly spread from eighteen to thirty years. More participants at the younger end of the age scale could have possibly produced more varied responses in regards to social media usage.
The omission of social media from this chapter should not be understood as implying social media has no significance to the experience of liveness. On the contrary, I would suggest that the practice of engaging with social media during live music events raises interesting questions relating to the spatial and temporal experience of live music. Moreover, since I completed my interviews, various new technologies have become popular and these can alter the embodied experiences of liveness. For example, Snapchat has rapidly gained popularity and Facebook Live has been launched. These two forms of social media focus on the instantaneous sharing of experiences, and as such, are particularly interesting in considerations of liveness.
Mobile network coverage to many live music venues and festival spaces has also improved allowing for more widespread usage of social media at events. However, due to the timing and methodological approach of my research I did not produce any material on these technological advancements and did not have the opportunity to conduct follow-up interviews.
The entanglement of live and recorded
As Sanden (2013) explains, the term ‘live’, when applied to music, may seem to represent a simple and even universal category, a common sense term unattached to a
125 particular time or place. Live music is perhaps most often thought of simply as music that is performed in the presence of an audience (Sanden 2013). However, this concept is much more complex than that, and this complexity has permeated definitions of ‘live’ from their inception in western culture. Sanden (2013) notes that within literature that considers live music and liveness this complexity is not always acknowledged and there remains room for further exploration.
For those studying and writing about live music, it is commonly accepted that liveness is a relational concept that emerged in response to the development and proliferation of recording and broadcasting technologies (Auslander 2002; Thornton 1995; Sanden
2013). However, as noted by Sanden (2013), some disparity exists as to when the term emerged, and under what circumstances. Sanden (2013) compares the accounts of Auslander and Thornton to demonstrate this. According to Auslander (2002), the notion of liveness developed during the 1930s, not simply in response to sound recording technologies (which existed from the 1890s), but rather in response to the specific technology of the radio and the shifts enabled or caused by it. In contrast,
Thornton (1995) believes that live music was not part of popular discourse concerning music until the 1950s and was the result of specific economic and social shifts.
Despite their differing analyses both accounts are useful in highlighting ‘live’ as a constructed concept that has always involved a complex relationship with technology and which continues to shape contemporary understandings and experiences of liveness. As Sanden (2013, p.4) suggests, ‘much of the ideology originally implicated in the concept of liveness has remained constant. The term live still carries with it a defining connection to unmediated musical performance.’
126 Prior to broadcast radio, individuals could play recorded music at home using a gramophone. Auslander (2002, p.16) explains that, in this context, there was no necessity for the word ‘live’, as ‘there was no possibility of mistaking the activity of listening to a record for that of attending a live performance’. The two experiences were distinct and, as Attali (cited by Auslander 2002, p.16) notes, recorded music at this time was ‘intended to serve only as secondary adjuncts to live performance’
(emphasis added). Auslander (2002, p.17) asserts that the relationship was complementary, as these recordings preserved performances and ‘respected and reinforced the primacy of existing modes of performance.’ However, the value and appeal of recordings was soon demonstrated with shifts in the music and radio industries. According to Auslander (2002), with the development of radio, the relationship between recorded music and live music, which had been complementary, shifted toward being oppositional.
As Thornton (1995) explains, developing technologies began to significantly alter the economics of music, and also listening practices, which from this time onward became increasingly private and domesticated. According to Thornton (1995, p.36), radio had quickly become a central source of music during the 1920s. Initially, most of this music was broadcast from a live performance and the most popular programs involved ‘big dance bands [that] played for an audience of ballroom dancers at the same time as playing for those at home.’ However, according to Thornton (1995, p.36), in 1927 the first BBC radio program to focus upon records led to a clear increase in sales, and record companies began to actively pursue air-play and buying plays of songs on commercial stations. Thornton (1995, p.36) suggests that by the
1930s, radio was ‘central to the new processes of record-selling and star-making’ and
127 broadcasting recorded music began to replace the broadcasting of live performances.
As Frith (1987, cited by Thornton 1995) asserts, the commodity that was music shifted irrevocably from live performance to recorded performance.
The term ‘live’ emerged in response to the specific technology of the radio and the shifts that occurred in the listening practices and musical landscape of that period.
Therefore, as Auslander (2002, p.16) suggests, performances only became understood as live when there was the possibility of them being recorded. The term ‘live’ provided a ‘terminological distinction that attempted to preserve the formerly clear dichotomy between two modes of performance, the live and the recorded’ (Auslander
2002, p.17). As Sanden (2013, p.3) suggests, ‘for the first time in history the adjective live was required to distinguish between different types of musical experiences.’
Importantly, the term ‘live’ did not simply differentiate between musical experiences, but also positioned live experiences as superior to recorded music. According to
Sanden (2013, p.4), at the time that the concept of live music emerged it ‘was typically considered more real, more authentic, and in the final balance, more desirable’. Performance mediated by broadcasting technologies was still considered to be live. Music mediated by recording technologies was considered the opposite and was also considered inferior and undesirable. Sanden (2013, p.20) suggests that music became understood and defined as produced by human or machine, either ‘live or mediated’ and as Auslander (1999, p.3) explains, performances were understood through this ‘reductive binary opposition’. According to Wurztler (1992, cited by
Auslander 1999, p.3), the categories of live and recorded were ‘socially and historically produced’, and through this production, have been positioned within a
128 ‘mutually exclusive relationship’, in which the live is often defined by an absence of recording.
It is important to note here that, when radio first became popularized, most musical content involved the broadcast of a live performance. Listeners were hearing a live performance, through the radio. As Auslander (2002, p.16) explains, when the term
‘live’ first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1934, it was defined as ‘of a performance, heard or watched at the time of its occurrence, as distinguished from one recorded on film, tape, etc.’. Music heard at the time it was performed, even when heard through the radio, was still considered to constitute live music. Whilst temporal co-presence was required, spatial co-presence was not. For one to hear music when one is not present in the space in which the music is performed of course requires some form of technological mediation. A technological mediation of the spatial relationship to the performance was acceptable in definitions of liveness, but a technological mediation of the temporal relationship was not. The early definition of live was not simply responding to a particular technology but incorporating the listening practices, as well as the spatial and temporal relationships that technology enabled, into its very definition.
The concept of ‘live’ music emerged from an entwinement with technology as an inherently contradictory, messy and dynamic term. From its inception, the notion of liveness already carried with it a level of mediatization. Even in its first uses, the concept of live music and liveness did not involve a clear-cut distinction between the live and the technologically mediated. Rather, the two categories have always
129 intersected. Yet, as Sanden (2013, p.165) argues, ‘the foundational opposition between live and recorded… remains consistent throughout the literature.’
This opposition is also embedded in contemporary discussions of the use of certain technologies, particularly phones and cameras, during live music events and was present in participant discussion of these technologies. Smartphones with recording and broadcasting capabilities have encroached further into everyday life and they have become more widespread at live music events. Most attendees now have the ability to record and share their experiences of live music and, as such, these attendees must choose whether or not to engage with their devices. To be temporally and spatially present at a live music event now also involves an individual negotiation of one’s technological mediation of the live music.
Handheld technological mediation and the disruption of liveness
‘Please leave your phones in your pockets/purses and enjoy the show live and in person’
(Sign from a performance by Jack White in Australia 2012, cited by Adams, 2012).
‘Please do not watch the show through a screen on your smart device/camera. Put that shit away as a courtesy to the person behind you and to Nick, Karen and Brian’
(Sign from a performance by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in New York 2013, cited by
Hann, 2013).
130 ‘Can you stop filming me with that video camera? Because I’m really here in real life, you can enjoy it in real life rather than through your camera’
(Adele speaking to an attendee at a performance in Verona, Italy, May 2016, cited by
The Guardian, 1 June 2016).
When using phones to record, the performance is not watched directly; rather, the performance is technologically mediated through a handheld screen. Through the practice of recording, one’s embodied focus shifts toward one’s recording device. The technological mediation of one’s view during live music events is commonly understood as disrupting the experience of liveness, both in terms of one’s own experience and the experience of others. The comments featured above are from prominent artists including an indie rock band, an alternative rocker, and a pop musician, and they demonstrate the dialogue that often features in discussions of live music within mainstream media, as well as forms of media focused more specifically on discussions of live music. Indeed, these musicians feelings about phones and cameras also feature within a plethora of online articles. ‘10 bands who hate smartphones at shows as much as you’ (Macgregor 2014), ‘Should music fans stop filming gigs on their smartphones?’ (Lee 2013), ‘Are Musicians Right to ban fans recording their shows?’ (Deiterman 2014), and ‘Why Adele Did the Right Thing By
Calling Out the Fan Videotaping Her Concert’ (Granados 2016), are just a few of the numerous articles addressing the subject. Contemporary discussions and historical definitions of what constitutes live music form threads that are dynamically woven into attendees embodied experiences.
131 For some participants, these threads were tightly woven and significantly contributed to their unfolding experiences of liveness. However, for others these threads were only loosely ravelled. For example, Max who attended one of Jack White’s 2012 shows, discussed how the musician’s ban on phones made him re-think his own practices and focus on ‘enjoying the concert for himself’, instead of ‘from behind a four inch screen.’ During his online interview Tom discussed his disapproval of other people recording live shows with their phones and provided a link to an article in which the author equally disapproved of this practice. These two participants clearly demonstrated that dominant discourse pertaining to liveness and technology is entangled with their experiences of these technologies. However, contemporary discussions of live music within mainstream media, and historical definitions, cannot be simply or straightforwardly applied to youths embodied experiences of liveness, it is not simply a matter of cause and effect, and these understandings of liveness do not simply act as filters through which recording and liveness are understood. Instead, contemporary discussion of live music and historical definitions form threads that are dynamically woven into an attendee’s ongoing entanglement.
Other participants also discussed the body-technic engagement produced through, or required by, recording with smartphones and cameras as problematic, especially in regards to the way the screens of these devices mediated the view of the event. Tom discussed his dislike of ‘looking through a screen instead of at an act’ and Grant said
‘I don’t want to be looking at my phone, I want to be looking at the musicians’.
Recording through a handheld screen forces a shifting of attention or at times a shifting of one’s embodied involvement. One’s direct focus upon the lively bodies
132 onstage shifts toward a small, technologically mediated view of those bodies, which is experienced for some as disruptive to one’s experience of liveness.
Participants were affected not only by their own use of these technologies, but also by that of others. Some participants experienced these technologies, when in the hands of others, as an obstruction within the live environment. Lucy spoke with a touch of annoyance, when she said, ‘I hate people that stand there with their phones up videoing kind of thing, you’re there, you know that the video’s not going to be that good… so there’s no point, you’re just getting your hands and your stupid phones in the way’. Lucy’s irritation at the recording practices of other attendees was palpable during the interview, and was emphasised through her use of the words ‘hate’ and
‘stupid.’ Jane also became annoyed when discussing other attendees recording during performances and commented that she had become ‘all fired up’ through the interview and needed to go home and calm down. Ada spoke in a more neutral manner as she described the engagement of others with hand-held digital screens, though she identified her irritation during live music events. She said: ‘phones and cameras get in the way of people’s view… which I’m really aware of because I’m average height so that’s annoyed me.’ For Tim an unobstructed view of the performance was also important; he explained that when recording ‘other people block [his] view’ and that
‘disconnects’ him.
It is important to note here that, unless situated in the front row, at live music events one’s view is often obstructed.7 Architectural features of the venue, such as columns, pillars, or the position of the sound engineer’s desk, as well as the actions of others
7 At festivals and large venues even attendees in the front row often have an obstructed view as security guards and official event photographers move between the stage and crowd.
133 such as sitting on people’s shoulders, or even tall audience members all frequently obstruct one’s view. Yet none of the participants complained about these things, despite the fact that I asked many of them directly about the significance of the view.
I would argue that all of these visual obstructions are considered naturally occurring or inevitable within the live music environment. In contrast, phones and cameras, especially recording, become highly salient objects within the space. Contemporary debate surrounding technology and liveness combines with the specificities of the live environment and transforms the ways smartphones are experienced. Through this process, recording screens become understood and experienced as things that are out of place. The experience of these hand-held digital screens as visual obstructions moves beyond a consideration of the physical properties of the objects.
These devices are not only visual obstructions; through the meanings that are attached to them and the ways they are understood these devices are experienced as disrupting the affectivity of the space, and so disrupting the embodied experience of liveness.
For Lucy and Ada, this is experienced as negative and for Tim, a moment of disconnection. This moment of disconnection could be understood as an experience of distanciation as the entangled attendee momentarily feels at odds with his environment. Tim experiences a felt distance or moment of discord, as the recording attendee disrupts the flow of affect. That flow of affect, the movement of energies and intensities within the live music space, structures and gives texture to the experience of liveness. The continually shifting entanglement, in which Tim is involved, constantly moves and adjusts and through this movement the feeling of distanciation emerges. A palpable pressure momentarily envelops Tim and pushes the experience of liveness away from his embodied experience. Tim is still entangled in the live
134 music environment, however, for a moment, recording attendees shift and move his embodied attention, which includes his emotional and affective experience, away from the lively performance toward a recording device that is experienced as obstructive.
At live music events the specificities of mobile, digital technologies, and the meanings that are attached to recording technologies, pull attention to the presence of these technologies. The pull of these technologies is due, in part, to the ways they have become incorporated into our corporeality. Our embodied focus oscillates continually between body and world and through the process, that Leder (1990) describes as ‘incorporation’, things become entangled in our experiential field and transform our embodied experience.
Incorporating technologies and shifting techno-somatic involvements
In everyday life, the digital screens of smart phones, cameras, televisions, computers, information boards, public advertisements and so on fill homes, offices, and public spaces. These screens are often interactive, they inform, entertain, provide instruction and direction, connect users to others in a variety of ways, allow access to a range of services including music and of course, they ring, buzz and beep. Introna and Ilharco
(2006, p.62) assert that, ‘We are accustomed in our daily life to perform the kind of activities in which screens are already naturally “there”.’ Leder (1990, p.32) explains that through the process of incorporation, actions and practices are ‘enveloped within the structure of the taken-for-granted body from which I inhabit the world.’ Through this process objects and things ‘that remain spatially discrete’ can become incorporated into one’s corporeal field (Leder 1990, p.33).
135
According to Leder (1990), the body is involved in a perpetual unfolding and enfolding, an ebb and flow, through which things are drawn into one’s embodiment.
Objects, actions and skills become incorporated into one’s embodiment through routine or practised actions. Leder (1990, p.34) asserts that our embodied relationship with the world ‘unfolds in the space created by our technologically supplemented bodies, not merely that of our natural flesh.’ Through the process of incorporation,
‘the lived body constantly transforms its sensorimotor repertoire’, developing and obtaining new skills and habits, using various tools, and machines (Leder 1990, p.30).
Therefore, Leder (1990, p.30) argues, the body must be considered not as a static entity, but instead as a ‘living process.’
Leder (1990) draws from the works of both Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi, and their discussions of a blind man’s stick, to argue that over time, as an object becomes incorporated into one’s embodiment, it mostly disappears from one’s corporeal focus and the experiential field opened up by that object becomes available. The thing or practice is incorporated into one’s embodiment and as such moves in and out of focus with one’s shifting corporeal attention. For example, for most young people, their corporeal focus sometimes sits with the phone and the potentialities it affords, and at times the phone falls back into the periphery of experience. A ring, beep or vibration can quickly pull one’s focus back toward the object.
Through the process of incorporation screens have become entangled within our corporeal field and through this entanglement, digital screens, are intra-actively experienced as an element of our embodiment. As the capabilities of these
136 technologies increase and alter, the potentialities of one’s embodied experience expands and extends, weaving new or different possibilities into one’s always emerging entanglement. Through this process body, environment and the incorporated thing are intra-actively transformed. At youth-oriented live music events smart phones remain incorporated in one’s embodiment, however functions of those phones, particularly the ability to record, are transformed by the entangled experience of liveness and all of the ideas, practices, feelings and forces that are part of that ongoing and emerging entanglement. As Barad (2007) notes, entanglements are always characterised by and dependent upon a series of specificities. Each entanglement is unique and shifts and alters in distinctive ways.
Richardson’s (2010a) discussion of technosomatic involvement focuses upon the specific and varied forms of embodied involvement that accompany differing forms of technologies, and as such, can be used here to examine the specificities of the entanglement between bodies, certain technologies and live music events. Through everyday and routine usage, Richardson (2010a, p.1) suggests that ‘screens have become part of the dynamic arrangement of our embodied experience’ and the concept of ‘technosomatic involvement’ recognises ‘the medium-specific ordering of sense perception and bodily orientation’ (Richardson 2010a, p.3). Within this arrangement, each engagement with screen technologies has a specific form of involvement (Richardson 2010a, p.3). Richardson (2010a, p.432) uses the concept of
‘technosomatic involvement’ to argue that through the habitual practices and routines of everyday life, screens and the shifting interfaces between bodies and these technologies, become ‘quite literally an aspect of our corporeal schematics.’
137 Richardson (2010a, p.1) suggests that technosomatic involvements are dependent upon or determined by ‘cultural, environmental, spatial and historical specificities’, as well as the particularities of the technological device. From Richardson’s (2010a) work and participant discussion, I understand technosomatic involvements as shifting entanglements. At live music events, the technosomatic involvements of everyday life, which entangle digital screens into our corporeal field, shift and alter. The spatial and temporal specificities of live music environments combine with contemporary discourse pertaining to liveness and technology, and entrenched understandings and definitions of the term ‘live’, as well as with a range of other factors, including individual experiences and memories, to produce technosomatic involvements that entangle as an aspect of the embodied experience of liveness.
Though not actually utilising the work of Leder (1990), Richardson’s (2010a) understanding of the body and the ways the body engages with things has several similarities to that of Leder. Richardson (2010a), also influenced by the writings of
Merleau-Ponty, employs the term ‘incorporation’ to describe a similar process to
Leder (1990). She suggests that one’s ‘perceptual reach and bodily boundaries’ are
‘always-already “extendible” through artefacts and technologies’ (Richardson 2010a, p.1). However, Richardson (2010a, p.1) explains that technologies should not be thought of simply as ‘attachments or extensions’; rather, our corporeal compositions
‘dilate to make room for instrumentality.’ Things do not just become attached to our corporeal structure; rather, our dynamic corporeality expands and alters to mesh and absorb things and practices and through this incorporation our embodiment is transformed.
138 For Richardson (2010a, p.2), the ‘irreducible relation between technics, embodiment, knowledge and perception’ is termed intercorporeality and is enabled by our ‘somatic openness’. The body is never shut off or closed to the world, but instead, is open to its environment and intra-actively emerges through its constant entanglement with it.
Like Leder (1990), Richardson (2010a) believes our corporeal structure, our way of being-in-the-world, enables the incorporation of technologies into our embodiment and our embodiment is transformed through this process. However, Richardson
(2010a) extends this idea of incorporation and transformation beyond Leder’s account, suggesting that the specificities of technologies, bodies and environments determine and affect the way in which each technology may imprint upon and shape our embodied experience of the world. Moreover, Richardson’s work is much more recent than that of Leder and as such, provides an account that recognises the complex and highly dynamic nature of contemporary technologies.
Through the routines and habits of everyday life, digital screens have become part of our shifting corporeal focus, and each type of screen is incorporated into one’s embodied experience in specific ways. Richardson (2010b, p.436) suggests that mobile phones have a ‘handiness’ that allows for or encourages the ‘habitual handling’ of these devices even at times when they are not being used for communication purposes. According to Richardson (2010b, p.436), people develop an
‘intimate familiarity of hand-eye-screen couplings.’ I would suggest this is particularly true for young people. Through their ongoing technosomatic involvement with smartphones, youths constantly and habitually engage with the technology to fill the ‘fissures of everyday life’ (Richardson 2010b, p.436). The ever-increasing capabilities of smartphones, particularly relating to these devices cameras, has meant
139 that the acts of photographing and recording have become, for many youths, another element within their everyday body-technic routines and habits. Through the technosomatic involvement with smartphones the practice of producing and sharing photographs and videos in everyday life has proliferated and, for many, become not only normalised but also habitual.
Considering my own experiences and participant discussion, I suggest that the embodied experience of liveness, or the active pursuit of this experience, shifts and alters attendees’ technosomatic involvement with these devices. Digital screens are physically and emotionally stimulating; they have immense power to pull and hold one’s embodied attention. Smartphones, and digital screens more generally, have a power to pull attention, but also the power to draw parts of the body, specifically the eyes and the hands, toward them. As Iltrona and Ilharco (2006, p. 63) explain, ‘The screen is often the focus of our concerns in a particular environment’. However, at live music events the technosomatic involvement developed through everyday life is disrupted, or perhaps experienced as disruptive, and as a result attendees actively negotiate and reconfigure their body-technic engagement in the space. In Marion’s discussion of her phone usage, she seemed to acknowledge both a habitual reach for her phone, and an effort to limit her phone usage. She said, ‘if I do… subconsciously reach for my phone [I’m] just like ‘Don’t!’ because you’re watching this… you’ve only got this opportunity to see them, they’re right in front of you, you need to make the most of it’. For Marion, the habit if reaching for her phone must be avoided to more fully engage in the live experience.
140 Even participants who engaged with their phones during events found this habitual habit problematic. Dave discussed taking photographs and videos at a recent concert and during his interview he even whipped out his phone to show me some of the photographs. However, he said, ‘I was actually thinking during that time why the hell am I taking these? I’ll probably never do anything with them… To be honest I was thinking I can’t believe I’m doing this during the event, but at the same time… everyone there had phones or cameras out’. Dave attended fewer live music events than many other participants and had, what could be described as, a more casual approach, which contrasted with participants who had a more serious and very dedicated approach to their attendance at live music events. For Dave the social aspect of live music events seemed as important as experiencing live music. Whereas some other participants attended events alone, Dave only ever attended with friends and whilst other participants thought it was important to attend and encourage the support acts, Dave discussed spending time socialising and at the bar before the main performance. However, he was still aware of the negative connotations that are entwined with understandings of liveness and the use of certain technologies. Even though these negative ideas did not stop him from using his phone, his actions were permeated by his own negative judgement.
During the live music event, Dave understood his technosomatic involvement with his phone as problematic; through his interview, Dave was able to demonstrate his understanding of the tension between technology and liveness. By acknowledging and discussing this, Dave actively negotiates that past engagement. He makes it clear that he is not just a spectator mindlessly taking photographs, but someone who questions his own actions. Moreover, by showing me his photographs they became purpose
141 filled; they were not items that were simply forgotten after the show, but instead part of Dave’s active contribution to my research. But, crucially, they are part of his embodied experience and an extended body-technic entanglement that exceeds (or alters) the temporality of the live event. The perceived opposition between liveness and certain technologies creates a tension for recording attendees that must be negotiated. This tension occurs not only in relation to entrenched understandings of liveness, but also against the constant entanglement of these devices that are incorporated into one’s experiential field through the routines, habits and practices of everyday life.
Again it is important to note the relatively homogenous nature of my sample. Dave was the only participant who described taking a large number of photographs or recordings at a live event. While others spoke of limiting their own usage and discussed the usage of others negatively, Dave was more uninhibited and relaxed in his discussion of his own technological engagement; even when questioning his actions he remained upbeat. The lack of enthusiasm shown by the participants toward recording during live music events in my sample is not necessarily indicative of overall attitudes and actions of attendees at events. Indeed, the negative comments by participants relating to other attendees recording, the plethora of online articles disparaging the use of smartphones at events, and artists banning smartphones and digital cameras during their shows, all suggest that engaging with these devices during events is actually quite common. Specifically targeting people who record or photograph at live events during the recruitment stage could have provided a sample of participants with more diverse experiences and attitudes toward this issue. A lack of diversity in this area of my research must be acknowledged and understood as
142 symptomatic of my sample rather than representative of attendees at youth-oriented live music events.
The high visibility of the recording attendee within the live music space is due in part to the physical properties of these technologies (for example, the brightness of the illuminated screen within generally dark spaces) and the violation of certain rules of etiquette within the space (obstructing the view of others). However, the dominant discourse surrounding liveness and technology is another element that shifts and amplifies an attendee’s dynamic entangled embodiment. A complex web of ideas, relations, sensations and forces imprints upon and imbues the embodied experience of live music events. Attendees actively negotiate the body-technic relationship within live music spaces, and participants in my research actively re-negotiate these relations through the interview process.
The ‘recording attendee’ as a co(a)gent and the destruction of liveness
Participant discussion of recording at live music events can be considered and explored using Michael’s (2012) discussion of co(a)gents. His discussion of co(a)gents stresses the centrality of technology in human experience, the complex interconnectedness of different entities, discourses and forces, and the distribution of agency which circulates and is shared in and between those interconnections. Michael
(2012, p.2) asserts that co(a)gents are produced through ‘specific technologies, bits of bodies, aspects of nature, parts of culture, and traditions of discourse’ coming together. This discussion of co(a)gents is situated within Michael’s (2012) broader discussion of actor-network theory (ANT). ANT is one of many perspectives within sociology that regards the social and technological as ‘mutually determining’
143 (Michael 2012, p.5). Michael (2012) employs ANT and develops this theory to demonstrate how nature and technology permeate a number of categories frequently used within the social sciences. According to Michael (2012, p.21), ‘the intermixing of the human and non-human is intrinsic to human society’, and so, developing accounts of how this intermixing unfolds is crucial.
Michael (2012, p.1) provides an account of humans as enmeshed entities produced through ‘language, through discursive formations, in their various liaisons with technological and natural actors, across networks that are heterogeneously comprised of humans and non-humans who are themselves so comprised.’ Humans are social, technological, natural, discursive entities, and according to Michael (2012, p.1), ‘to disentangle the traditionally discrete entities and processes’ is imbued with difficulty.
Michael (2012) proposes the co(a)gent as a way through which to understand entangling entities and processes. The co(a)gent draws attention to dynamic relations and shifting arrangements, the flows and movements between things, bodies, ideas and energies. Michael (2012) asserts that humans are co(a)gents, or shifting combinations of multiple co(a)gents. He explains that co(a)gents have a ‘co-agency’ that is ‘exercised amongst its components, components that are themselves heterogeneously distributed’ (Michael 2012, p.136). For co(a)gents, agency is not reducible to the human, but shared and dispersed amongst the things and forces that co-constitute the human.
Michael’s work adds another layer of complexity to my understanding of liveness as an entangled embodiment. The attendee and the smartphone are each variously constituted by shifting networks of things, forces and discourses and as they entangle,
144 agency is spread across and throughout those networks. That distributedness recognises that the human is not the sole source of agency; instead, all components actively participate in and contribute to the emerging entanglement. This understanding of agency is not too dissimilar from that of Barad (2007), who argues that agency is not something that can be possessed by people or things; it is not something that can be held and it does not equate to human intentionality. Rather, for
Barad (2007, p.214), ‘Agency is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment.’ It is, according to Barad (2007, p.178), ‘“doing” or “being” in its intra-activity.’ Agency is action and emerges through the ongoing reconfigurations of various and shifting entanglements. In the act of reconfiguring their technosomatic involvements, attendees at live music events can purposefully engage in ways of being and doing that create the experience liveness.
From this perspective, digital devices in and of themselves, do not have the power to pull attention. Rather, these devices are elements within dynamic entanglements that are intra-actively formed and intra-actively configure and reconfigure specific engagements. The unfolding intra-actions between body and screen at live music events constitute an important element in an attendee’s ongoing entanglement that contributes to, diminishes or shapes the embodied experience of liveness. The recording attendee can be considered a co(a)gent. The phone or camera, used as a recording device, the attendee’s arms, attitudes and actions of performers regarding these technologies, the proximity of other bodies, as well as other aspects of the spatiality and temporality of the event, all combine to create the recording attendee.
The recording attendee co(a)gent intra-actively forms and is highly visible within the live music space and can trigger an affective shift, or disrupt the flow of affect.
145 However, more than this, the recording attendee is actively bound to the process of co-creating liveness.
At live music events liveness is not just an experience attendees pursue or orient toward, and it is not simply an idea they think about or negotiate. Instead, liveness is intra-actively co-produced and part of this co-production involves the technosomatic involvement of attendees. By adhering to the expected and accepted minimal technosomatic involvement during live events the participants in my research understood their actions as actively contributing to the experience of liveness for themselves and others, whilst the recording attendee was understood as challenging that experience.
For Ada the practice of recording was experienced as opposed to the very nature of liveness. Discussing her technological practices at live music events, Ada stated adamantly that she did not video record during such events. When I asked why, she sighed, seeming somewhat exasperated as she explained, ‘Because, it really takes away from the organic, live experience.’ Ada’s discussion clearly echoes traditional understandings of live music and use of the word organic implies a perceived naturalness that may be jeopardized or tainted through the use of certain technologies.
Clark’s discussion was similar to that of Ada; he described personal recordings during events as, ‘destroying a little bit of live music.’ For this participant, live music has a quality that is taken away or destroyed through the act of video recording. Videos capture, contain and make permanent elements of the live performance. The practice of recording captures aspects of the performance and was understood by Grant as being opposed to the very nature of liveness. Grant explained his dislike for recording
146 at shows, saying, ‘sure you can sort of refer back to what you’ve captured, but that’s not what it’s about… it’s all about being in the moment.’ For Grant, live music is not about looking back, remembering the experience, but instead about being actively engaged in the experience at the moment of its unfolding. Recording was understood as compromising what live music is ‘all about.’ At the very moment one tries to preserve or capture the live experience through recording, that experience is altered.
Clark, Grant and Ada, experienced recording technologies and recording attendees as negatively affecting the very experience of liveness. For these participants it is not the broad category of technology that is problematic, but rather, the specific qualities of recording technologies.
Moreover, these recording devices capture only limited visual and auditory material.
Even the best cameras and devices can capture only part of the action on stage or in a crowd. Attendees, of course, never experience the whole event, just snippets of it, but to be at the event and in the crowd one experiences a multitude of feelings, thoughts and sensations as a continual stream of action, emotion and affect pulse through the event. Live music events are multisensory experiences that involve the body as a whole in moments of heightened or intensified embodiment. This multisensorality cannot be captured, replicated or contained.
The complexity, multiplicity and specificities of all the different aspects of experience are excluded from the photograph or recording. The bass vibrating through the floor, the smells of the crowd, the overwhelming sound of the band, the relief of a cool breeze, or the feeling of singing along with thousands of others are all omitted.
Participants spoke about liveness as something particular, unique and fleeting. The
147 body as a whole is engaged and entangled within a complex, transient environment.
The liveliness of the event and the emotional and affective force that permeates and shapes attendees embodied experiences is, for these participants, dulled or interrupted by recording technologies as their engagement within the space is disrupted.
Participants attempt to preserve or renegotiate their experience of this liveliness and by doing so preserve the particular embodied experience that unfolds through their multisensorial entanglement with the live environment.
The lively technosomatic involvement of photography
Whereas most participants disapproved of recording or, (as in Dave’s case) questioned their decision to record, photography was more widely accepted by participants. Photographing requires an embodied engagement that differs from that required by recording. Participants who discussed photography generally understood the practice of taking photographs as maintaining an engagement with the performance, rather than shifting their engagement to their digital screen. Whereas recording involves a screen being placed for an extended period of time between audience members and performers, and attendees potentially watching the performance through the screen, taking a photograph is quick and easy. An individual’s bodily orientation shifts only very briefly toward their hand-held device or, it could be argued, an individual’s orientation stays with the performance and their camera or phone remains on the periphery of their embodied focus. The technosomatic involvement required to photograph has decreased as the capabilities of smartphones have increased. For example, with an iPhone a person can access their camera simply by sliding their finger up the screen; the camera automatically focuses and with a single tap the photo is taken. Through the routines and practices of
148 everyday life, the skill of taking a quick photograph can become incorporated into one’s corporeal field along with the technological device that photographs.
When explaining why he preferred taking photographs to making recordings, Tom said, ‘videos are intrusive’. In contrast to recording, he discussed photographs as
‘pretty quick and not too disruptive.’ Moreover, Tom considered the prolonged engagement and involvement with a phone screen as required when recording, to be
‘disrespectful to an artist.’ Alternatively, the act of taking a photograph allows attendees to remain engaged in the performance. Similarly, whereas Ada discussed recording as taking away from the live experience, she said that when taking photographs she can ‘still concentrate’ and be ‘in the moment.’ For Ada, the technology of the smartphone, when used to take photographs, does not compromise or conflict with the experience of liveness but allows aspects of the live experience – being in the moment – to be felt. Max understood photographing during performances as allowing him to ‘capture special moments on stage.’
The experience of liveness not only involves a physical, spatial and temporal co- presence but a particular embodied engagement. What Ada describes as concentration could also be thought of as an embodied attunement or focus. The experience of
‘being in the moment’ is not necessarily automatic or guaranteed within live music spaces, but instead requires an embodied focus on the performance. In addition, despite the advancing capacities of cameras, when taking a photograph, these participants understand themselves as possessing agency; they are the active element in their discussion. The act of taking a photograph at a live music event involves the capacities of the camera intra-actively combining with a number of factors and
149 elements including the person taking the photograph, their position in the crowd, the lighting conditions and the movements of the subject. Taking a photograph is not the result of controlling or mastering the technology, but intra-actively negotiating one’s engagement with the camera in the specific conditions of the live music event.
Technologies that are experienced as maintaining particular characteristics of liveness, and at the same time maintaining an embodied focus upon the performance, were understood by participants as acceptable at live music events. In the ongoing intra-active configuration and re-configuration of liveness, the action of photographing does not pull attention away from the performance for the photographer or those around them. The device is, in many cases, the same as that used for recording but the action is very different. The production and maintenance of liveness remains intact through the act of photographing. Sanden (2013, p.6) suggests
‘the perception of liveness depends not necessarily on the total eschewal of electronic mediation but on the persistent perception of characteristics of music’s live performance within the context of – and often with the help of – various levels of such mediation.’
Importantly, participants who discussed taking photographs all discussed photographing the artists or elements of the performance. No participant discussed taking selfies during performances; however, I have witnessed this practice a number of times, particularly at festivals.8 To take a selfie attendees turn their backs to the stage and focus on their camera as they capture an image that is either entirely, or
8 This could be for a number of reasons. Festivals take place over long periods of time and between performances there can be long periods of waiting. Taking selfies could simply be a symptom of boredom and a way to pass the time. Indeed, I have often witnessed selfies being taken when no one is on stage. Festivals also have much larger
150 mostly, of their own face. Their embodied engagement completely shifts away from the live performance toward their device and the action of capturing an image of themselves. Furthermore, selfies require a certain amount of space that is generally not available, or not comfortably available, in most crowds. The person taking the photograph will generally stretch their arm as far as possible from their face to capture their own image. This action can be very disruptive to nearby attendees as someone else’s arm and phone are thrust, not just into ones line of sight, but into one’s personal space. Moreover, the action of taking a selfie garners attention as one or two bodies turn and for a moment, orient themselves in a way that starkly contrasts with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other bodies.
The expected and accepted embodiment of the attendee is outwardly and forwardly oriented toward the live performance, selfies draw one’s attention back toward the self. The body as a whole could be understood as disengaging from the performance as one’s technosomatic involvement becomes the focus of embodied attention. Whilst taking a photograph of the performance can be understood as requiring an active attunement to the liveness of the event, taking selfies could be understood as shifting one’s attunement toward their device and the image it will create.
crowds than most other live music events and festival venues generally have vantage points from which the sheer size of the crowd can be seen, this would make the potential background of these selfies more impressive than that of a small venue. Also, at festivals, attendees constantly move between stages, some even do so during performances, this could lessen feelings of inhibition when taking a selfie and could eliminate the feeling of intimacy that can be created in smaller venues.
151 Stage screens and the affective reconfiguration of liveness
At youth-oriented live music events with large audiences, stage screens are often used. These large digital screens are usually positioned on each side of the stage and sometimes at the back of the stage behind the performers. They generally display what is happening on stage, or a section of it, as it happens, although, during some performances other images and videos are displayed. For example, Flume’s performances now generally involve stage screens that show various images and video sequences, some computer animated, some not, that are choreographed with his music and light display. Performance footage is not usually pre-recorded and, even when an event is being broadcast or streamed live, members of the crowd remain the only people who will ever see that footage presented in that way. The screens and the images they present are very much tied to the particular music, time and space in which they occur. Moreover, when aspects of the live performance are shown on these screens they share the spontaneous and temporary nature of the performance. As such, these screens could be understood as possessing qualities associated with liveness. Yet, these screens occupy a complex position and were experienced by participants in multiple ways.
Some participants experienced stage screens as compromising and disrupting the liveness of the event. The problem for these attendees was not with the content displayed upon the screen, but with the fact that the screen provided a technologically mediated view. The screen is a highly visible technology that is not directly involved with the music-making practices (as opposed to technologies such as instruments and amps that are highly visible, but create or contribute to the creation of music). Some
152 participants experienced the technological mediation of the live performance as undesirable.
Joel discussed his preference for watching the stage rather than the screen. He said, ‘I try to avoid the screen. I focus on the stage, their live performance, not video footage of the show I’m at’. Despite his attempts to avoid engaging with the screen, Joel said,
‘sometimes it is a bit distracting and you catch yourself watching the screen’. By using the phrase ‘catch yourself’, Joel suggests that he engages in a form of self- surveillance. He understands the action of watching the stage screen as undesirable and something to avoid. His intention and desire is to watch the stage, yet the screen still pulls his attention. This idea was reflected in Marion’s comments. She said, ‘I try to just watch the stage, but I do find myself watching the screen a lot, which I find annoying, I consciously try not to’. As with her phone usage, Marion makes a conscious effort not to engage with the screen; however, at times the screen still pulls her attention and produces a feeling of annoyance.
The technosomatic involvement developed through everyday life, in which youths habitually engage with and orient themselves toward digital screens, remains entangled with the body even as attendees actively attempt to re-negotiate this engagement within the live music space. At times the power of the screen to pull attention compromises this negotiation. The responses of Marion and Joel highlight a tension that exists between the technosomatic involvement of bodies and digital screens in everyday life, and the engagement with these screens during live music events. During these events, the everyday technosomatic involvement shifts or is momentarily renegotiated as digital screens take on different meanings. Richardson
153 (2010a) suggests that the ways in which we incorporate screens into our corporeal schemata is, in part, determined by the specificities of the technology, but are also determined by the specificities of the environment. The embodied experience of liveness involves a particular embodied engagement that alters the experience of these digital screens.
Participants consciously reconfigure the body-screen engagements that are typical in everyday life and purposefully resist the usual pull of screens that emerge through this everyday engagement. By actively reconfiguring their body-screen relationship participants contribute to the ongoing production of liveness. They are not simply passive subjects that the experience of liveness happens to, but instead actively involved in co-constituting the live experience. As such, one’s shifting technosomatic involvement is caught up in the experience of liveness as an embodied entanglement.
Attendees, as co(a)gents, intra-actively form, maintain, strengthen and weaken the experience of the liveness through their entangled being and becoming, which always involves the negotiation of one’s technosomatic engagements.
Participant discussion of stage screens and smartphones had obvious points of connection and this demonstrates that, despite the very different materialities and the different body-technic involvements they produce, these two digital technologies are entangled in the experience of liveness in ways that connect. These two forms of technology are, at times, understood and negotiated in similar ways at live events. The ideas, histories, discourses and forces attached to these two technologies intersect and produce or threaten the experience of liveness in similar ways. However, the differences between smartphones and stage screens and the ways attendees engage
154 with them have important implications for the exploration of the embodied experience of liveness. The specificities of stage screens, or at least some of them, are important to note here. The sheer size and brightness of stage screens demand attention, even from attendees like Marion and Joel who are trying to avoid engaging with them.
Whereas mobile phones have a ‘handiness’, which allows them to be held or always in reach of the hand, stage screens are usually experienced from a distance. Indeed, their positioning on the sides of stages often means that attendees in the first rows of the audience do not have a clear view of these screens.
Attendees generally have no control over what is displayed on stage screens, unlike their personal devices through which they determine the content they will engage with. Stage screens, like cinema screens, exceed the abilities of the eyes by providing close-up images, which can include the performer’s face, the sweat dripping from their forehead, their fingers strumming the guitar, the impact of the drumsticks smashing the drums and so on. Stage screens also provide dynamic images that may switch quickly between the various members of a band and the audience. Unlike cinema screens, the engagement of attendees with stage screens can be highly dynamic. Attendees can move in, out of and around the audience space and one’s orientation toward a stage screen is often not front on; depending on one’s position within the crowd, one’s body may be angled away from stage screens toward the stage. The very different qualities of stage screens imbue the technology with the potential to transform the live music space, not only on an individual level as smartphones and digital cameras do, but also for the audience as a whole.
Steve’s discussion of stage screens provides an entirely different perspective on this
155 technology and demonstrates the potential these screens hold to reconfigure the emotionality and felt spatiality of the event and by doing so enhance or amplify experiences of liveness. Watching the stage screens at a show enhanced Steve’s experience of the live performance and enabled him to attune to the flow of affect within the space. Steve discussed a Radiohead performance he attended at which singer Thom Yorke looked directly into the camera as he sang a particular song. Steve said, ‘There were two big screens either side of the stage and it was a slow song, which allowed the singer to use expressive techniques and it created a really moving emotional performance.’
For Steve, an intimate visual connection with the performer was created, a connection that would have been impossible without usage of the stage screens. Angel and Gibbs
(2006, p.26 and p.29) assert that ‘the face is the primary site of affective expression’ and a ‘major interface for the transmission of affect which binds human beings in relationship with each other’. Through Yorke’s technosomatic involvement with the venue’s cameras, his distinctive face and his facial expressions were visually amplified. The specificities of the song, the venue, the embodied performance by
Yorke and the engagement with technology, by both performer and audience, combined to alter Steve’s embodied experience of the space.
Yorke’s purposeful involvement with the stage screens, contrasts with my experiences of live performances. During most of the performances that I have attended where stage screens were being used, the performers either completely ignored the cameras, or looked to them only very briefly. Steve also said he had not seen other performers engage in this way with the cameras and the screens they are attached to. Perhaps
156 ignoring the cameras and stage screens in this way relates to the disapproval of certain forms of technological mediation by both audience members and artists. When an artist purposefully engages with these screens the tension associated with the technologically mediated view diminishes and attendees are able to embrace the experience produced through the lively entangling of technology, music and bodies.
In recent years, electronic dance music artist, Flume, has also embraced the use of stage screens, along with light displays. As Flume has become more successful, his use of lights and digital screens in his live performance has become increasingly elaborate. This artist uses these technologies, not to provide an amplified view of his performance, but instead to emphasise, energise and give colour and light to the liveliness of his music. Through the unique and highly dynamic technosomatic involvement he establishes for his audience the affectivity of the live event is amplified and continuously altered.
In Steve’s example, the technologically mediated engagement enabled a forceful, visceral connection and functioned to reconfigure the spatiality of the event. Steve said, ‘Although it was in a larger venue, [it] felt like a smaller personal gig… like he was singing to you!’ Several participants discussed larger venues as lacking intimacy.
In vast spaces, filled with thousands of other bodies, the affective bonds between performers and audience may dissolve or dissipate. Through an engagement with the stage screens, Steve’s experience of the space is reconfigured and the vastness is replaced by an intimacy as the flow of affect is amplified. A technosomatic involvement with the stage screens allowed Steve to attune to the affectivity of the live environment and the face of the performer. My engagement with a large digital screen during a performance at Splendour in the Grass similarly reconfigured the
157 affectivity of the space.
Flume was about to perform in a headlining spot on the festival’s second largest stage at the end of the second day of Splendour in the Grass. I had been wading through mud almost continuously for two days and an old knee injury had become aggravated. I left my friends, who wanted to get into the middle of the crowd to dance, and by some miracle found an empty seat in a nearby eating area. I could see part of the distant stage from my position, although one side was blocked from view by the side of the marquee. I could easily and clearly hear the music. I had seen Flume perform at a festival earlier that year; his performance (at this reasonably early stage in his career) had involved little movement or action. His interaction with the crowd was minimal. He mostly stood by himself, often in semi-darkness, behind his electronic equipment and simply played his songs. Feeling like I wouldn’t miss anything on stage, I sat back in my seat, squished between unknown attendees, and looked to the stage only occasionally. I focused mostly upon the black sky above, while I listened to the music.
The familiar electronic beeps of the song ‘Left Alone’ stuttered across the crowd and were met with frenzied cheers. The whirring main vocals of feature artist Chet Faker combined with the electronic drum beats and background vocals that Flume layered into the song. ‘Left Alone’ was my favourite song by Flume (at the time) and I had attended Chet Faker’s performance earlier that day. I looked quickly to the stage, checking for Chet Faker. I could only see Flume. When I had seen Flume perform previously, Chet Faker’s vocals were not performed live. I assumed the same pre- recorded vocals were being played, so sat back in my seat again.
158
The air was damp and a few gentle drops fell from the blackened sky. I cursed myself for using my rain poncho earlier in the day to sit on the muddy ground. I glanced around, half knowing nowhere close by sold ponchos, and immediately noticed the figure portrayed on a large screen in a nearby beer garden. It was Chet Faker. I quickly looked back to the stage and realized he was standing in the area obscured from my view. At the time I chose my seat I had completely forgotten about the beer garden’s screen, which sat in darkness while the stage was empty, and so had positioned myself with my back to the screen, turned toward the stage area. I swivelled in my seat to look again at the screen, but pressed uncomfortably against the arms, elbows and legs of those around me. I looked to the stage but Chet Faker was still out of view. So I sat back again, watching the crowd and listening to the song.
I began to hear slight cracks and moments of scratchiness in the vocals, notes that were hit differently, emphasis being placed on different words or syllables. The drumbeat seemed to hit harder, the moving and intensifying cheers of the crowd probably followed Chet Faker’s movement across the stage, and the buzz in the air seemed to amplify. I noticed the way the stage lights flashed and strobed across the crowd to the beat of the song. Thousands of heads, arms and bodies seemed to rise and fall, illuminated to the rhythm of the music. As the song drew to a close, the same stuttering beeps it began with were almost completely inaudible, enveloped by the applause, cheers, and yells of the crowd.
Developed from field notes produced at Splendour in the Grass, North Byron
Parklands, 26th-28th of July 2013.
159
Through an accidental engagement with the large digital screen at Splendour in the
Grass, my embodied experience of the live performance was reconfigured. I only looked toward the screen momentarily but this short view of the stage, and a live body on the stage singing, altered my experience of the space. The view was significant in this example; however, the view functioned to produce a felt co-presence that triggered a shift in my embodied experience and intensified my corporeal focus. After seeing Chet Faker on stage I did not continue to watch the screen or the stage. Instead the view of the crowd, the lights, and the way these things combined and entangled with everything else unfolding in that moment filled my focus. After seeing Chet
Faker was there on stage, singing live, I became more attentive to the unfolding, emerging, liveliness of the moment. Through a felt co-presence, between the performer and me, I became more attuned to the liveliness of the moment. I heard the intricacies of Chet Faker’s vocal performance, the details, differences, and distinctiveness of his singing, in that particular moment. Other elements of the song, such as the drumbeat, seemed to intensify. The rhythms of the lights, meshed with the movement of the crowd. The lively affectivity of the space seemed to shift or become amplified. In these two examples, digital screens did not diminish or obstruct the experience of liveness, instead, a technological mediation of the view entangled with other elements of the live environment to produce or emphasise the embodied experience of liveness. Visually, acoustically and spatially, the body as a whole, engages with the dynamism of the environment and through that engagement the experience of liveness is co-constituted as an entangled embodiment.
160 Conclusion
Through everyday life, digital screens are incorporated into the embodied experiences of modern western youths. The potentialities of our embodied experience alter and expand as the capabilities of these devices, such as smart phones and other digital screens, are incorporated as an element within our dynamic and entangled experiential field. Engagements with these technological things are shaped and structured by shifting technosomatic involvements, which are determined by a series of interconnected specificities that include, though are not limited to, parts of the body, capacities and materiality of the technology, the cultural value and its historical development (Richardson 2010a). At live music events, the technosomatic involvement of everyday life shifts, as digital screens take on different meanings and attendees try to renegotiate their engagement with these technologies.
For participants, smartphones and digital cameras, when used for recording by themselves or others, as well as the larger stage screens, often disrupted or obstructed their experience of the live music environment. Contemporary discussion of live music by musicians and within popular media, often positions use of these technologies as oppositional or detrimental to liveness. Such discourse contributes to attendees experiencing recording practices and technologically mediated views as negative. The recording attendee, considered as a co(a)gent, becomes highly salient during live music events, as dominant discourse and culturally specific understandings of liveness combine with the specificities of the space and body. The way that the recording attendee is experienced at live music events would shift and vary between individuals and, even for an individual attendee, would shift and vary between events and also within a single event, as the specificities of the environment
161 differ. However, the act of recording was discussed by participants most commonly as taking away from or being opposed to the very nature of live music. Participants discussed consciously resisting the urge to record or reach for their phone, or minimising their phone usage at events and by doing so, purposefully negotiate their everyday technosomatic involvements. Moreover, technosomatic involvements that are quick and unobtrusive, such as that required to take a photograph, were discussed by participants as maintaining the experience of liveness. By reconfiguring and negotiating their technosomatic involvements, participants actively contribute to the co-constitution of liveness. Through their technological entanglements agency is dispersed and shared and this distributedness allows attendees to purposefully engage in ways of being and doing that actively produce and maintain the experience liveness.
More than merely maintaining the experience of liveness, certain technological engagements can enhance or amplify the embodied experience of live music events.
An engagement with stage screens by both Steve and me functioned to reconfigure the affectivity of the live music environment and, by doing so, created or intensified the experience of liveness as an embodied entanglement. As technologies rapidly advance and alter, our technosomatic involvements continually shift and there exists a huge potential for expansion and extension of theories that consider liveness and the use of technologies at live events. This highly dynamic entanglement has altered in many different ways just through the course of my research and these shifting technological engagements will be discussed in the conclusion of my work.
162 Through the embodied experience of liveness, the entanglement between bodies, environment, things, and forces can be felt. The complexities and intricacies of the body, world and their constant meshing become apparent as we attune to the lively feelings, energies and intensities that shape and structure the experience of liveness.
This entanglement describes our way of being-in-the-world. However, various factors, including the mundane routines of everyday life, the ecstatic, recessive tendencies of our bodies, contemporary understandings of technology and liveness, and dominant discourse surrounding the body and mind, all combine to push this entanglement into the background of our embodied focus. The experience of liveness can force our entanglement into our embodied focus. The following chapter will consider moments in which our entangling with the live environment forcefully intensifies our embodied experience through a focus on the embodied experience of heat at live music events.
163 Chapter 4: The touch of heat from the surface to the depths
The 18th of January 2013 was both the hottest day to ever be recorded in Sydney, with temperatures exceeding forty-five degrees, and the day of Sydney’s Big Day Out. As I stepped off the train at Olympic Park, the heat immediately hit me in the face. It was stifling, overwhelming and suffocating. Within the festival site, bodies were spread through the shaded areas, lying on the cool concrete, or sitting slumped against brick walls, all energy seemingly drawn out by the heat. A thin layer of sweat covered the skin of most people, some dripped with it and the smell hung in the air.
The free water stations sat largely abandoned as the water inside slowly simmered in the sun. Down by the stages, unfathomably, bodies still danced, swayed, jumped or thrashed to the music, though far fewer than in previous years. The security attendants, who usually hold water bottles out to attendees, were today armed with huge cannon-like hoses. Water shot out and swept across the crowd, bodies surged toward the spray. Arms and cheers rose into the air as the water hit the baking, often reddened and burnt, skin. Sitting in the stands, out of the sun, but still encased in the heat, I tried to push my attention out toward whoever was on stage. The heat pushing against my body and seeping through my skin was exhausting. My thoughts were hazy as my attention meandered lazily from one thing to the next. My lungs felt heavy, the air felt thick and the single drip of sweat that crept slowly down my back caused extreme agitation. I couldn’t wait for the day to be done.
Developed from field notes produced at Big Day Out, Sydney Olympic Park,
Homebush, 18th of January 2013.
164 Introduction
At youth-oriented live music events, heat radiates from bodies packed tightly in a crowd: it envelops the skin and covers it in sweat. It intensifies, unable to escape the usually windowless rooms, or beats down on bodies under the summer sun.
For many attendees heat is central to the embodied experience of live music events.
Heat is energizing, exhausting, internal, external and in between; it generates and radiates from the corporeal depths and the world around us. From the surface to the depths, the body is bound to a continual generation, regulation and experience of heat.
At live music events attention can be pulled, often sharply or for extended periods, toward the experience of heat as an element of our entanglement. Heat is experienced in multiple ways and will be discussed through this chapter as an element of touch that has received little scholarly attention in the ‘sensual revolution’. Heat will be explored as an external sensation produced through contact with the weather, an affective force, a form of energy that is produced internally, and as a quality of the air experienced in the corporeal depths.
The embodied experience of heat, and indeed the embodied experiences of weather more generally, are complex, multiple and entangled and as such need to be teased apart to create conceptual clarity. Leder’s (1990) understanding of bodily regions and capacities as ecstatic and recessive provides a useful framework through which to do this. Unfortunately (though, perhaps unavoidably) this teasing apart theoretically separates what is always entwined in lived experience. As I am considering heat predominantly as an element of and response to the weather, I will begin this chapter by exploring the most obvious and immediate experience of heat, which involves the
165 ecstatic body and specifically our cutaneous contact with the world. I will briefly locate my discussion of heat in relation to existing accounts of touch and weather.
The skin is a constant site of encounter between body and environment: it feels, responds to and is transformed by heat, and at outdoor events this heat is often an element of the weather. Australia’s music festival season falls predominantly during the summer months and so it was unsurprising that participant discussion of heat overwhelmingly related to the weather and the touch of heat on the skin. Drawing from Leder’s (1990) understanding of the absent body and Ingold’s (2011a) discussion of weather, I argue that just as aspects of one’s body shift into the background of one’s embodied attention, so too do aspects of one’s environment. In the predominantly indoor spaces of modern western life, the weather often shifts into the background of our experiential fields. At outdoor music festivals the weather, and in particular the experience of heat as an element of the weather, are pulled into one’s attention. For participants in my research and me, the unpleasant touch of heat shifted and altered the emotional engagement with the live music. Using the work of Vannini and Taggart (2014) I then consider the touch of heat as an affective force and as contributing to the shifting affectivity that imbues experiences of liveness. Heat as an affective force is examined as both a bodily capacity and collective condition that has a particular materiality, which imprints on different bodies in different ways, and which is part of the ongoing intra-active formation of the body-in-and-of-the-world.
Next I move beyond conventional understandings of touch and consider heat as a distinctive form of sensory perception that is felt internally. Paterson (2007) considers the somatic senses through his discussion of the haptic, which he defines as a synergic
166 system that involves the internally oriented somatic senses, and that often produces indistinct and indefinable sensations. Paterson’s (2007) understanding of the ‘haptic’ is unusual with its inclusion of the body’s interior, though, through this inclusion, it conceptually opens up the body and understandings of embodied experience. Potter
(2008), as well as Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) argue that heat can be considered as an internal energy force that informs and contributes to embodied ways of knowing, being and feeling. I suggest that through the embodied experience of live music the somatic senses can entwine with elements of the weather to produce an experience of heat as an affective force that enables the intra-active unfolding of body and environment.
Lastly, heat is considered as an experience of air that is felt within the corporeal depths and specifically the respiratory system. Using Ingold’s (2006) discussion of air and Leder’s (1990) discussion of dysfunction, I argue that the embodied experience of liveness pulls attention toward aspects of the body and environment and their entangling. The body as a whole entity, from the surface to the depths, senses and interacts with the body’s surrounds and these interactions shape and “flesh out” the embodied experience of liveness. Heat, at one and the same time, evidences the inescapable entwinement of individuals and their environment and pulls attention from that environment back toward the body, whilst penetrating that body and confounding the separation of the surface and the depths. The experience of heat is multidimensional and multidirectional; from the outside in and the inside out heat entangles body and environment. Each experience of heat, from the cutaneous to the corporeal depths, demonstrates the complexity of the body that is always entangled.
167 Heating up the ‘sensual revolution’
In the generally moderate to hot environments in which I conducted my research, the embodied experience of heat was often central to the experience of live music, shaping, influencing, and at times even ruining attendee experiences of the event.
However, academic accounts that consider the embodied experience of the weather, and the embodied experience of heat more broadly, are limited (Ingold 2011a,
Vannini and Taggart 2014, Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015). This is particularly surprising given that, as Vannini and Taggart (2014, p.61) suggest, warmth and temperature awareness are important dimensions of everyday life that shape many mundane interactions and stimulate considerable economic activity through the production of heat and regulation of temperatures. Furthermore, heat and the body’s ability to regulate its temperature are crucial for our survival (Ong 2012, Vannini and
Taggart 2014, Allen-Collinson 2015).
Despite limited scholarship focused upon weather and heat as embodied experiences, the ‘sensual revolution’ has generated greater interest in the corporeal capacities relating to touch (Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015). Howes (2005b, p.28) recognises that of the ‘many bodily channels’ that produce and enable information and sensation,
‘touch is a particularly diffuse and varied source.’ As interest in the senses has grown, it has been repeatedly argued that the faculty of touch is of immense importance
(Cataldi 1993, Benthien 2002, Howes 2005a, Classen 2005, Tuan 2005, Paterson
2007). For Benthien (2002), the significance of touch is evidenced by its early development. Touch is the first sense to emerge, developing ‘when the embryo is less than three centimetres long’ and remaining of primary importance after birth, when its development is followed by that of ‘auditory perception and only then by visual
168 perception’ (Benthien 2002, p.7). Indeed, Paterson (2007, p.1) asserts that ‘touch is crucial to embodied experience’, and is present as an aspect of all interaction. Tuan
(2005, p.75) asserts that touch ‘opens up the world’, and along with the other sensing and perceiving regions of the body, it constantly locates us in that world.
In its most immediate and obvious form, touch involves one’s cutaneous contact with the world (Paterson 2007). Covering the entirety of the body’s surface, the skin is the largest sense organ and, as Howes (2005b) explains, it provides sense experience that simultaneously registers the whole and the minute. According to Howes (2005b, p.28), ‘if sight worked this way we could see the blue expanse of sky, and at the same time be looking at grains of sand.’ Furthermore, as Howes (2005b) explains, the skin can register some sensations unlike any other part of the body. The temperature of one’s environment can temporarily imprint on the skin. As Benthien (2002) suggests, the skin is a surface always connected with the world and so is experienced as a site of encounter. Upon the surface that is the skin, the individual and that which is other coalesce, tangle or clash. At live music events the skin comes into contact with elements that are human and nonhuman, organic and inorganic, living and nonliving.
At outdoor live music events, this cutaneous contact involves the embodied experience of the weather.
Weathering the heat
Blistering heat, icy winds, pounding rain and the resulting fields of mud are all weather conditions I have tolerated (and sometimes even enjoyed) for the love of live music. Participants in my research similarly spoke of extreme heat, lightning storms, pounding rain and freezing nights at live music events. The weather is highly
169 significant to music festivals, having the potential to profoundly affect attendees’ experiences, as well as the potential to affect the very existence of the event.9 During outdoor events, individuals are placed in direct contact with the weather for prolonged periods of time. Falls Festival, Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival and Splendour in the Grass are just some of the multi-day outdoor events to be held annually in New
South Wales, Australia. Even one-day events generally run for at least twelve hours.
This prolonged and direct contact with the weather varies from the typical experience of contemporary everyday life.10
The weather is an aspect of the natural environment that is constantly and perceivably changing, yet as Ingold (2006) asserts, it rarely features in scholarly accounts that consider embodiment and the interaction between the individual and the environment.
Instead, these accounts often understand the world as inanimate, and from this perspective, as Ingold (2011a, p.73) explains, it is assumed that life ‘is lived on the ground, anchored to solid foundations, while the weather swirls about overhead’.
Through such accounts, the air, the sky and the weather are rendered immaterial, and largely irrelevant to everyday life (Ingold 2006).
To ignore these meteorological phenomena is to diminish the dynamism that characterises the relationship between the individual and their surrounds. Both the body and environment unfold in a perpetual process of becoming. Ingold (2011a, p.115) asserts that to ‘inhabit the open is to dwell within a weather-world in which
9 The Playground Weekender festival was cancelled in 2012 due to the festival site flooding and was never held again. 10 Of course some occupations do involve working predominantly outdoors; for example Luke is an arborist, but this was not the dominant experience of participants. This participant did not discuss heat as significant to their experiences at live music events.
170 every being is destined to combine wind, rain, sunshine and earth in the continuation of its own existence.’ The weather is constantly forming and unforming, shifting and stirring, rhythmically entwining with bodies, places and things to shape and contribute to the social, emotional and physical experience of everyday life. As Ingold (2006, p.9) suggests, the world is not a ‘ready-made’ surface that beings are propelled across, but instead ‘a world-in-formation.’ Body and environment emerge through their continually unfolding entanglement. Yet this dynamism, the liveliness of the world, is often muted or minimised in our everyday experiences, as various practices, forces and discourses separate and distance the weather from us. For example, our predominantly indoor lifestyles typically produce an experience of tactile neutrality.
As discussed by Howes (2005b) and Waitt (2013), indoor spaces are generally created with the aim of providing an embodied experience that is comfortable and stable.
Uneven grounds, howling winds, warming sun, wet rain, fresh air, and darkening skies are all typically separated from the body during the routines of daily life.
Just as aspects of one’s embodiment are involved in a constant shifting of focus, and as Leder (1990) suggests, can recede from one’s attention, so too do aspects of our environment. As outlined in Chapter 1, certain aspects of our body’s functioning recede from attention as others hold our focus. The concept of the ‘recessive body’ describes aspects of our corporeality, for example the workings of our liver and intestines, which are largely absent from conscious thought. The body as a whole, according to Leder (1990, p.24),
provides the background that supports and enables the point of corporeal
focus. As such, the body itself is not a point but an organized field in which
certain organs and abilities come to prominence while others recede.
171 Our environment could be considered in a similar way. Certain aspects of the environment hold our attention, whilst others recede into the background. However, as Ingold (2011a, p.115) suggests:
The environment has been engineered, or ‘built’, to conform to expectations of
closure, but… life always and inevitably breaks through the bounds of the
objective forms in which we have sought to contain it.
Festivals provide a moment or an occasion when the weather breaks through, disrupting the experience of everyday life.
During these outdoor live music events the weather is pulled into focus and this focus on the weather often begins before the actual event. For days leading up to outdoor events, I scan the skies checking for any lingering grey clouds, I take note of the temperature and plan what clothing will be appropriate and check the weather forecasts with a new found fervour. Often in the days leading up to Splendour in the
Grass, Byron Bay locals and early arrivals to the area post information onto the festival’s Facebook page regarding recent rainfall and instructing non-local attendees what they need to pack, for example gumboots or sneakers, rain ponchos or hats, and
Triple J radio station even features a segment with a weather expert giving advice about the predicted weather during the event.
As the weather presses upon attendees in an uncontrolled and often unavoidable manner it becomes an important aspect of one’s embodied attention. It is important to note here that the weather, and in particular heat as an aspect of the weather, touches and permeates bodies in very different ways. The ways in which heat is embodied, experienced and understood varies dramatically between individuals, cultures and
172 even subcultures (Potter 2008, Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015). The experience of heat is not simply an innate response to stimuli. Rather, heat imprints upon different bodies in different ways and these imprints are culturally, socially, biologically, historically and spatially specific (Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015).
The specificity of the embodied experience of heat was evident in participant responses. For some, heat did little to impact upon their experience of the space. This was evidenced through the comments of Cameron and Lewis, who both experienced heat only as a mild irritation or simply an expected and accepted part of the event. No participants in my research discussed enjoying the experience of heat. Later in this chapter I discuss my own experiences as I purposefully pursued warmth, and the enjoyment of heat. However, my enjoyment of heat was relatively mild and experienced as relief from feeling cold. The enjoyment and purposeful pursuit of heat, beyond my own experience, is not discussed through my work. However, I do not mean to suggest that this is not a significant experience for other attendees.
At live music events some attendees seem to enjoy the experience of being hot. On the hottest day on record at Big Day Out, bodies continued to thrash in front of the stage in the mosh pit, and some attendees emerged from the hot and heaving crowds covered in sweat, but also smiling. Furthermore, although Overell (2014) does not focus upon the experience of heat in her work on grindcore music, she quotes a participant, Jules, who clearly enjoys the experience of heat saying: ‘When there’s a nice decent crowd there… it’s nice and hot and sweaty… [i]t’s awesome.’ For some, the embodied experience of intense heat and being hot could enhance the experience of liveness in a desirable way. Conversely, for most participants in my research, as
173 well as me, the embodiment of heat, and specifically the touch of heat upon the skin, were discussed most commonly in negative terms and for some, it profoundly impacted upon the experience of live music events.
When I asked Marion about any negative experiences she has had at live music events, she said:
negative experiences would be Big Day Out… it was boiling hot and I got
sunburnt… that made me feel weary throughout the day, having to last until
the evening, knowing that the band I wanted to see most was playing at about
ten-thirty that night, and just physically feeling exhausted from the heat.
The weather at the event, and in particular the heat, contrasted sharply with Marion’s everyday experiences as an office worker and shaped her embodied interaction with the space, physically and emotionally. Extreme tactile stimulation was produced by the ‘boiling hot day’ and Marion’s body was transformed by the space, made ‘weary’ and ‘exhausted’ by the heat. For this participant the touch of heat upon the skin contributed to her temporal experience of the festival.
In moments of discomfort, the passing of time registers more forcefully upon the body as our embodied focus increases and intensifies. For Marion, the physical force of heat stretches and lengthens each moment as her attention is pulled to the uncomfortable and uncontrollable entwinement between body and climate. Instead of enjoying her experience in the moment, Marion’s attention shifted toward the amount of time that sat between her present discomfort and an awaited performance. Like my own experiences of intense heat at Big Day Out, Marion’s experience of the festival, which should have been enjoyable, was transformed by the touch of heat into
174 something that must be endured. Time lags and stagnates as the body is enveloped in heat and this experience of temporality, combines with the unavoidable nature of heat at outdoor festivals to contribute to a negative emotional experience. At these live events the weather does not merely swirl above, on the periphery of experience, but through contact with the skin can shape an attendee’s experience of the event physically, emotionally and temporally.
For Cataldi (1993), and Benthien (2002), the connection between tactile experience and emotion is particularly potent and evidenced through words such as ‘touched’ and
‘feeling’, which of course indicate both tactility and emotion. Paterson (2007, p.13) discusses the links between these terms as a conceptual slippage, which he understands as occurring due to the ‘“touching” nature of touch.’ These authors demonstrate that the experience of emotion has a palpability that can register on the skin, and the skin registers sensations that shape and produce emotion (Cataldi 1993,
Benthien 2002, Paterson 2007). Heat produces an emotional palpability that is felt and intensified on the skin, and although Marion said she felt ‘physically exhausted from the heat’, I would argue that this experience has an emotional element that could have amplified her feeling of weariness. In the intense heat, the excitement and anticipation
Marion had for the band that she ‘wanted to see most’ wilted as her embodied experience of her expected wait time palpably and uncomfortably expanded. Festivals create experiences of intense emotion, including excitement and anticipation; for
Marion, these emotions were smothered by the touch of heat. The skin registered, contributed to and shaped an experience of exhaustion in which the physical and emotional were interwoven.
175 The experience of heat not only affects the body in the moment of its touch; rather, the touch of heat imprints upon, permeates, and produces vivid memories. In these memories, heat as an aspect of both environment and bodily experience is foregrounded and other aspects of experience fall into the background. Paterson
(2007, p.24) suggests that tactility involves the constant interweaving of both presence and absence: ‘presence through the immediacy of sensory experience, and absence through memory, forgetfulness and longing.’ Abby’s attendance at
Soundwave festival in Eastern Creek during 2010, and the day’s weather conditions, produced particularly vivid memories and Abby discussed the experience a number of times through her interview. She said:
I think the first thing I went to we went right at the beginning at like nine
o’clock in the morning at Eastern Creek …it was boiling hot I think it was
about a forty degree day and I ended up getting sunburnt on my head… we
were standing in the line for a good half an hour before we were let in and that
was not even worth it because I didn’t even want to see the bands that were
playing because it was so hot and bothering me.
It was Abby’s first time attending Soundwave, and indeed any festival, and the excitement that had influenced her early arrival at nine o’clock in the morning quickly diminished with the touch of heat upon her skin. Abby’s contact with her uncomfortable surrounds became agitating and negatively affected her interest in attending performances.
Interestingly, although Abby discussed the experience of this festival repeatedly and remembered aspects of the day in detail, speaking about leaking taps, mud, other attendees, the feeling of her hair on her sweaty neck, and so forth, her embodied
176 experience of heat affected her memories of the musical performances she attended.
The weather and specifically the heat were forcefully pulled into the centre of Abby’s attention as her contact with this aspect of the natural environment disrupted her desired experience of the event. The performances Abby attended during the heat of the day failed to make a lasting impression, whereas the touch of the climate and the imprint of the sun on her skin are remembered vividly. Abby said:
I was burnt like hell and it just wasn’t a pleasant experience of the day, like
even though I saw bands I like… I still can’t even remember that many bands
that I saw because it was that hot, until you know the sun went down and it
was a lot better.
The practice of discussing and remembering these experiences, relating to the tactility of heat, also involves the interweaving of presence and absence. The immediacy of touch in a physical sense is absent in remembering, but the emotional touch of the heat is present. Indeed, Abby spoke with a hint of irritation, scrunching up her brow and nose as she described the heat. My own experiences of heat at Big Day Out align with Abby’s. As the touch of heat simmered on my skin, my focus was with this overwhelming embodied experience, rather than the performances I attended, and my memories of the day remain punctured by my agitated state.
The skin, a region of the ecstatic body, reaches outward into the environment; however, one’s focus upon elements of that environment shifts and oscillates. The tactile intensity produced through contact with a hot environment can hold and permeate the body, transforming one’s physical and emotional state and by doing so transforming one’s experience of one’s surrounds and structuring one’s memories of the experience with both presence and absence.
177 The affective force of heat
The experience of heat not only influences emotion but can function as, or contribute to, an affective force and the shifting affectivity in live music environments. The following section from Tim’s interview demonstrates that his experiences of heat clearly shaped his emotional engagement at outdoor events; however, I would suggest his discussion also moves beyond the identified emotion of anger and demonstrates an embodied experience of affect. Tim said:
[at] outdoor festivals usually I’m cranky and sunburnt and hating all the
shirtless men who are touching me… I think at the summer festivals because
it’s so hot and so horrible to be out in the heat there’s this underlying anger,
like everyone’s just walking around a bit angry.
As discussed through Chapter 1, Anderson (2014) describes affects as intensities or forces that attach to people, places and things. He explains, ‘the affective quality, or tone, of something can condition life by giving sites, episodes or encounters a particular feel’ (Anderson 2014, p.137). In Tim’s discussion, heat is experienced as a form of intensity that generates an ‘underlying’ feeling. This feeling produces a distinct and palpable mood, which he perceives as being shared amongst all attendees.
Heat, as an affect, has a particular materiality; it envelops with a weight and a density, which vitalizes some and stagnates others. At outdoor live music events bodies, environment and things can become blanketed in the affectivity of heat.
Importantly, Paterson (2005, p.164) directly links the experience of affect to tactility and the emotionality of touch. He argues that affects are intensities that are actualised in the materiality of the body, and open ‘something mutual between bodies… and things’ (Paterson 2005, p.164). Paterson (2005, p.164) explains that affect ‘traverses
178 the divide between… the sensory body, and the material, and encompasses those embodied feelings of tactility along with emotional feelings of touch – of being affected.’ For Tim, the touch of heat at summer festivals creates a particular feeling that simmers beneath the surface and tempers all experience. This hot and horrible feeling stems from the weather conditions, but manifests in the emotional state of attendees. Heat induces, or is involved in, the configuration of a particular affective experience, which cannot be reduced to either body or environment, but instead emerges through their entanglement. As Anderson (2014) suggests, affects emerge through encounters. At outdoor live music events, bodies sweat, burn and heat up under the intense summer sun; the touch of heat opens and entangles bodies and environment with an affective charge that emerges from and exceeds each entity.
The way heat is absorbed by or impinges upon different bodies can vary immensely, yet Tim experienced his own response to the weather conditions as affecting all the bodies that surrounded him. For Tim, the feelings produced by heat are not simply individual experiences, but also extend over and exert a palpable force on all bodies and the environment; that force shapes everyone’s emotional state. Anderson (2014, p.105) understands affects, in part, as both bodily capacities and collective conditions and as such a body’s affective charge always ‘carries traces of other bodies, and both reflects and contributes to some form of complex, changing, relational field.’ The affective force of heat as a bodily capacity and collective condition, emerges, not only through felt sensation, but also the tangling and meshing with other things in the environment, including, though not limited to: bodies both human and nonhuman, musical and nonmusical rhythms and beats, cultural traditions attached to live music, everyday habitudes, structural elements of the venue, movements and weather
179 conditions. As Vannini and Taggart (2014, p.66) suggest, the embodied experience of heat should be considered ‘as a nexus of intersecting practices and experiences through which different actors become entangled in the lifeworld.’ In this constantly unfolding entanglement, Vannini and Taggart (2014, p.66) assert that heat functions as ‘an affective force that manifests itself in involvement in the lifeworld and in its transformation.’ Therefore, heat can be considered an aspect of the ongoing intra- active formation of body and environment. The experience of heat as an aspect of the weather, and the way it is embodied by attendees, does not just transform the experience of liveness, but intra-actively contributes to the formation of liveness.
According to Vannini and Taggart (2014, p.66), the experience of heat as an affect involves ‘an atmospheric attunement.’ The body does not just register the hot environment or respond to heat; it is not a straightforward or purely biological reaction. As Vannini and Taggart (2014, p.66) explain, thermoception does not function ‘like a thermometer’; rather, the embodied experience of heat requires an attunement to the liveliness of the world in formation. Heat is produced at the continually emerging intersection of body, environment, action, sensation, perception and movement (Vannini and Taggart 2014). Tim’s experience of heat was not the result of the touch of the weather upon his skin, but an embodied openness and an affective attunement to the tangling of the live environment, which includes the imagined bodies of other attendees. Through the experience of heat, the attendee can attune to the affectivity of the live environment. At these live music events, heat can powerfully envelop and blanket bodies, rupturing the desired experience, sticking to bodies and memories, and producing moments of felt intensity. However, as attendees move, dance, mosh and hurry through live music events, heat also forms internally.
180 The haptic and heat as energizing
We walked toward town to catch the bus from the centre of Byron Bay out to the
Yelgun Parklands, the site of Splendour in the Grass. We rejoiced in the warm winter sun that had abandoned Sydney, soaking it in through our bare arms and legs. ‘Have you girls packed something warm?’ An older male yelled the question at us from across the street, where he stood strapping his surfboard to the roof of his car. We assured him we had jackets, and he replied ‘It’s lovely now but it’ll get cold out there tonight’. Most attendees arrived at the festival prepared for the shifting temperature.
At the start of each day the event’s coat check was frenzied as attendees rushed to drop off their heavier, warmer layers of clothing, to be collected again when the sun went down.
In the evening the warmth of the sun weakened and as it sank behind the bush that surrounded the site, the space was filled with crisp winter air. As my friends and I milled between stages trying to decide which performance to attend next, rain began falling from the blackened sky. The droplets felt ice cold as they hit my skin and soaked into clothing. We swiftly put on plastic ponchos and made the quick decision to watch Alt-J. The upbeat, indie rock music pumped from a nearby stage. As the crowd crammed even more tightly than usual under the tent, to escape the rain, we hung back, protected by our ponchos. In the open air the chill of the night easily enveloped our bodies. I stepped from side to side as my body tensed and shivered in the cold.
The music, with which I was only vaguely familiar, was lively and cheerful. The strobing lights, colourful flags and costumed individuals surrounding us produced a
181 festive, energetic feeling. The many intoxicated attendees around contributed to a party-like atmosphere. The darkness and the billowy, hooded ponchos provided us with a felt anonymity, as our bodies and movements became indistinct. And, although none of us usually dance at live music events (due to a combination of minimal space and self-consciousness), we all began to move to the music with more and more vigour. The space quickly filled with more dancing bodies, undoubtedly spurred on by the music, the atmosphere and a desire for warmth.
As I moved, the tension in my body brought on by the cold seemed to release, my muscles simultaneously relaxed and became reenergized as a warmth slowly developed and intensified spreading through my body from the inside-out. The cold air burned in my throat, a painful contrast was created as each intake of air felt like an icy blade slicing to the centre of my warming body. My skin blazed as the escaping heat remained trapped under the impermeable poncho. And my body buzzed with the same energy as the space. When the song finished and we all stood still I pressed my cold palms against my face to relieve my burning cheeks and my friend struggled beneath her poncho as she tried to remove her jacket and jumper.
Developed from field notes produced at Splendour in the Grass, North Byron
Parklands, 26th-28th of July 2013.
Whereas the heat of the sun at summer festivals can feel immediate, inescapable and overwhelming, at times hitting the body with a force and fierceness, heat and warmth at winter festivals can be enjoyable and may be purposefully pursued or produced. At live music events bodies are warmed, not only from the external weather but also by an internally generated heat that can be produced through movement and emotion.
182 This experience of heat still involves an entanglement with one’s environment. This internally generated heat is felt in contrast to the weather, rather than because of it.
Moreover, it is a heat produced through movement in a particular environment. That environment not only enables movement, but as demonstrated through my field notes, can also trigger and shape movement. To explore this experience of heat we must move beyond traditional considerations of touch. Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.253) argue that heat has been theorized ‘both as a specialized sense of touch and as a separate and distinctive form of sensory perception.’ The experience of heat as a distinctive form of sensory perception involves ‘feelings of internal energy’ (Allen-
Collinson 2015, p.256). This specialized sense of touch involves the ‘synergic interaction of the somatic senses sometimes referred to as ‘haptic’’ (Paterson 2007, p.4).
The term haptic has been utilised in different ways within different disciplines, though usually refers to conventional understandings of touch (Allen-Collinson and Owton
2015). Paterson (2007) moves beyond such understandings and defines the ‘haptic’ as a system that works synergistically, and involves the touch of the skin as well as the somatic senses, which are ‘interior to the body.’ Paterson (2007) draws on the work of
Gibson, amongst others, to explore the somatic senses, which extend beyond the touch of the skin and that include kinaesthesia, proprioception and the vestibular system. These somatic senses refer to the sense of movement, bodily position and balance respectively (Paterson 2009). Paterson’s (2009, p.768) conceptualisation of the haptic explores ‘the multiplicity and the interaction between different internally felt and outwardly oriented senses.’ Paterson (2007, p.7) explains that touch in the form of skin contact to be ‘relatively easy to recognise and quantify.’ In contrast, the
183 somatic senses are often ‘vague, barely articulable or easily confused’ (Paterson 2007, p.7). Yet these interior bodily sensations form the background of everyday embodied experiences (Paterson 2007). Paterson’s (2007) understanding of embodied experience is similar in this matter to Leder’s (1990) notion of the ecstatic and recessive body.
The experience of heat touches the body through the ecstatic body and somatic senses. At Splendour in the Grass, as the rain began to fall, the movement of dancing produced an internally felt heat. Movement of my body within the cold environment warmed my muscles, tendons and joints, as the haptic system was purposefully and vigorously engaged. The warmth that I experienced first in my moving limbs, released the tension in my muscles brought on by the cold weather, and spread throughout my body. As I continued to dance, this internal heat moved outward and my skin was warmed, though this time in contrast to the cold air that enveloped my body.
Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015), as well as Potter (2008), discuss this form of heat, felt within the muscles and the haptic system and purposefully generated through movement. The practice of ‘warming up’ is commonly utilised by individuals engaged in extended and focused periods of physical activity and is discussed by
Potter (2008) in relation to her experience as a professional dancer, and by Allen-
Collinson and Owton (2015) in relation to their experiences distance running and boxing. By completing a warm up, the body’s temperature is purposefully raised to mobilize, loosen and lengthen ‘unprepared stiff muscles and joints’ (Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015, p.255). This mode of heat, contributes to or produces an internal state, which Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.256) describe as an ‘energizing
184 element.’ When warming up, Potter (2008, p.455) experiences this mode of heat, this internal energy, as indicative of ‘bodily readiness.’
Through bodily actions such as a warm-up, the individual can develop a ‘heightened awareness of somatic sensations in muscles, tendons and joints’, which is focused upon the embodiment of heat, and the way in which this heat moves and intensifies
(Allen-Collinson 2015, p.256). As I danced in the cold night air at Splendour in the
Grass, I purposefully engaged my haptic system to produce an internally felt heat. As
I moved, the tension in my muscles eased as an inner warmth spread throughout my body, and the somatic senses, which usually sit in the background of everyday experience, shifted into my embodied focus and my awareness of the haptic system intensified. However, Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) suggest that this experience of inner heat does not only involve a heightened awareness of certain aspects of one’s embodied experience. Rather, the internal heat generated through movement and a purposeful engagement with the haptic is also felt as an energy and intensity.
Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) draw on the work of Paterson to argue that this experience of heat, or an aspect of it, is linked to the haptic and in particular, to proprioception. Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.252) extend the definition of proprioception, to also include ‘an inward-feeling, sense of oneself.’ Proprioceptors are understood as being directed inward and ‘lying in the deep tissues and muscles of the body’ and varying from exteroceptors, which are externally directed ‘sensory nerve-end receptors of the “classic five”… sense organs’ (Allen-Collinson and Owton
2015, p.252). Proprioceptors are generally understood as referring to ‘neuromuscular perceptory processes’, though a broader use of the term also incorporates ‘perception
185 of the viscera’ and is linked to understandings of the visceral (Allen-Collinson and
Owton 2015, p.252). According to Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy (cited by Allen-
Collinson and Owton 2015, p.252), the visceral describes the ‘realm of internally felt sensations, moods and states of being, which are born from the sensory engagement with the material world.’ This internal state of being involves a palpability, a feeling that cannot be reduced to conventional understandings of touch.
For Potter (2008, p.454), heat is a ‘sense of energy’, the perception of which is
‘strongly connected to other sensory modes’, though also distinct. The internal experience of heat can be understood as a separate, though always intertwined sense.
According to Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.259), these experiences of heat as an internal energy can vitalize and invigorate the body, glowing and blazing from within, a vibrant and felt ‘life force.’ As Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) explain proprioceptors ‘transmit messages of felt inner-warmth.’ Vannini and Taggart’s
(2014, p.66) suggestion that thermoception involves an ‘atmospheric attunement’ could also be used here to suggest that in relation to the felt inner warmth discussed by Potter and Allen-Collinson and Owton, thermoception also involves an affective attunement. Dancers such as Potter, as well as athletes and individuals who practice continual and focused embodied engagement through particular physical activities, become attuned to heat as an inner energy, an affect, and for these people their affective attunement to heat is highly developed. However, my experience at
Splendour in the Grass demonstrates that the affective force of heat as an internal energy registers even within bodies that are not purposefully attuned to the experience.
186 Potter (2008) and Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) discuss an internally felt heat that is experienced or triggered through regular, focused and practised bodily activities. After my experiences at live music events, such as of dancing in the cold, I would suggest that a heightened awareness of somatic sensations, and an affective attunement to the touch of heat, can also be experienced as one’s entanglement becomes felt. This feeling involves an immediate and fleeting experience of one’s embodiment in a particular environment. My experience dancing at Splendour in the
Grass was not a regular or practised bodily action. Instead, it was a response to my specific embodied experience of the live environment, which included, though was not limited to, the particularities of the music, the weather, the affective force of heat, the crowd positioning, and my movements. Eric also briefly discussed dancing as a form of producing warmth. He said, ‘when its colder and winter we’re all grooving out it’s a form of survival’. At outdoor festivals, when exposed to cold air, attendees may purposefully engage the haptic system to produce an internal heat. This engagement with the haptic system by attendees is only momentary and irregular. It is not a repeated and developed practice like a focused warm-up. However, it similarly produces an awareness of the haptic system, and an affective attunement to heat as an intensity that is actualised in the materiality of the body. This materiality extends beyond the surface into the depths. As the affective force of heat opens up bodies and environments in a mutual unfolding, it is not simply or only the outwardly extending senses that are entangled, but the body as a whole.
The immediate and momentary production of, and attunement to, heat through a purposeful engagement with the haptic system involves the environment as much as the body. The internal somatic senses mesh and entwine with external cutaneous
187 contact and entangle with the weather to produce a particular embodied experience of heat. In their field notes, Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.256) discuss the outward focus upon the environment that results from the internal production of heat, stating: ‘Once I’ve finished the warm-up though, there’s no doubt about how more attuned I feel with the air, the environment.’ Just as one’s cutaneous contact with the environment is always and already entangled with internal sensations and perceptions, so too are internal somatic senses bound to one’s ongoing entanglement with the external. As weather conditions shift throughout the day and throughout the seasons, attendees actively attempt to shift and negotiate their embodied experience of heat.
Importantly, it was the cold weather that drew my attention to my internal feeling of heat. Against the cold, this internal feeling is emphasised and becomes much more distinct, palpable and perceptible.
As Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.262) suggest, discussing heat as internal or external can be problematic, ‘for in lived experience such distinctions are not so neat.’
Instead, ‘forms of heat experience interweave in complex, shifting, transient ways’
(Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015, p.262). Indeed, my intention in this chapter, by discussing heat first in relation to the tactility of the skin, and then in relation to the somatic senses, is not to suggest that these experiences are distinct or separable, but instead to draw attention to embodied experiences that move beyond the surface body, and also affect as a force that mutually entangles and opens environment and bodies, from the surface to the depths, in their continual co-constitution. Now, I wish to move beyond the haptic and consider another region of the body that senses and responds to the touch of heat, and by doing so, further extend and expand upon conceptualisations of the embodied experience of liveness.
188 Heat and the respiratory system as a sensing region
At the first festival I ever attended (Homebake 2005), Gyroscope was to take the stage early in the day’s schedule. I had seen this occasionally heavy, alt-rock band several times before in small venues and in the middle of Sydney’s Domain, I easily and eagerly made my way with two friends to the very front of the loosely packed crowd.
However, as the guitarist’s first chords snarled through the warm December air the proximity of bodies quickly and dramatically altered.
The crowd surged forward and my body was thrust into the metal barrier. One friend looked immediately panicked and signalled to security to be pulled out. Random arms began appearing between me and my remaining friend, as unknown others tried to push into the front row. With every surge forward hot air gushed out from the crowd.
The intensity of the sun seemed to amplify and the heat generated by the continually heaving mass of bodies overwhelmed me. Suddenly I was wrenched backward off the barrier and bodies quickly filled the space where I had been. Now completely surrounded, unable to see the stage, my friend, or security, I was crushed between bodies that were all male and all larger than mine. I tried desperately to breathe, but the thick, hot air seemed to catch in my throat. And the pressure on my chest that precedes an asthma attack made panic rise within me.
Without considering whether I could even be heard above the thrashing music, by the thrashing bodies, I yelled ‘I need to get out’. A male’s voice was almost instantly in my ear, ‘You want to get out?’ it questioned and I yelled ‘Yes’ automatically. ‘She needs to get out’ I heard from behind me and I was swiftly lifted above the crowd and passed forward. Relief was instant as I felt the clean, fresh air enter my body. Above
189 all the densely packed, writhing bodies my lungs could fully expand again. I drifted across the top of the crowd, toward a waiting security guard.
Developed from memory of Homebake, The Domain, Sydney, 3rd of December 2005.
At live music events, parts of the body and aspects of the environment that often recede from attention, or are experienced as absent, can become thrust into one’s focus. Heat in the air can be felt within the respiratory system and produces an experience distinct from other qualities and textures of the air. The respiratory system forms part of the corporeal depths (Leder 1990). However, it does not just automatically respond to the environment; rather, it can register sensations and information from aspects of the environment. The experiences registered, enabled or generated by the respiratory system can significantly affect an individual’s emotional engagement with the environment. Moreover, the air is a constant, shifting and essential aspect of our environment and embodied experience, yet it is often ignored in academic accounts that consider the interaction and entangling of these entities. At live music events the changing quality of the air can be felt and highlighted, as bodies move within diverse and dynamic environments. Within a single site, the air can alternate between fresh, stale, hot, dry, damp, thick, light, crisp, or heavy, as bodies bunch and thin, and aspects of the environment open and close, rise, fall and intensify.
At youth-oriented live music events, especially near the stage, attendees cluster closely together. When bodies pack and squeeze tightly into this space, the quality of air between those bodies alters as it heats up or the heat from the weather is intensified.
190 According to Ingold (2011a, p.116), the air and the sky are often perceived as
‘boundless emptiness’ and understood as nothingness, simply an empty void and examinations of air are usually absent in accounts that consider the relationship between bodies and environment. Moreover, the felt qualities of air are uncommon in accounts of embodiment. Given the position of the respiratory system within what
Leder (1990) terms the recessive body, this is not surprising. Both the part of the body that breathes and the substance we breathe recede from attention. According to Leder
(1990), the internal organs, located within the recessive body, generally recede from attention and are usually absent from our lived experience. Leder (1990) suggests that the internal organs of which we are aware, such as the heart, stomach and lungs, are part of complex systems, aspects of which surface occasionally through sensation, but generally fall away from attention and will. Importantly, Leder (1990, p.43) does recognise that conscious effort can pull one’s respiratory system into focus, despite its positioning within the recessive body and his assertion that the alveolar tissue of the lungs is ‘virtually without sensation.’ He also mentions the potential to increase
‘awareness of and control over’ certain aspects of the inner body through practiced and focused routine actions. As discussed in Chapter 1, Leder (1990) gives the example of yogis, who are able to increase their awareness and control of the inner body. Leder (1990) does not explore this idea at length, but its inclusion within his work signals the potential for extension and development. One’s body-focus can also be increased through moments of dysfunction.
Leder (1990, p.106) suggests that in moments of dysfunction parts of the body, which are usually experienced through absence, shift into focus, they ‘dys-appear’. Leder’s
(1990, p.37) analysis of the recessive body concentrates upon digestion; however, he
191 asserts that this bodily capacity is constituted by complex and diverse systems, which each possess ‘different ways of withdrawing or surfacing to consciousness.’ My own experiences as an asthmatic demonstrate the dys-appearing body. Asthma is a condition of the respiratory system that involves the tightening and swelling of the airways. My respiratory system responds to certain environments and emotional states in a way that makes breathing difficult and induces a number of symptoms including wheezing and coughing.
At the onset of an attack, my attention is forcefully pulled toward my respiratory system as it fails to function correctly. Through this condition, and the practice of several activities that encourage breath awareness, I have developed a greater awareness of this bodily region, even when I am not experiencing any symptoms of its dysfunction. Just as the runners, boxers and dancers in the works of Potter (2008) and Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) have developed a heightened awareness of their haptic system, I have developed a heightened awareness of my respiratory system; however, my awareness was developed through dysfunction. As such, my experiential field extends to my corporeal depths and my respiratory system is not absent from my focus, but instead always functioning on the periphery of my attention.
In my experience, live music events are understood and navigated, at least in part, in relation to the respiratory system. I first ventured into a festival space almost eleven years ago, yet I remember the experience vividly and it continues to influence my practices at such events. I have never again sought a position at the front of a festival crowd and the intense memory is often triggered in large, tightly packed crowds. Even
192 now, if my position becomes crowded and the air thickens with the heat radiating from other bodies, my chest begins to tighten and I move further back in the crowd.
Some participants also mentioned breath awareness during interviews; however, Abby provided the most extended discussion of breathing. She even acknowledged the frequency with which she discussed this by saying, ‘I talk about it [breathing] a lot because I feel like I’ve suffocated enough to tell my tale.’ For this participant, the enclosed nature of indoor events intensifies the proximity of other bodies, feels
‘claustrophobic’ and brings on a feeling of suffocation. Abby said that she preferred outdoor events, but she had difficulty in detailing this preference. About outdoor events she said, ‘I dunno, I’m trying to find the word for it, but I can’t, but it’s … really open and you can see the sun going down, you can see the lights come up and you can breathe, more than what you could in a venue’. Inside indoor venues, Abby’s attention is pulled toward the proximity of other bodies, the confined nature of the space and her own breathing. Abby experiences this confinement as suffocating, compared to more open, outdoor spaces. Luke also mentioned breathing as significant to his experience of the spatiality of live music events. This participant discussed his preferred position within the crowd to be toward the back, where he has space around him, as it ‘feels like space to breath a bit’. For these two participants the experience of closeness and proximity is felt, at least in part, through their breathing. This experience is not triggered by bodily dysfunction but instead the shift in air quality produced by densely packed crowds. The specificities of the live music environment and the way their body’s respond to those specificities, force the embodied attention of Abby and Luke toward their corporeal depths.
193 Breathing was discussed by Abby again when I asked her if she had ever been overwhelmed by an experience in a live music space, either positively or negatively.
Abby responded:
I think more negatively than positively, when you can’t have any space to
breathe or move it does become overwhelming. I’ve started to panic a few
times, I’ve had to calm myself down and be like it’s ok, it’s going to be over
soon’, and then you start not enjoying the band because you[’re] just trying to
control yourself and your breathing.
For this attendee the respiratory system does not simply ‘fall back from its own perception and control’ as do other regions of the recessive body (Leder 1990, p.69).
Rather, Abby’s breathing responds to her environment and in particular a perceived lack of space within the crowd. As Abby registers her surrounds as lacking the ‘space to breathe’, she attempts to exercise control over her breathing, and regulate her embodied response to her surrounds. For Abby, her changing respiratory rates and increased breath awareness are a response to her surrounds, a sign and source of emotional distress and a method for shifting her emotional engagement with the live music environment. Like me, Abby panics as her embodied focus shifts toward the change in her breathing; however, unlike me Abby is confident in her ability to control her breathing and by doing so push it back into the background of her awareness.
Although Abby did not discuss her experience of the respiratory system as relating to heat, it is important to discuss here to demonstrate that awareness of one’s breathing and the feel of the air is not only triggered through physical dysfunction and also to recognise the diverse ways in which the entanglement between body and environment
194 are felt and discussed. Different bodies register experiences in different ways and participant discussion of those experiences will vary. It is always important to acknowledge such differences and not simply collapse them into each other. The ways the weather-world permeates and constitutes the embodied experience of liveness is bound to the specificities of each body, environment, event and their entangling.
Differing experiences, or the different ways people talk about those experiences, do not negate any significance but reinforce the idea that liveness as an entangled experience is always complex, multiple and messy.
The respiratory system, like all the systems that enable the sensing body, is characterised by absence. We are largely unaware of the complexities and intricacies that allow this system to function. We do not feel the parts of this system but their interaction with our surrounds that is the continual inhalation and exhalation of air.
This is not to suggest that the respiratory system, and the aspects of the environment with which it is constantly engaged, are constantly perceived. Nor am I suggesting that the respiratory system provides the same depth of experience as other sensory regions. Rather, that this is potentially another area capable of registering both perception and sensation, and an area through which the materiality and emotionality of one’s self and surrounds unfold. At live music events the experience of heat and breathing in hot air can draw attention to this corporeal capacity and its entanglement with the dynamic environment.
The air we breathe into our bodies does not simply provide us with a feeling or generate information. Through a complex process, this element of the environment is drawn into the bloodstream and flows throughout the body, which is entirely
195 dependent upon it. The air we breathe, like water, very literally connects us to our surrounds. Through the act of breathing, we are entangled with the environment, as this external element becomes part of our living, functioning body. As Ingold (2011a, p.115) suggests, ‘to feel the air and walk on the ground is not to make external, tactile contact with our surroundings but to mingle with them.’ It is within this mingling that
‘we live and breathe’ as the ‘wind, light and moisture of the sky bind with the substances of the earth’ in the ongoing process of entangling, being and becoming
(Ingold 2011a, p.115).
Within the festival space, the experience of heat and the closeness and proximity of other bodies involve the body as a whole entangling with its environment. The sound of thousands of separate conversations envelops my body. The view of the stage becomes limited or completely blocked as heads surround me. The smell of sweat, smoke, beer and various deodorants is registered with every breath. Various parts of other bodies nudge, push, slam, or press against my skin. Heat emanates from those bodies and the air becomes dense, thick and heavy. A light breeze provides momentary relief, but struggles through the crowd. The experience of air quality is undoubtedly dependent upon sight, smell, taste and touch. However, this interconnectedness does not reduce the significance of the respiratory system.
Ingold (2011a, p.136) asserts that ‘the environment that we experience, know and move around in is not sliced up along the lines of the sensory pathways by which we enter it.’ Instead, the sensing regions of the body, which are oriented both outward and inward, are enmeshed in a system that operates synergistically. As Pink (2015) suggests, the body is a complex and coherent entity, always both complete and
196 incomplete, and always in and of the world. The sensing, thinking, feeling body always involves what Paterson (2007, p.2) describes as the ‘co-implication of body, flesh and world.’ Utilising the work of Merleau-Ponty, Paterson (2007, p.160) describes flesh, not simply as a part of the body, but as an element of body and world.
Flesh is an aspect of being that functions as a medium through which object and subject are formed (Paterson 2007).
Flesh, therefore, sits prior to the differentiation of subject and object and implies ‘the intertwining and exchange between subject and object, between the sensate and the sensible… resulting in an underlying ambiguity and possible reciprocity between them.’ The body is not separated from the world it senses and perceives, but instead is implicated in the world and its unfolding. Paterson’s (2007) discussion of the flesh of the body and world resonates with Ingold’s (2006) discussion of meshwork and
Barad’s (2007) concept of intra-action. Bodies and world are co-constituted through their mutual unfolding. This unfolding does not simply involve the sensing body responding to the external stimuli of the world. Instead, body and world emerge through their entangling.
Conclusion
The embodied experience of liveness is not simply a felt state achieved through attendance at a live music event. Rather, liveness is an unfolding and emerging entanglement. At live music events bodies mesh with aspects of the live environment such as the other bodies, music and weather, which produce and enable moments of shifting intensities. Heat is one such intensity. Heat emerges from the entangling of bodies and world, it touches with an affective force, and can draw attention to the
197 mutual openness of body and world. The movement of heat on, through, and from the body is not restricted to the tactility of the skin, but permeates the body, from the surface to the depths.
At outdoor live music events, as the heat of the summer sun touches one’s skin, aspects of body and environment, which recede from one’s focus in everyday life, are pulled into one’s embodied attention. A tactile intensity is produced that has the potential to transform the experiences of attendees physically and emotionally, and structure their memories of the event. The tactility of heat can move beyond the skin and function as an affective force, exerting a palpable pressure as a bodily capacity and collective condition. The affectivity of heat involves an atmospheric attunement and intra-actively manifests as an aspect of the perpetual unfolding of body and environment.
Heat is not simply, or only generated through contact with the environment; rather, at live music events heat can be internally produced. Paterson’s (2007) discussion of the haptic, and Potter (2008) and Allen-Collinson and Owton’s (2015) work on heat as an internal energy force, extend and expand understandings of the embodied experience of heat and demonstrate that heat can momentarily produce an increased awareness of the internally oriented somatic senses. At live music events these moments always involve the meshing of body and environment and can be produced or enabled, not only through practised or regular bodily actions, but also through moments of intensity when one’s entanglement is amplified.
198 The embodied experience of liveness produces moments of felt entanglement that can move beyond the surface and somatic senses toward the corporeal depths. The experience of hot air can be registered and sensed in the respiratory system. As bodies pack closely together in live music venues, the texture and temperature of the air shifts. Whether through dysfunction, as in the experience of asthma, or sensitivity to one’s personal space, attendees can negotiate an aspect of their entanglement through their respiratory rate and breath awareness. The body as a whole is always implicated in the intra-active unfolding of the body and environment
Through the embodied experience of liveness, heat as a bodily intensity, highlights or amplifies the entangling of body and world. This experience of liveness involves moments in which one’s shifting entanglement is felt. These moments will be explored further through the next chapter, in relation to the concept of atmosphere and the shifting affective atmospheres that imbue the embodied experiences of live music events.
199 Chapter Five: Affective atmospheres
Soft shadows began to fill the space and the golden light of the setting sun slowly faded. The heat of the day had weakened into gentle warmth and the leaves of the surrounding trees fluttered as a light breeze meandered through their branches then weaved its way through the crowd. The industrial style buildings that edged one side of Callan Park had become dark silhouettes against the light blues, pinks and purples that spilt across the evening sky. During the movement from day to night, the buzz of the crowd seemed to intensify and become more and more palpable as the space was transformed. The imminent arrival of the headliners was signalled, the easing heat from the day allowed attendees to move and dance with more freedom and vigour, the alternating light and darkness emphasised the carnival feel, and the anticipation and excitement that built throughout the day began to peak.
Haim were moving toward the end of their energising set and had lived up to their reputation as a great live pop rock band. The three sisters, accompanied by a drummer, had ripped through song after song, the crowd cheering, laughing, dancing and singing along with them. Lorde (who had recently risen to international fame with exceptional speed) was due to take the stage next and the crowd began to multiply quickly as her fans filled the few empty patches of grass on the hill.
As the familiar opening of Haim’s popular song ‘Don’t Save Me’ played across the space, thousands of voices cheered in unison and thousands of hands clapped, raised in the air. Around me everyone bopped or swayed in the limited space they had. Each body danced a little bit differently, though still together, moving on the shared beat. I
200 felt the familiar hum inside my chest, my throat, and my limbs as I became attuned to the excited, lively atmosphere. And as usual I experienced the indescribable feeling, somewhere between crying and laughing that takes hold in such moments.
As the song neared its end, the moment in which Danielle, the lead singer, sings then pauses unaccompanied by instruments intensified that atmosphere. The air seemed to crackle with an electricity as the band and crowd paused simultaneously. The rare second of stillness and quiet was permeated by just a few singular cheers. In the next second the drums pounded and the vocals reverberated over the crowd once more.
The bodies on stage and in the crowd sprang to life again as the drums, guitars and vocals tore through the space with a new force.
Developed from field notes produced at Laneway Festival, Callan Park, Sydney
College of the Arts, Rozelle, 2nd of February, 2014.
Introduction
Atmosphere is central to the embodied experience of liveness. Youth-oriented live music events are commonly described in terms of atmosphere. When I interviewed participants, the term arose both in my questions and their responses. A number of participants discussed atmosphere, throughout their interview, in terms of the ‘feeling’ or ‘vibe’ of the event or specific performances at festivals. The notion of atmosphere has pervaded my experiences of live music events and my understanding of liveness for as long as I can remember. The lively atmosphere at events (or at a bad event, the lack of atmosphere) is palpable. When I read through my field notes, those that contain the most detail and describe the most memorable moments generally focus
201 upon memories that remain permeated by the experience of atmosphere, even years after the event.
Atmospheres are enabled, produced, known and altered through the specificities of environments and bodies and how they entangle with various things and forces. At
Laneway festival the sounds and sights of the music and the crowd, the time of day, the feel of the temperature and my overall physical comfort, the look of the sky, the movement of bodies around me, the excitement of experiencing Haim’s performance and the anticipation of the performances still to come, all combined to create my embodied experience of atmosphere.
According to Anderson (2014, p.138), atmospheres ‘envelop people and things’ and can ‘condition life by giving sites, episodes or encounters a particular feel.’ For
Ingold (2012), atmospheres are central to our ongoing entanglement with the world.
He asserts that atmospheres ‘hold the key to the way we, as living, breathing beings, embrace and are embraced by the world around us’ (Ingold 2012, p.75). Yet to talk or write about the experience of atmosphere is fraught with difficulty. This is in part due to the complexity and contradictions that imbue the concept of atmosphere.
Anderson (2009, p.77) suggests that ‘the concept of atmosphere…holds a series of opposites – presence and absence, materiality and ideality, definite and indefinite, singularity and generality – in a relation of tension.’ Atmospheres occupy and permeate an in between, an inside and outside, a space of fluidity, multiplicity and tension. To begin this chapter, I explore this multiplicity by considering Ingold’s
(2012) discussion of the varied definitions of atmosphere. Ingold (2012) identifies
202 differences in definitions of atmosphere in regards to meteorology and aesthetics, but argues that they can be used in a way that is complementary. In doing so, Ingold
(2012) provides an understanding of atmosphere that combines weather and affect, and provides a multifaceted understanding of atmosphere, which is crucial to the exploration of this term in regards to the embodied experience of liveness. By combining the meteorological and the aesthetic definitions of atmosphere, Ingold
(2012) provides an account of this concept that binds body and environment.
Despite the connections between weather and atmosphere, the embodied experience of atmosphere differs significantly to that of the weather. The works of Ingold (2012) and Anderson (2014), used in combination, highlight these differences and each function to fill in and structure my discussion of atmosphere and weather. Ingold’s
(2012) work has a heavier focus upon weather than that of affect. In contrast,
Anderson’s (2014) focus is with affective atmospheres. For the purposes of my discussion, these works each shape and extend my understanding of the atmospheric shifts that permeate the experience of liveness. At outdoor events, one’s embodied entanglement with meteorological shifts can trigger, intensify or diminish the experience of atmosphere.
Drawing on participant discussion, particularly the difficulties associated with talking about atmosphere, I examine the ‘strange materiality’ of affective atmospheres. As
Anderson (2012, p.139) explains, the simultaneously definite and indefinite qualities of affective atmospheres can forcefully envelop bodies and things, though they are not always ‘sensible phenomena’. The tensions and dualities of atmospheres are explored as collective conditions and bodily capacities that are experienced as both personal
203 and shared. Due, in part, to this strange materiality, the experiences of atmosphere continually exceed and escape expression. As such, gaps will always remain in accounts of affective atmospheres; however, exploring the specificities and intricacies that produce atmospheres can extend our understanding of this concept and the lived experience of atmosphere, which is central to experiences of liveness.
Next, to discuss the material particularities of atmosphere at live music events, I examine the ways my entangled embodiment was felt while moving through and in the muddy fields of Splendour in the Grass. According to Ingold (2011a, p.143), everyday life is characterised by an ‘illusion of groundlessness’ as the engagement between body and ground is minimised. Experiences such as mine, moving in the mud, disrupt this everyday experience. I then move on to discuss this disruption and argue that through this experience of the ground, attendees at live music events can become differently oriented toward their body as a whole and to the dynamism and liveliness of the environment. A particular atmosphere is created and amplified as the dynamic environment allows for bodies to move and engage differently.
Then, drawing on the work of Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) regarding intense embodiment, I suggest the experience of live music events could be described as producing moments of intense entanglement. In these moments one can become attuned to the affective atmosphere. Open bodies experience a felt entwinement with the world and that entwinement is experienced, produced and enabled by an ongoing intra-activity, which involves bodies, things, feelings and forces. The embodied experience of liveness involves moments of intense entanglement that are formed through intra-action and imbued with feelings of liveliness.
204 Through moments of intense entanglement, a heightened awareness of body and environment is felt, and affective atmospheres are intra-actively shaped, enabled and embodied. Lastly, as I consider affective atmospheres as forming an element or force within that intra-activity, I discuss the connections between the works of Barad and
Ingold that have become interwoven to develop, shape and structure my understanding of liveness, embodiment and entanglement. Atmospheres intra-actively form and reform at live music events and this ongoing process is central to the experience and concept of liveness.
Understanding atmospheres
Definitions of the term atmosphere vary significantly within different disciplines
(Ingold 2012). Ingold (2012, p.76) seeks to erode the conceptual distance between meteorologists and aestheticians usage of the term and demonstrate how it ‘cuts to the heart of our perception of the world.’ In terms of aesthetics, Ingold (2012, p.79) explains that the concept of atmosphere is often used to describe the ‘evocation of feeling.’ Drawing from the works of Benjamin on ‘aura’, Binswanger on ‘mood space’ and Böhme on atmosphere, Ingold (2012, p.79) suggests that, for aestheticians, space has an atmosphere that presses upon us, gripping and directing our feelings.
According to Bollnow (2011 cited by Ingold 2012, p.79), an atmosphere is neither subjective nor objective but involves the human and the ‘undivided unity with [their] surroundings.’ For Böhme (1993 cited by Ingold 2012, p.80), an atmosphere is an
‘indeterminate spatially extended quality of feeling’ that occupies the affective environment and emerges through the coming together of people and things. The body is understood as bound to its surrounds through atmosphere. However, the
205 materiality, lived details and specificities of our environment are generally not explored by aestheticians (Ingold 2012).
For Anderson (2014) affect is central to the concept of atmosphere. Anderson (2009, p.77) understands atmospheres as ‘singular affective qualities.’ He believes they are
‘a kind of indeterminate affective excess through which intensive space-times are created and come to envelop specific bodies’ (Anderson 2014, p.160). Anderson
(2014, p.160) suggests that ‘sites, objects, people and so on, all may be atmospheric or may feel and be moved by atmospheres.’ Affective atmospheres come into being through the entangling of people, things and forces; they are produced through and exceed this becoming. As Anderson (2014, p.13) states, an affective atmosphere is
‘always-already imbricated with other dimensions of life without being reducible to other elements.’
In Ingold’s (2012) understanding of atmosphere affect and weather mesh and entwine in the ongoing unfolding of body and world. However, Ingold (2012) explains that as meteorology developed as a science, atmospheres became measured and calculated as meteorologists attempted to quantify the dynamic, order the unruly and contain the uncontainable. With the industrial revolution traditional wisdom regarding earth, air and sea was generally discarded due to social, scientific and technological advances and meteorology moved into the laboratory (Ingold 2012). As Szerszynski (2010 cited by Ingold 2012, p.78) asserts, this scientific activity ‘brought the weather indoors, in an attempt to tame its material and semiotic unruliness.’ As the concept of atmosphere took on these scientific definitions, the weather was separated from the everyday, the bodily, the emotional and the affective (Ingold 2012). Between meteorologists and
206 aestheticians, as Ingold (2012, p.80) explains, ‘we have on the one hand a medium evacuated of all traces of mood or affect, and on the other a system of affects which seems to exist in a vacuum.’
Ingold (2012) argues that clear connections exist between the meteorological and aesthetic conceptualisations of atmosphere, despite their positioning as oppositional.
As discussed in the previous chapter in regards to the embodied experience of heat, bodies inhabit the air. All interaction takes place in the medium of the air, and that which conditions the air –the weather –tempers all interaction (Ingold 2012). The weather is enmeshed with our emotional and affective life. Ingold (2010, p.122) states: ‘the experience of weather lies at the root of our moods and motivations; indeed it is the very temperament of our being.’ Ingold (2012) suggests that the links between the origins of several words evidences this. For example, the Latin word
‘temperare’, which means ‘to mix’, provides the common root for other words such as temper and temperament (Ingold 2012, p.76). Ingold (2012, p.76) asserts that such blending of different roots is not a coincidence; rather, the ‘weather is a phenomenon of both time and mixture, and of both our affective lives and the aerial medium in which lives are led.’ Bodies are entangled with the weather, and as such the weather is central in the colouring and conditioning of affective life. Adopting Ingold’s idea, I consider atmosphere in relation to both affect and weather through this chapter.
Considering affect and weather in terms of atmosphere, and the way these two forces intermingle, provides an account of liveness as an entanglement that is neither simple nor straightforward, but attends to the multiple, messy and dynamic nature of this entanglement. Both weather and affect texture life; at outdoor live music events,
207 weather and affect intertwine with bodies and things to create, shift and amplify particular atmospheres that press upon and permeate bodies. These atmospheric shifts contribute to, shape and structure the embodied experience of liveness.
Given this entanglement, the theoretical connections between the two concepts of weather and affective atmosphere are unsurprising. Indeed, Ingold’s (2010, p.131) suggestion that, when outside, ‘the weather is an ‘all-enveloping infusion which steeps [one’s] entire being’, resonates with Anderson’s (2014) description of affective atmospheres as enveloping people and things and conditioning life. Anderson (2014, p.141) understands atmospheres as always ‘finished and unfinished, forming and deforming, appearing and disappearing.’ Atmospheres are always in a state of flux,
‘they are never still, static or at rest’ (Anderson 2014, p.141). Similarly, weather is in a perpetual state of dynamism, continually ‘forming and dissolving’ (Ingold 2010, p.131). This similarity does not simply mark a parallel between two unrelated things.
Rather, I would suggest that weather and affective atmospheres share characteristics, are at once distinct yet indissolubly linked, and are mutually imbricated in the unfolding of the world.
Ingold’s work on the unfolding relationship between the human organism and its environment draws attention to, explores and interrogates the weather as an aspect of that environment in a sustained and detailed way. Anderson’s work on affect and particularly affective atmospheres, provides a frame through which to consider these ambiguous, dynamic and forces that are permeated by tensions and contradictions.
Using the works of Ingold and Anderson together provides an affective and meteorological account of atmosphere that can extend and expand conceptualisations
208 of liveness. Entangling these works in my understanding and discussion of liveness has allowed me to explore the ways the embodied experience of liveness is configured and reconfigured through shifting atmospheres. Liveness involves the ravelling and unravelling of things, forces and feelings as the world in flux is momentarily emphasised. At live music events, the unfolding of the world, the dynamism of our environment, body, and the entanglement of the two, are amplified. The fleeting nature of these events is central to the embodied experience of liveness and at outdoor events is felt through an intertwinement with the natural environment, and in particular with the weather.
Feeling and discussing atmospheres
Affective atmospheres and weather are entangled phenomena, each constituting, shaping and re-shaping the other and each informing and conditioning everyday life.
They are a constant thread woven through existence, at times aggressively pushing through the fabric of experience, and at others slipping by unnoticed in the background. However, weather and affective atmospheres are not the same thing; though they are entangled phenomena, they maintain a distinctiveness. Utilising the work of Barad (2007), I understand entanglement not as collapsing things, forces and feelings into one another, but instead as recognising that things emerge through their ongoing intra-action with one another. I understand affective atmospheres as always entwined with the weather; however, they can shift, intensify or diminish independently of the weather. For example, an individual can purposefully attempt to alter an affective atmosphere, or even alter it unknowingly. At live music events, during slow, soft and emotional songs a particular affective atmosphere can develop; the crowd seems to quieten and become still, and a kind of tension seems to rise as the
209 crowd becomes intensely absorbed in the music. That atmosphere can quickly shatter when an individual attendee, often seemingly oblivious to the atmosphere, begins a loud conversation with their friends.
This example brings me to another distinction between weather and atmosphere. The embodied experience of weather is complex, multifaceted and dynamic; however, the materiality of weather often has a clarity and definiteness. Even though different weather conditions affect bodies in different ways, when directly exposed to the weather, individuals generally notice the conditions, and identify them in the same way. For example, people standing in the rain would generally notice it was raining and describe the weather condition in the same basic manner. On the other hand, affective atmospheres are imbued with what Anderson (2014, p.138-139) describes as a ‘strange materiality’, in that they ‘condition life and thought’, though ‘are not necessarily sensible phenomena.’ Anderson (2014, p.140) elaborates on this idea explaining that the term atmosphere often seems to describe ‘something vague… ill- defined [and] indefinite’ that seems to ‘exceed clear figuration’, but at the same time,
‘the affective qualities that are given to this something… affirm the singularity of this or that atmosphere and the inseparability of from that which it emanates from.’
The strange materiality of atmospheres is not always felt and, even when the body does register or feel an atmosphere, that feeling possesses a dual quality. As Anderson
(2014, p.141) explains, affective atmospheres are ‘ephemeral’, ‘formless’, and
‘indeterminate’; however, they can also create a very palpable impression upon or within the body. Affective atmospheres can powerfully press upon the body and affect with ‘a kind of a force’ (Anderson 2014, p.137). As Wetherell (2012, p.140)
210 acknowledges, communal affects exert ‘a physical grab as our bodies begin to enact anger, or compassion or shake with laughter.’ The strange materiality of affective atmospheres, as I understand it, relates both to the seemingly contradictory qualities of the feeling of an atmosphere as definite and indefinite, and also the difficulty in describing the experience of an atmosphere, even when it presses or permeates with force it escapes or exceeds articulation. The tensions and contradictions that are embedded in definitions of the term atmosphere also constitute the materiality of atmospheres.
The difficulty in discussing atmospheres arose in a number of interviews.
When asked if she had a favourite festival, Lily quickly and enthusiastically responded that she ‘loved Splendour’, though she struggled somewhat to articulate why. She said ‘because it was fun and there was mud. Um I dunno why it was good, there was a good atmosphere’. Lily paused in thought and added ‘it’s more chilled’.
Lily’s comments reflect the ambiguity of atmospheric experience. Even when an affective atmosphere is foregrounded in experience, powerfully enveloping something, it remains within a field of tensions, contradictions and often exists ‘on the edge of semantic availability’ (Anderson 2014, p.139).
Although I have experienced a lively atmosphere countless times during live music events, and although the bodily sensation is definite and distinct, the experience remains difficult to describe. At Laneway festival, the lively atmosphere I experienced was felt as a warmth, a bubbling within my torso, somewhere above my stomach, not of nervousness or excitement but of attunement and happiness, and it moved and spread through my limbs, a simmering beneath the surface of my skin.
211 And as I recall the feeling through my writing, my throat seems to tighten a little as the memory is now tinged, feeling bittersweet in its passing and in my inability to fully capture the experience.
In the previous chapter I discussed Paterson’s (2007) idea that tactility always involves both presence and absence. I would suggest that the embodied experience of an affective atmosphere involves something similar. Affective atmospheres always possess a transient quality; even when hitting the body with force, when intensifying and amplifying, an affective atmosphere is simultaneously deteriorating. The dynamic nature of affective atmospheres means that, although they are always emerging, unfolding and becoming, they are also always passing. So, even when in the midst of a powerful embodied experience of an atmosphere, there is an awareness that the feeling is fleeting.
Although I did not ask any participants directly about the fleeting nature of atmospheres, I believe Lewis’s discussion of an intense emotional experience at
Splendour in the Grass relates to this. During Lewis’s interview, he discussed becoming emotional and tearing up during a performance. Lewis’s interview will be discussed in detail in the following chapter in relation to affective movements and the affectivity of tears; however, here I want to suggest that part of Lewis’s intense emotional experience related to the transient nature of affective atmospheres. Lewis discussed the ‘different atmosphere, [and] different environment’ produced at live events as important to him. When describing his experience tearing up, Lewis explained that he was standing at the front of the crowd, near the stage; a position he chose because he felt that area had a ‘certain vibe’ that he enjoyed. Lewis said he
212 became teary at a particular performance on ‘last day, the very last day’ of the festival, and said that his experience of this particular event had been the ‘most fun
[he’d] ever had at a festival.’
Lewis’s comments relating to atmosphere and the vibe he experienced at the front of the crowd demonstrate that this participant was attuned to the affective atmosphere at this live music event and that this experience was significant to him in the constitution of liveness. I would suggest that Lewis’s emotional experience was made more intense as it occurred on the last day of the festival and the fleeting nature of his experience was felt and amplified. A range of factors brought on Lewis’s tears; his attunement to the affective atmosphere and his awareness that his experience of that atmosphere was coming to an end intensified his emotional response.
The experience of an affective atmosphere seems to sit somewhere between absence and presence or maybe it simultaneously traverses presence and absence. The fleeting, transient quality of affective atmospheres gives them an ephemeral, ungraspable quality in experience. In addition to this, or perhaps because of this, affective atmospheres also have an ungraspable quality in expression. Affects are those forces non-representationalists, such as Vannini (2015, p.6), recognise as ‘not quite graspable.’ Affects exceed and disrupt any simple or straightforward representation.
Like the experience of an affective atmosphere, trying to discuss or write about an affective atmosphere always involves presence, absence and the tension of everything in between.
213 Affective atmospheres also involve a seemingly contradictory duality in which the atmosphere is experienced both as a collective condition and bodily capacity; it is simultaneously shared and personal. Anderson (2009, p.80) discusses this duality, stating that affective atmospheres are both ‘impersonal in that they belong to collective situations’, but can also ‘be felt as intensely personal.’ Wetherell (2012) describes the experience of atmosphere as similar to swimming in the ocean and passing through water of differing temperatures. This description captures the simultaneously personal and shared nature of affective atmospheres. The experience of an atmosphere is intensely individual and personal, embedded in the flesh of one’s own body, but at one and the same time, it is also felt and experienced as communal or shared. Just as the swimmer understands others in the water to be simultaneously feeling the bite of the cold wind against the skin, the relief of warm water and the pull of the current, so too did I experience the lively atmosphere as shared with other attendees.
The experience of affective atmospheres as both collective and personal, and also bound to weather, was demonstrated through John’s interview. John said that outdoor live music events have more of a ‘party atmosphere’ than those indoors, and despite describing bad weather as ‘more difficult to manage’, he detailed an experience that involved rain and mud when asked about his best memories of live music events. John said,
it was [at] Big Day Out a few years ago and it was only a small stage… but
everyone was getting along and it started to rain and no one seemed to care
and we were all just dancing in the mud together…it was good music as well,
and it was just a really good experience.
214 John experienced a particular feeling, an atmosphere, which emanated from, and produced a felt connection or affinity with, the crowd. Within the mud, John danced together with strangers to the music. Mud, rain, music, dancing and the behaviour and feeling of the crowd combined to create a particular atmosphere that involved a felt togetherness, a shared experience. The weather conditions and the feeling of the moment have remained potent in his memory, a memory described by John as one of his best at a live music event.
Atmospheres are produced and felt through the specificities of experience. Many of my most potent experiences and memories of atmosphere within live music spaces involve the combining of weather and affect, body and environment and were produced at Splendour in the Grass. At Splendour in the Grass, the specificities of the environment and the event, and in particular the presence of mud, create a unique embodied experience. Within the muddy fields of Splendour, for three days surrounded by bush, as bands perform and attendees cheer, sing, dance, sunbake, run, eat, rest, play, craft and so on, a lively atmosphere is created and at times forcefully punctuates and accentuates the experience of liveness. Affective atmospheres are always and already both bodily capacities and collective conditions, inseparable from the entwinements in which they emerge, intensify and deteriorate.
The lived experience of atmosphere can never be truly or fully expressed. However, we can explore the particularities that produce atmosphere and by doing so extend our understanding of this concept. To unpack and understand this phenomenon we need to develop a conceptualisation of the entanglement between body and environment that focuses upon the specificities and particularities that create moments of intensity. We
215 need to unfold and untangle the mingling and meshing of lived experience and try and capture, at least in part, the materiality of atmosphere and the ways this shapes the experience of liveness. In doing so, we can reconfigure understandings of liveness and imbue this concept with the complexity and liveliness it demands. To begin this process of unpacking, I will start at the base or the foundations of my experiences at
Splendour in the Grass, with the feet and the muddy ground.
Moving in the mud
After a heavy downpour at the start of Day One of Splendour in the Grass 2012 the
Belongil fields had quickly become covered in mud. Whole sections of the festival site were nothing more than mud pits, full of wet, sloppy mud, slippery in some places and thick in others, able to suction onto shoes and pull them off feet. Through these areas, in my knee-high gumboots, I moved more slowly with shorter strides than usual. Each step was somewhat tentative as I became hesitant to put my feet down with any force or speed in case of an unexpected deep spot or mud slide. I felt the solidity, sloppiness or slipperiness of the ground through my feet and legs, and the muscles in my calves seemed to work overtime balancing and stabilizing my body with every step. In difficult areas my arms and hands moved like those of a tightrope walker, helping to steady my body. I quickly learnt to navigate these spaces, finding the routes with shallow mud or semi-solid ground and observing the spots to avoid, where others became stuck, lost footwear or slid coming to an abrupt and messy halt.
At one point I edged carefully around a huge puddle that was almost entirely covering a pathway, unsure of the depth and slipperiness beneath the opaque water. A barefooted male sloshed through the puddle. Noticing my careful movements, he said,
216 ‘you can’t avoid the puddle, the puddle is everywhere, become one with it, embrace the puddle’, as he gestured toward the ground ahead. And he was right, even with the most careful navigation the mud was unavoidable. Flecks of cold, wet mud hit bodies, as impatient individuals splashed quickly through wet, sloppy areas. Groans, boos and unappreciative yells followed them on their hurried paths. Splodges, splatter marks and dashes of mud covered arms, bags and clothes. Boots, and legs became stained and encrusted with it. The sounds of squeaking gumboots in motion, and the squelching of mud moving around and under feet, were constant. When frenzied cheers erupted from nearby stages, marking the arrival of a band or performer, the rhythm of the squeaking and squelching would instantly hasten, as bodies moved with a newfound urgency toward performances. The unmistakable smell of mud was unwavering, though an occasional unpleasant odour alerted me to something foul lingering beneath the surface or mixed through the mud.
One evening, as the mud fields became covered in darkness and the festival buzzed with a new electricity, I simultaneously felt an empty space beside me where one of my friends had been walking, and heard a shocked yell from behind. In the space we had just walked through she stood stuck in the mud, one leg encased. Writhing, wriggling and swearing, she tried to free her booted leg. Two of us stood, one on each side of her, and pulled her arms upward and forward. The muscles through my upper arms and back strained as we tried desperately to free her and my boots slid on the ground unable to grip to the mud. She yelped and yelled as we pulled aggressively at her arms, finally defeating the sticky sludge.
217 And after each long day at the festival, when I lay in bed at night, the muscles in my feet, legs and lower back ached from a day of moving in the mud.
Developed from field notes produced at Splendour in the Grass, Belongil Fields,
Byron Bay, 27th-29th of July 2012.
During two of the three years I attended Splendour in the Grass, once at Belongil
Fields and twice at the new festival site in North Byron Parklands, the ground became a muddy mess. In the new and larger Splendour site, the spread of mud over the festival space seemed slower and more gradual. However, over the three-day period it encroached onto almost every inch of ground. In such circumstances the ground – the stable, comfortable and often-ignored foundation of everyday life –was replaced by a shifting, unstable, messy, and often unpredictable mass. As Ingold (2010, p.126) explains, the ground is an element of our environment that is always shifting. The ground is ‘not pre-existent but undergoes continuous generation’. The ground is formed and exists through the continuous reactions ‘between substances and medium’
(Ingold 2010, p.126). The ground rose up (literally and figuratively), became a central element in my embodied experience of this live music event and accentuated the body as a whole as an entangled entity moving through the festival site. Through this felt entanglement, bodies are experienced as open to their dynamic surrounds.
The body as a whole senses, perceives and interacts with its entangled surrounds and this occurs through the body’s always interconnected ‘synergic system’ (Merleau-
Ponty 1962 cited by Pink 2015, p.29). The body has a simultaneous unity and multiplicity. The various regions, capacities and functions of the body do not operate singularly, nor do they rise to, or recede from our attention, in an isolated manner. As
218 Leder (1990) explains, from the surface to the depths, the body is always interconnected, with each region and system enabling, supporting and connecting the body as a whole. Ingold (2011a, p.136) argues that, ‘in ordinary perceptual practice these [sensory] registers cooperate so closely, and with such overlap of function, that their respective contributions are impossible to tease apart.’ The body is an entwined entity, each part and capacity is connected to all others and each part and capacity is entwined with its environment. As demonstrated through my field notes, when moving through the mud the haptic capacities of the body combine with the ocular, auditory and olfactory, as other regions and capacities recede from attention, and the body as a whole moves in its environment.
The relationship between the ground and my body was always mediated through my gumboots and for three days those boots became incorporated into my corporeal schemata. As discussed in Chapter 4, Leder (1990) suggests that our corporeal structure and way of being-in-the-world is characterised by a somatic openness, through which our bodily boundaries are open and can extend outward to allow for the incorporation of things. This somatic openness of the body allowed for the incorporation of my gumboots, though it did so in order to close off the skin of my feet from the cold, wet ground. By incorporating the gumboots, which fall into
Michael’s (2012, p.46) category of a ‘mundane technology’, I was able to control an aspect of my bodily contact with part of the environment. In Chapter 3 I discussed the more complex technology of digital screens becoming incorporated into one’s embodiment, and the way that process of incorporation transforms one’s experiential field. The ‘gumbooted attendee’ could be considered a co(a)gent, as this mundane technology combined and entangled with ‘bits of bodies, aspects of nature, parts of
219 culture, and traditions of discourse’ (Michael 2012, p.2). The gumbooted attendee moves, knows and feels the live environment through a specific, multisensorial embodied experience. The gumboots become actively entwined in the relationship between body and environment, which continually moves, shifts and changes. Agency is dispersed through that entwinement and the gumboots intra-actively participate in and contribute to, the ongoing configuration and reconfiguration of the embodied engagement with the environment.
With my boots, I moved through the mud, feeling the ground and the way it imprinted upon my body as a whole. The pressure or lack of pressure against my boots and feet, whether or not my boots slipped, slid or gripped the mud and the way my leg muscles, tendons and joints, from my calves to my thighs, stretched, strained or were jolted all produced sensations that allowed me to understand the consistency and texture of the mud and navigate the site. My movement through the festival site also required a particular visual engagement. My usual walking posture – upright with eyes ahead – was replaced as my eyes moved between the bodies ahead of me and the ground around me. Unable to walk in straight lines, my eyes roamed the ground and the sea of bodies equally, and I learnt to visually identify risky, problematic mud.
In sticky, slippery areas, my arms and hands did not simply swing by my side as usual; instead they were held slightly up and outward from the body, assisting balance, and braced for action, ready to grab onto any stabilizing thing, whether it be an unknown passer-by, tent pole or stall corner. The muscles in my arms, shoulders and upper back strained and stretched as I tried to pull a stuck friend up and out of the sludge, their weight magnified by the downward pull of the mud. At the end of the
220 first day and then at various times throughout the weekend, my lower back also shifted into my attention. The long periods standing in the unstable mud, combined with my leg and foot muscles, tendons, and joints, tensing, straining and moving in uncommon ways, engaged the muscles of my lower back beyond their usual function.
Within the festival site and even around Byron Bay’s town centre, I often observed attendees standing with extended legs, up on their tiptoes, or pulling one foot at a time up toward their lower backs, or bent forward reaching for the ground, as they tried to stretch the lower half of their body.
The ground, covered in mud, and engaged with through the particularities of the festival, produced a multisensorial engagement that awakened and enlivened parts of the body that commonly recede from attention in everyday life. This particular type of embodied engagement resonates with Allen-Collinson and Owton’s (2015) use of the term ‘intense embodiment’. Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.247) utilise this term to define ‘periods of heightened awareness of corporeal existence’. During these periods, ‘background feelings’ can be brought ‘vividly to the foreground of consciousness, generating a heightened sense of corporeal “aliveness”’ (Allen-
Collinson and Owton 2015, p.262). Drawing upon the work of Leder and his concept of the dys-appearing body, Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.247) suggest that intense embodiment occurs when regions or capacities of the body, that are mostly absent from one’s attention, are ‘brought into heightened awareness when pain or illness, or indeed intense pleasure remind us of its presence’.
In these circumstances the body ‘“dys-appears” and is brought – sometimes acutely – to consciousness’ Allen-Collinson and Owton 2015, p.247) Leder’s (1990) term, ‘dys-
221 appearing body’, emphasises dysfunction and negative bodily experiences. Leder
(1990, p.164-165) does briefly describe an ‘expanded awareness’ that is triggered through the process of absorption, when we ‘awaken and the world rushes in fraught with beauty or significance.’ However, Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015, p.247) extend and emphasise ‘a positively heightened sense of corporeal “aliveness”, of the senses working at an intense level’ through their discussion of intense embodiment.
Allen-Collinson and Owton (2015) emphasise the pleasurable aspects of intense embodiment; here I would emphasise the amplification of a multisensorial movement of the body through its environment.
Whilst moving through the mud, a heightened awareness of my body’s multisensorial capacities produced an intense embodiment. This experience was not triggered through pain or pleasure but instead through the mud and my embodied focus upon it as an unusual and uncommon environmental element. Importantly, this intense embodiment drew my attention equally to my body and my environment and shifted my embodied experience. My embodied experience was not produced only as an experience of the mud. These two elements, body and mud, entangled in the festival site with the experiences of liveness, music, crowds, cold air, sunshine and other things, forces and feelings. Each element of the entangling web of experience informed the others, influencing and shaping that experience. These moments of multisensorial intensity produced a particular embodiment and importantly a particular experience of entanglement that are essential to the experience of atmosphere.
222 Disrupting the illusion of groundlessness
Ingold (2011a) suggests that in academic accounts that consider the ways bodies interact with and experience environments, often ground and the feet are either not considered, or their significance is minimised. Just as the weather has been pushed into the periphery of embodied experience, so too have the ground and the feet.
However, bodies do not float above the surface of the world; they are grounded and move through it. At live music events, as the muscles in the feet ache and throb from hours of standing on concrete, grass is compressed and muddied from the movement of thousands of feet, toes are crushed by other attendees, shoes slip, slide or stick to spilt substances, skin blisters, socks bunch, the feet and the ground are regularly pulled into one’s embodied focus. Indeed, some participants mentioned their feet aching or becoming injured at live music events, and others discussed carefully planning their footwear before an event in relation to the ground of the venue and predicted weather conditions. During live music events (and in some cases, even before an event), one’s feet, and that which they move on or through, pull focus as an element within one’s multisensorial entanglement with the live environment.
This heightened awareness of one’s feet and the ground, for most, contrasts with the everyday experience of the feet and the ground. Ingold (2011a) suggests that an illusion of groundlessness pervades modern metropolitan life. For most, the illusion of groundlessness is deeply embedded in embodied experience and pushes the ground, one’s feet, and the entanglement of the two, into the periphery of experience. The illusion of groundlessness describes the modern tendency to ignore the ground as foundational in human life and Ingold (2011a) discusses three factors that have contributed to this illusion. Firstly, through evolutionary discourse the capacities of
223 the hand were considered to be a defining feature of human ability and so the foot was devalued and positioned as inferior to the hand within a dualistic relationship; secondly, in modern metropolitan environments the ground has mostly been smoothed, straightened and hardened; and thirdly, the development of various technologies, such as footwear, cars and chairs, have separated the body from the ground (Ingold 2011a, pp.44-48). The illusion of groundlessness involves both body and environment, as aspects of each have been bound to discourses, practices, and traditions that allow or force these bodily and environmental elements to recede from attention.
I would suggest that the illusion of groundlessness could also be considered as having a gendered element that relates to the specificity of gendered footwear. When wearing high heels, I think about the particularities of the shoe, the ground I expect to walk on, and the amount of walking and standing I expect to do. I also become more sensitive to features of the ground, including the texture, solidity, and in particular, any irregularities. When wearing high heels my feet and the ground are pulled into my attention more frequently. However, at youth-oriented live music events high heel shoes are uncommon and no participant discussed wearing them. Instead, participants spoke about wearing shoes that would be comfortable, easy to move around in and offer some protection for their feet.
Ingold (2011a) traces discussion of human evolution and the capacities of the hand from classical Antiquity onward, to demonstrate the ways in which the hand has been linked to the civilized, thinking “man” and the foot to the savage, active “man”.
Through this discourse, thought was separated from action, mind from body, and man
224 from nature. The familiar series of interconnecting dualisms that were generated through Cartesian thought were reproduced and reinforced through the dominant understanding of the foot and the illusion of groundlessness. Ingold (2011a, p.35) suggests, that from this perspective, ‘the biped is held down only by two [feet], while the arms and hands, released from their previous functions of support and locomotion, become answerable to the call of reason.’
Live music spaces can powerfully disrupt the illusion of groundlessness. This disruption allows attendees to become differently oriented toward the ground, their embodied experience, and environmental conditions. In everyday life, the functions and capacities of the foot are reduced and diminished. The function of the foot, covered by the shoe, and walking on generally paved or covered surfaces, is reduced to a ‘stepping machine’ and thinking with the feet is minimised (Ingold 2011a, p.44).
However, in spaces such as the Splendour site when the ground is unpredictable and unknown, the feet and the ground take on new significance. Attendees must constantly negotiate the mud in terms of their feet, their footwear and their movement through the site. But also in terms of their skin, their clothing, the temperature of air and mud, and the type and amount of contact with the mud they can tolerate. Ingold
(2011a, p.39) suggests that, for the walker, ‘the world of their thoughts, their dreams and their relations with others floats like a mirage above the road they tread in their actual material life.’ At Splendour in the Grass, an attendee’s thoughts and attention constantly oscillate between the ground, the placement of their feet, the crowd, the music and other things.
225 For many individuals the ground and their feet recede from their focus in the routines of everyday life, rising up and grabbing attention only at times of dysfunction. When encountering broken, uneven pavement or uncomfortable shoes, the foot and the ground painfully or uncomfortably appear through a moment of dysfunction; to use
Leder’s (1990) term, they dys-appear. During moments when this illusion of groundlessness is disrupted and the interaction between ground and foot, or ground and body is experienced, a felt entanglement between body, environment and things is produced, as our material grounding in the world is amplified or accentuated. This is emphasised in Michael’s (2000) account of walking boots and pain. Michael (2000, p.115) states that walking boots are ‘meant to be invisible, or rather intangible’ to provide unproblematic contact with the ground. However, during times of pain and discomfort, ‘instead of being silent [the boots] constitute noise… which utterly interrupts the usual flows’ (Michael 2000, p.115).
The receding of the ground from one’s attention also occurs because of the general solidity, uniformity and impenetrability of the ground. In modern western societies, the paths and routes most individuals walk have already been determined and created, then paved, cemented or otherwise covered. As Ingold (2011a, p.44) states, ‘It appears that people, in their daily lives, merely skim the surface of the world that has been previously mapped out and constructed for them to occupy.’ The body as a stepping machine simply follows the paths already laid, and the engagement of the body with the ground it walks through, as a thinking, feeling, and sensing system, is minimised. Obviously, certain events and conditions can disrupt this perceived solidity and stability. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and flooding can quickly demonstrate the dynamism and unpredictability of the ground. Such incidences
226 powerfully disrupt the illusion of groundlessness, as the ground, or parts of it, rise up, becoming centrally positioned in one’s embodied attention.
In more mundane circumstances, the feet and the shoes they wear can leave marks and contribute to the dynamism of the ground, though to a much lesser extent. Feet and shoes regularly imprint upon green and unpaved surfaces. Ingold (2011a, p.44) notes that when pedestrians walk on these surfaces in cities and make an imprint upon the ground, it is generally regarded negatively, with ‘urban planners and municipal authorities’ understanding such action as ‘a threat to established order and a subversion of authority.’ Of course, outside of urban hubs, through bush and along coastlines, walkers commonly leave imprints that linger and combine to create a walking track. For most people though, the ground recedes from their attention, and additionally, their imprint upon the ground is also diminished or erased.
In an outdoor festival site with an unpaved ground, such as Splendour in the Grass, simple movements such as standing or walking leave imprints. These imprints compound, deepen, and erode throughout the day, magnified and accentuated by thousands of feet in motion. The fluxes of weather and the dynamism of the environment combine with movements and actions of attendees, equipment, vehicles and other things and the ground becomes a lively entity within the space. Feet, mud, gumboots and the body as a whole engage with and attune to this lively entity, which contrasts sharply with the stable, solid and predictable ground that recedes from attention in everyday life. Ingold (2011a) argues that, by moving in the world, we contribute to its ongoing formation. At Splendour in the Grass, the dynamic body is felt and known through its entanglement with the shifting ground amongst other
227 things. In my experience, moving through the mud did not simply produce bodily sensations. I also registered and understood the mud’s varying textures, consistencies, smells, appearance and temperature, the force with which it could suction down a gumboot and the speed with which it could coat a dropped item. During these moments, the body and environment are equally entwined. The body is known and felt through its movement in the environment, and the environment is known and felt through the moving, sensing, thinking body. This reciprocal knowing, feeling, being and becoming can be understood as an intense entanglement.
Becoming intensely entangled
Allen-Collinson and Owton’s (2015) concept of intense embodiment can be extended to ‘intense entanglement’ to describe the moments of heightened awareness of body and environment produced through the experience of liveness. Within a period of intense entanglement, the liveliness of both bodies and environment is felt and intensified as one’s embodied attention shifts toward the liveliness of the world.
In his discussion of the animate, Ingold (2011a, p.68) argues that our way of being-in- the-world ‘originally’ involved an openness to the world. However, through ‘deeply sedimented… canons of western thought’, this openness has been inverted and the entrenched, accepted logic understands individuals as closed off, contained entities.
According to Ingold (2011a, p.68) an individual’s ‘inner constitution’ is understood to be ‘sealed by an outer boundary or shell that protects… from the traffic of interactions
Behaviour and action are conceptualised as the individual’s outward expression of an internal schema of the mind, located in the head (Ingold 2011a).
228 The logic of inversion, which separates mind from body, body from environment, culture from nature and so on, remains dominant in everyday ways of knowing and being. This logic perpetuates ways of being-in-the-world that ignore or dismiss aspects of our intertwined existence; for example, in the illusion of groundlessness, or the disregard for air and weather. Ingold (2011a, p.68) argues against this ‘logic of inversion’, and aims to ‘recover that original openness to the world.’ Such openness is foundational to animism, which Ingold (2011a) suggests is not a belief system, but rather a way of being-in-the-world. Ingold (2011a, p.67) describes animism as ‘a condition of being alive to the world, characterised by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next.’
Allen-Collinson and Owton’s (2015) discussion of intense embodiment, and my discussion of intense entanglement, resonate with Ingold’s (2011a) discussion of animism. However, whereas Ingold discusses animism as a condition of being-in-the- world that contrasts with dominant contemporary thought, my notion of intense entanglement (derived from Allen-Collinson and Owton’s 2015 work on intense embodiment) describes just a moment of being-in-the-world. Intense entanglement provides a momentary disruption to the logic of inversion. For just a moment, the lively entanglement of bodies and environment, which are always in flux, is felt. I am not arguing here against Ingold’s discussion of animism; instead, I am suggesting that the experience of liveness, and in particular the experience of intense entanglement, does not completely invert the entrenched logic that understands individuals as closed off from their environment.
229 In contemporary life, recorded music is so readily and easily accessible; we can literally hold thousands of songs in our hands or pockets. Music can form a private auditory bubble, which we can access at almost any time. Indeed, participants discussed listening to music, while driving, studying, travelling on public transport, walking, working, and exercising. In contrast, live music events are shared, transient and fleeting, requiring a particular co-presence in a specific time and space. The momentariness of live events draws attention to the world in flux: the emergence of body and environment along, and through, shifting lines of entanglement. Everyday life and experiences of music are by no means devoid of dynamism, but at live music events this process is accelerated and amplified.
Through this felt entanglement, bodies attune to the affective atmosphere, and this attunement is essential for affective atmospheres to become sensible phenomena.
Attunement requires an active involvement. It is not accidental or guaranteed, but requires an embodied attention and sensitivity to the entwinement between body and environment. During live music events, one’s ability or inability to attune to an atmosphere is linked to a number of factors, including the consumption of alcohol or recreational drugs.11 Wetherell’s (2012) discussion of affective atmospheres extends and clarifies my understanding of affective attunement; she suggests that affects are not contagious, like a virus that can be simply and unintentionally be caught. Rather, to experience affect requires the individual to be ‘actively caught up in a process or practice’ (Wetherell 2012, p.141). To experience an affective atmosphere, one must be actively engaged with one’s surrounds, moving, sensing, thinking and feeling within that engagement. Indeed, Anderson (2009, p.80) explains that ‘to attend to
11 However, discussion of drug use was limited due to recommendations by the HREC, which were discussed through the introductory chapter of this thesis.
230 affective atmospheres is to learn to be affected by the ambiguities of affect/emotion, by that which is determinate and indeterminate, present and absent, singular and vague.’
Attending and attuning to affective atmospheres involves an embodied focus on the subtleties, tensions and movements of the world, and the body as part of that world.
Attuning to the intricacies of one’s entanglement involves a situatedness, an attention and sensitivity to the nowness of each moment, and the shifts that entwine, move and pass between each moment. Wetherell’s (2012, p.141) notion of being ‘actively caught up’ in something resonates with Ingold’s (2011a) discussion of being alive to the world and Barad’s (2007, p.x) ‘ongoing practice of being open and alive’ to each new intra-action. By being or becoming attuned to one’s environment, one can feel the affective atmosphere press upon or permeate the body and this can produce a moment of intense entanglement.
The intra-activity of atmosphere
Whilst I carefully navigated the mud to avoid any falls, other attendees engaged with it with a child-like abandon. Indeed many attendees seemed to revel in the opportunities presented, playing in and with the mud. Some attendees decorated their bodies and clothes with muddy handprints, or finger-painted their faces with stripes beneath their eyes, like some kind of war paint. Some wrestled in it, emerging covered from head to foot. Two males, dangerously close to me, scooped up handfuls of mud, one tried to compress his handful like a snowball, before hurling it toward his retreating friend. Another short-lived amusement involved a group of all males running and sliding on their chests as far as possible through the mud, as if on a slip-
231 and-slide. The watching crowd clapped with a faster and faster rhythm, then cheered as the slider came to a stop. The action of torsos sliding wildly along the ground sparked childhood memories of my own slip-and-slide experiences and then fainter memories of playing in mud: constructing mud bricks for a quickly abandoned fort,
“baking” mud pies, and receiving the telling-off of a lifetime from my Grandmother after entering the house covered in mud from a backyard Iron-man challenge.
While the crowd waited for Snakadaktal to take the nearby stage, a human tunnel formed as thirty or forty people stood in two parallel lines facing each other with their arms stretched outward toward their partner, palms touching. The aim of the game was for individuals to run, crouched down, one at a time through the tunnel and remain on their feet. Most failed, skidding or landing face first in the mud somewhere in the midst of the tunnel. A large crowd had gathered around the tunnel, cheers and applause erupted each time a runner fell and they all emerged from the tunnel covered in slop but grinning from ear to ear. The muscles and tendons at the corners of my jaw tingled as I smiled and laughed at both the joy of the people falling and the enthusiasm of the crowd to witness them fall. Watching attendees experience that brief moment of untroubled free fall, before their body hits the soft ground, triggered memories of a school excursion to Collaroy Beach, during which the class had quickly forgotten their concerns of coastal erosion and began tripping and tackling each other into the soft sand.
And from a bar veranda packed full, a large group coaxed unsuspecting attendees to walk toward them, calling and gesturing with smiles spread across their faces. They were hoping the unsuspecting attendees would fall into a deep hole that had formed.
232 The undetectable hole pulled legs downward covering them with mud up to the thigh.
Each time someone fell a loud cheer would erupt from the bar before a few people ran to the aid of the stuck attendee. The shared, collective playfulness of attendees always seems to separate Splendour from other festivals. At every turn, in every moment of impatience, the excitement, anticipation and happiness of the crowd can bubble over and spill into games, pranks, spontaneous chants or sing-alongs.
Developed from field notes produced at Splendour in the Grass, North Byron
Parklands, 26th-28th of July 2013.
The mud at Splendour in the Grass did not just shift attendees’ engagement with the ground, or produce a felt entanglement with it, but also produced and enabled a unique and lively atmosphere that contributed to and shaped the embodied experience of liveness. While I watched attendees play in the mud at Splendour in the Grass, I felt a lively, playful and fun affective atmosphere. This playfulness was enabled and shaped by the presence of mud, as well as other factors including the lengthy wait times between performances, the possible consumption of alcohol and other recreational drugs, the isolation of the festival site away from everyday spaces and the carnival-like setup of the space. Weather, bodies, movement, ground and other things and forces combined and meshed to produce the shifting affective atmosphere. Within that entanglement, neither the weather conditions nor affective qualities could be separated from the atmospheric experience.
As open bodies attuned to the dynamism of their environment, a lively atmosphere was produced, felt and intensified. As this atmosphere enlivened my embodied experience of the event, it triggered memories of my own experiences in mud, falling
233 and playing. Body, environment and atmosphere were known and experienced through their lively and enlivening intra-active entanglement. Each entity did not exist separately and momentarily entwine during my experience in the muddy fields of the live music event; rather the body, environment and atmosphere were reciprocally co- constituted. This mutual unfolding is central to liveness in the ways it is conceptually understood and the ways it is experienced.
As discussed in my methodology chapter, the concept of intra-action is central to the work of Barad (2007, p.33), and involves the ‘mutual constitution of entangled agencies.’ People, things and forces come into being through their intra-actions and the ability to act emerges from within their entanglement; ‘separately determinate entities do not pre-exist their intra-action’ (Barad 2007, p. 175). Barad (2012, p.77) asserts, ‘“Individuals” do not not exist, but are not individually determinate (emphasis added). Rather, “individuals” only exist within phenomena… in their ongoing iteratively intra-active re-configuring’ (Barad 2012, p.77). All matter and all phenomena are formed through an ongoing process of entangled emergence. The human and non-human, bodies, environment, affect, matter, and discourse intra-act and are made and unmade through a continual entangling. The embodied experience of liveness intra-actively forms particular atmospheres that collapse and reform and this continual dynamic process is not limited to, or produced only through that which happens at live music events, but connects to and intertwines with attendees memories, expectations, everyday routines, understandings of music and liveness, and a range of other factors, things and forces.
234 When considering atmosphere, the conceptual development of my thesis and the ways in which particular ideas and theories have combined, coalesced and collided, has been as important to my writing, as my actual experiences. The way I understand
Barad’s (2007) discussion of intra-action is in itself entangled in a web of ideas, concepts, experiences and memories that constitute and shape my understanding of body, environment and liveness. The work of Ingold and Barad, despite having different disciplinary backgrounds, and the interests and focus of each theorist varying significantly, overlap in certain areas and this overlapping has shaped and structured my understanding of the two.
Vanderbeck and Worth (2015, p.232) describe the works of both Ingold and Barad as supporting a broadly ‘socio-materialist or post-humanist view’, in which the person and their ‘context’ or environment are understood as being involved in a process of mutual emergence. Svane (2014) furthers the comparison of the two and asserts that there are clear links between Barad’s notion of intra-action and Ingold’s discussion of a meshwork. The concept of intra-action understands all things, not as pre-existing their interactions, but as emerging through their continual intra-actions. In a similar way, a meshwork involves all things issuing forth ‘along the lines of their relationships’ and perpetually threading their way through the continually emerging meshwork (Ingold 2011a, p.71). As Ingold (2011a, p.84) explains, a meshwork is constituted, not simply by ‘interconnected points’, as in a network, but by ‘interwoven lines.’
When read together in relation to liveness and my current discussion of mud, the works of Ingold and Barad intra-act with other ideas, feelings, experiences and so on
235 to form, configure and re-configure my understanding. Ingold’s detailed discussions of an organism’s ongoing entanglement with their environment, and aspects of that environment including the weather, the ground, and the air, provide a foundation and give form to my understanding of bodies as always and already entangled, and liveness as an entangled experience. Barad’s work, which I came to relatively late in the process of my research, did not re-shape my understanding of entanglement and liveness, or alter the direction of my research as a whole. Rather, Barad’s discussion of intra-action and entanglement, as intra-active, sharpened and clarified the way I think about and understand entanglement, and drew my attention to, and highlighted particular aspects of Ingold’s work.
Furthermore, Barad’s emphasis upon the entangling and meshing of processes of being and knowing highlighted, and forced me to think more deeply about, my experience as a researcher and research as an entangled process. As a result I understood my experiences as deeply enmeshed in my research and altered my style of writing and chapter structures to incorporate and examine my own experiences, as well as those of participants, in relation to my developing theoretical framework.
Incorporating my experiences into my research and reconsidering the process as intra- active pushed my understanding of liveness, entanglement and embodiment further forward, and outward.
Multiple, messy and moving, thoughts, feelings and memories intra-act to produce my specific understanding of the embodied experience of atmosphere. My own experiences moving through the mud at the festival and observing others at play, my memories of past experiences playing in mud and natural environments, the
236 continual dynamism of those memories, and indeed the way those shifting memories combine with theoretical concerns and are shaped into written text for the purpose of my research; all intra-act as dynamic threads within a shifting entanglement. The intra-activity of the world, that is the multiple and shifting practices of engagement between the human and nonhuman, produce and transform knowledge and experience. My experience of the atmosphere at
Splendour in the Grass and the way I understand and write about that experience involves an ongoing and dynamic intra-action.
Both Ingold and Barad provide an account of the human as a complex, messy and lively entity bound to, and continually transformed by, its environment. Bodies, environments and things are not separate but ‘enmeshed and co-emergent’
(Vanderbeck and Worth 2014, p.232). Ingold and Barad each understand experience as an unfolding process of being and becoming, entangled or enmeshed with things, forces and feelings, the human and nonhuman, the living and nonliving. I understand the experience of liveness as evidencing and accentuating this entwinement. At
Splendour in the Grass, bodies and environment are mutually shaped and reshaped through their ongoing enmeshed intra-action. The atmosphere of Splendour is formed, altered and reformed through this intra-action and so too are the experiences of attendees shaped and re-shaped. Being attuned to dynamic elements within the environment opened up that environment to new possibilities of movement and embodied experience, as the liveliness of youthful bodies combined with the liveliness of their environment.
237 Conclusion
Affective atmospheres envelop and condition thought and feeling. They unfold, take shape and deteriorate through the intra-active becoming of the world. Affective atmospheres are produced by and exceed the entangling of bodies and environments, which are constituted by the weather, earth, air, the living and nonliving, human and nonhuman and all other manner of things and forces. Live music spaces become atmospheric hubs, as open bodies attune to their entangled environment and by doing so feel the forming and re-forming of a world in flux. The embodied experience of liveness produces moments of intense entanglement and affective atmospheres are central, contributing to, producing and tempering these moments. Exploring affective atmospheres in live music spaces contributes to the development of liveness as an increasingly complex area of study and acknowledges the multiplicity that imbues the experience of liveness, which is always bound to a series of tensions between experience and expression.
The embodied experience of liveness is, at least in part, configured and enabled through that which disrupts and exceeds everyday life. By moving through the muddy grounds at Splendour in the Grass, my embodied engagement shifted as I experienced moments of intense entanglement. A heightened awareness of body and environment was produced and my multisensorial entangling with the world was, at least for a moment, felt. Through these moments of intense entanglement, bodies become attuned to dynamic forces and intensities that can be described as affective atmospheres. The dynamic nature of atmospheres enlivens bodies to their surrounds, as environment and body mesh, and one’s attention is pulled toward this entwinement.
As Anderson (2014, p.138) suggests, atmospheres ‘condition life’ and, as Ingold
238 (2012, p.75) states, it is through atmospheres that we ‘embrace and are embraced by the world’. Understanding our multisensorial entanglement with the world, which is intra-actively shaped and re-shaped through and within affective atmospheres, is crucial in understanding embodied experience and indeed the concept of liveness.
A focus upon the weather and dynamic elements of the environment such as mud draws our attention to the world in flux and highlights the centrality of movement to our entangled being and becoming. Movement and the experience of being moved permeate, shape and direct the embodied experience of liveness. However, movement also permeates, shapes and directs the ways we talk about and remember that experience. The entangled experience of liveness, and the processes involved in researching this experience, are not static or stable, but instead involve constant motion and movement. The lively movement of a world in flux imbues and constitutes all experience and is of utmost significance within the research process. As such the movements that occur, physically, emotionally, affectively, atmospherically and conceptually must all be considered and interrogated.
239 Chapter 6: Affective movements and the
liveliness of interviews
We sat in the corner of a local pub. It was a Thursday night and like usual not too busy. Locals hummed around, occasionally yelling hellos from across the room but noticing my notepad, kept a respectful distance. The interview was progressing nicely.
I already knew Peter, a twenty-five-year-old labourer, and he was always easy to speak to. He liked talking and loves live music – an ideal participant. I felt it was going well, I was relaxed and we were approaching its conclusion. I wanted to ask
Peter about his emotional and affective experiences of live music events, a tricky, but important question. I decided to mention a recent male participant’s response to the same question, thinking Peter might feel more comfortable discussing emotional experiences this way.
He started his response by making a joke and laughing it off and then the shift in
Peter was palpable, not just in the tone of his voice, which became focused and held a different form of emotion, but also in his posture and his eye contact, which seemed to intensify. He spoke about a specific night, a couple of years ago, a particular show, featuring his favourite band. I had heard him talk about this band before. He always gushed with enthusiasm when speaking of their live performances. He spoke about the location of the show, Jindabyne, his favourite place, with the same enthusiasm. And then he mentioned a girl. I knew immediately it was an ex-girlfriend. I felt a tension, an unease, rise in my chest. It had been a bad break-up for him and, in a relatively small community, such things often become public knowledge. I felt a pang of pity for
Peter. Uncomfortably I scrambled for something to say and asked a feeble follow-up
240 question. As I watched him speak, I saw tears well in his eyes. A pain grabbed the back of my throat, as if the muscles constricted. My pulse quickened. Seeing other people teary often sends me into a mirrored state. Seeing a male I knew tear up over an ex-girlfriend amplified the effect. That it was happening mid-interview in a pub, surrounded by locals, including his current girlfriend, created an inescapable feeling of sadness, mixed with immense discomfort. I looked down at my page of notes. In a mild form of panic I quickly skipped over all follow-up questions I had about intense emotional experiences and scanned for the next question. I focused hard on my delivery, determined not to show my discomfort, determined to show that I didn’t notice his tears. I focused on my voice and, keeping it level, tried to reclaim my relaxed disposition. Peter kept his head down as he pondered my completely unrelated next question. When he answered the tears were gone; his voice relaxed and we fell back into a more regular rhythm. ‘Crisis averted!’ I thought.
As I sat in my apartment the next day transcribing the interview, I became overwhelmed with annoyance. My cheeks burned with my irritation. I was annoyed and frustrated that I didn’t ask more questions, or acknowledge his tears and the emotional nature of his response. Why did I panic and change the subject as quickly as possible?
Developed from notes produced during Peter’s Interview, December 2013
241 Introduction
At live music events, affects constantly move through the space, flowing, sticking, transferring, circulating and permeating bodies and environment. The embodied experience of liveness is known and felt through the movement of affect, amongst other things. The embodied experience of an interview is also produced through the movement of affect. This movement of affect happens between and around the interviewer, interviewee and all that fills the space directing and permeating the intra- action. The movement of the conversation, whether fluid, linear, circular or halting and stuttering, can bring on confidence, calm, frustration or stress. Participants, as well as researchers, are moved by what is said or not said, tones of voice, bodily postures or gestures, facial expressions, technological failures or interruptions, weather conditions, time restraints and so on. Bodies move and are moved, from the depths to the surface and beyond, and those movements constitute, shape and direct the interview as an entangled intra-action.
Examining the affective flows, as well as the movement of emotions, ideas and memories in interviews, can enrich the co-produced data, and extend and expand the meaning of liveness and research as an embodied practice. An attunement to these movements is central to the research process. In this chapter, I examine and explore the movement that occurred through my interviews with Peter, Lewis and Abby.
Movement during these interviews is considered in terms of the affective and atmospheric shifts that unfolded, the experience of being emotionally moved and movement toward or away from certain topics. Such movements intra-actively produce or enable the interview as a co-constituted emergence.
242 This focus on intra-active movement opens up an understanding of the interview beyond the transcript. Interviews are complex embodied experiences through which various feelings, forces and things entwine. Transcripts are ultimately inadequate in any attempt to explore this complexity. Examining affective movements during interviews shifts the researcher’s focus, or disperses that focus. What the researcher or participant said does not lose importance. Rather, the embodied experience of the interview takes on equal importance. Barad’s (2007) work on entanglement, intra- action and in particular her discussion of diffraction – as both a concept and methodological tool – draws attention toward moments of movement, difference, interaction and tension. I consider such moments in this chapter in terms of the physical, the emotional and the affective. Attending to affective movements that occur during interviews opens us up to the liveliness of the world.
I begin this chapter by outlining how everyday spaces are intra-actively transformed through the interview into what Watkins (2011, p.138) describes as, ‘affectively charged sites.’ Through her work, which considers the affective geography of classrooms and the tears of teachers during interviews, Watkins (2011) examines tears as a felt intensity, rather than simply a display of emotion. By considering Peter’s tears in relation to Watkins’ (2011, p.138) concept of an ‘affectively charged site’, I will explore the movement of emotion and affect within the interview, as well as my engagement with that movement. Moreover, utilising Barad’s (2007) discussion of memory as an intra-active enlivening, I will argue that, through interviews, memories entangle and emerge, not simply as retellings of the past but as transformative embodied experiences.
243 Discussing lived experiences in the interview enlivens these memories and engages with these memories in new and different ways. Peter’s interview demonstrates the importance of being alive to the world. This notion, as discussed by Ingold (2011a) and introduced in the previous chapter, requires an active attunement to, and a heightened awareness of, the dynamism that imbues one’s entangled being. I develop this idea by examining Lewis’s discussion of his tears during a live music event and the way his discussion of those tears unfolded through the interview. Using Barad’s
(2007) concept of diffraction draws attention to the movements, shifts, intricacies and subtleties that shaped the material produced through Lewis’s interview, and the continually shifting affectivity of the experience.
Finally, to explore this idea, I consider the importance of examining and interrogating the interview as a whole, not just as a transcript or excerpts from a transcript, but as an embodied experience. Within the affectively charged site of an interview, affective atmospheres can develop, shift and intensify. To follow the movement of affect and shifting affective atmospheres during Abby’s interview produces an understanding of her discussion that entangles my felt experiences of interviewing and writing. To discuss the affective movements that occurred in Abby’s interview, I will focus on particular moments, or sections of time, segments of experience that contributed to shifts, or as importantly, contributed to the emphasis on or accentuation of certain memories and feelings. Doing so demonstrates Abby’s emotional investment in her experiences of live music, my embodied experience of the interview, and the ways in which those factors moved, directed and shaped the interview.
244 Enlivening the interview
Capturing the emotional and affective experiences of live music spaces was one of my goals in interviewing, but when confronted with a raw, though brief, show of emotion during Peter’s interview, I purposefully moved the interview back to more mundane territory. Peter’s tears demonstrated an intensely felt and remembered entanglement, but also produced a brief, though intense, embodied reaction for me. This triggered a swift and rather obvious movement away from the emotive topic. I cannot focus on why this participant became teary. As demonstrated through my description above, I did not provide the space within the interview for Peter to discuss his emotional display. I can, however, explore the effect these tears and my own discomfort had on the intra-action of the interview.
As acknowledged in Chapter 2, there is a common assertion that we live in an
‘interview society’ (Silverman 2006, p.202); however, for most individuals the interview space is not one they inhabit in everyday life. In fact, for most, interviews in a broader sense are usually associated with emotionally and affectively charged events and contexts (for example job or police interviews). During interviews, common, routine and comfortable spaces transform and change as shifting affects imbue the space. The interview is filled with the human and nonhuman, including, though not limited to, the existing relationship – or lack of one – between participant and researcher, the expectations of both, nervousness, excitement, interest or anxiety, distraction, time pressures, laughter, tears, memories both positive and negative, words, silences, misunderstandings and pauses, notepads, clipboards, pens and recording devices. These feelings, forces and things are thrust into a temporarily entangled state that is an interview. Through the intra-action of the interview, the
245 mundane settings within which I conducted my interviews, such as study rooms, libraries, parks and pubs, were for a moment transformed.
In her discussion of teachers’ tears, Watkins (2011, p.138) describes classrooms as
‘affectively charged sites.’ Watkins (2011) explores how the specificities of certain sites can trigger particular feelings and intensities, and how social relations are mediated within these spaces. Watkins (2011, p.138) argues that the classroom, as an affectively charged site, is a porous space characterised by ‘shifting bodies, both animate and inanimate, where various relationships are formed, in particular between teacher and student.’ Within these spaces, ‘a topography of interaffectivity and circulating desires’ is interwoven with complex power relations. Watkins (2011, p.138) explains that this affective charge is intensified in classrooms for younger students, due to the ‘interiority, closeness and protracted nature of bodily interaction that occurs there and the personal attachment each of its occupants feels for these spaces.’
I would suggest that interview spaces, through the unfolding intra-action of the interview, become affectively charged. The interview spaces I used for my research differed greatly from that of the classrooms discussed by Watkins. Apart from the obvious physical differences, my participants and I did not have the same familiarity and emotional connection to the sites in which I conducted interviews. The spaces I used for interviews were not spaces participants or I inhabited through everyday life and they were somewhat neutral, not ‘belonging’ or personalised by researcher or participant, the way classrooms are by teachers and students. However, within these spaces a varied, though still significant, affective charge was produced. Whereas
246 classrooms become part of an everyday environment for students and teachers, an interview is generally a fleeting, unusual or atypical experience. In terms of the interviews I conducted, individuals, often strangers, met with me just once, for an hour, to discuss memories, experiences and emotions. The generally secluded or private nature of the interview space, the proximity of bodies, the brevity of the experience, the subject matter discussed and the recording device all entangled with other feelings, forces and things to produce the interview space as an affectively charged site.
Although all of the interviews I conducted were held in everyday spaces, the site and the relationship that unfolds within that site were transformed through the specificities of the interview. Drawing from the work of Watkins (2011), I interpret an affective charge to describe the particular affectivity of a site or environment. In my understanding an affective charge is similar to an affective atmosphere, but different in some key ways. Affective atmospheres flow through life, sticking to things here and there, forming, intensifying and deteriorating, entangling bodies and things, emerging from and exceeding that entanglement, at times forcefully felt and at times unnoticed. An affective ‘charge’ implies a more intense and concentrated form of energy. Drawing from the work of Watkins (2011) I understand sites that are affectively charged as having a heightened or more intense affectivity that both allows for and triggers experiences of heightened emotion.
Whereas I understand affective atmospheres to be amorphous, indefinite and continually present: forming, diminishing and reforming, I understand an affective charge to be highly specific and situated in the particular engagements between
247 bodies, environment, thoughts, feelings and things. Importantly, I would suggest that an affective charge can occur at odds with an affective atmosphere. For example, at a live music event the overall atmosphere could be one of liveliness and excitement, though in a section of the crowd, when some attendees engage in undesirable behaviours, such as being rude or aggressive toward others, a particular affective charge, one of hostility and tension, is produced. The overall atmosphere of the event does not shift and can still be felt, but within that particular space in the crowd, bodies, things and environment are bound to an intense charge of affect.
An affective charge is intertwined with the affective atmosphere in that it always operates in relation to it; however, it can produce a very different embodied engagement. As interview spaces become affectively charged sites, the affective charge of each interview will of course, differ and constantly shift through the interview, as will the way in which it is embodied. For Peter, the specificities of the interview and his recounting of a specific and significant memory combined with the affectively charged intra-action to produce tears. As the engagement between Peter and me unfolded in relation to all the other things and forces that filled the space a specific and intense affective charge momentarily shifted the emotionality of both
Peter and myself, though in different ways. While Peter seemed nostalgic and sad, I became panicked and uncomfortable.
Interestingly, this moment occurred directly after I mentioned another male participant’s discussion of crying and at about forty-nine minutes into the interview.
At that point in the interview we were talking about Peter’s experiences seeing his favourite bands live, when I said, ‘I had a guy who said he teared up during a
248 performance, have you ever had a really intense emotional reaction to a performance?’ Peter paused for a moment, looked at me deadpan, said ‘Umm at
Britney Spears’, then laughed briefly and thought a little more before going on to say:
no, no, no, no probably when one of my favourite bands played one of my
favourite songs um, it was a pretty good moment, probably one of the best
moments I’ve had in my life thus far. [Slight pause] I was in Jindabyne, which
I fucking love! Maddest place ever! Seeing my favourite band, Frenzal
Rhomb, with my favourite girl in the whole world and they were playing my
favourite song ever.
Peter’s eyes were bright as he described the memory and the smile he started his response with gradually faded. He bowed his head downward as he finished speaking.
The only follow-up I could manage, as I battled my discomfort was, ‘so do you think it was a combination of everything?’ Peter raised his head again as he agreed, ‘Yeah it was definitely a combination of everything’, with tears in his eyes. I scrambled to move past this moment and onto something completely unrelated, I asked, ‘And do you usually drink alcohol at live music events?’ Peter simply replied ‘Ummm’ and kept his head down undoubtedly caught off guard by the abrupt change in topic. I prompted him with a more specific question about his alcohol consumption and as he raised his head and responded the interview fell back into something similar to its previous rhythm and feel.
Watkins (2011, p.142) explains tears are embodied intensities that emerge from the
‘intersection of bodies and space, through which we come to be.’ Watkins differentiates between emotion and affect to argue that tears are perhaps not, or not always, a sign of emotion. According to Watkins (2011), emotion and affect are
249 always entwined, with emotion being a product of affect. Emotion is produced through embodied engagements with the world, but form through ‘affective transactions.’ Watkins quotes Massumi (1996, cited by Watkins 2011, p.142), to argue that emotion and affect ‘follow different logics and pertain to different orders.’
As Watkins (2011) explains, this assertion equates emotion with the mind and affect with the body, though does not represent a dualistic relationship. She writes, ‘an embodied notion of mind does not collapse the two, but maintains an analytic distinction’ (Watkins 2011, p.142). Body and mind, emotion and affect, are always entwined and co-constituted through the ongoing entanglement between body and environment.
Watkins (2011) understood her participants’ emotional investment and interest in that which was being discussed during interviews, as central in the affective production of tears. Peter’s investment in his memory is obvious, however, my investment in that moment shifted and these shifts created an uncomfortable embodied experience. In the moment of Peter’s tears my investment in my thesis and the generation of relevant and significant material diminished and instead I became overwhelmed by the proximal and emotional body of this participant. The physical engagement of interviews creates a particular spatiality that contributes to the affective charge of the site. That I already knew Peter, and knew the ex-girlfriend he spoke of undoubtedly contributed to my discomfort; however, Watkins (2011) suggests that affects become amplified through the proximity of bodies in a confined space. Although Peter’s interview took place in a pub, the act of interviewing, which clearly separated Peter and I from the other patrons, created the feeling of a bounded space. Moreover the background noise of the pub forced a closer physical engagement as our words
250 constantly contended with the chinking of glasses, the rumble of different conversations and the pub’s constant music. Affects are ‘relationally derived’ and in interviews what is being said, how it is said and where it is said all contribute to the meaning and experience that is produced.
Through the practice of interviewing, participants can actively engage in, and contribute to, the formation and amplification of affect as they recount experiences of significance and meaning (Watkins 2011, p.142) Peter’s tears demonstrate the significance of this memory. According to Watkins (2011, p.140), tears can be triggered for participants as they ‘relive’ certain experiences through discussion, and the affects from those experiences move beyond the past into the present. She says:
they relive these experiences in the telling of their tales. These affects don’t
simply dissipate. They are embodied and move beyond the spaces in which
they were first generated and, as constitutive of subjectivity, affect all those
with whom these bodies, in turn, interact (Watkins 2011, p.140).
Peter’s memory triggers emotion, which enters and becomes entangled with the intra- action, shifting and intensifying the affective charge. Peter’s tears involve more than just a reliving of an emotional memory. Remembering is an active and entangled pursuit. Barad (2007, p.ix) suggests that ‘memory does not reside in the folds of the individual brain’; it ‘is not a replay of a string of moments, but an enlivening and a reconfiguring of past and future that is larger than any individual’ (Barad 2007, p.ix).
Following this idea, I understand memory, not as representing a fixed past that can be recalled, shared, erased or recorded and not as simply belonging to an individual.
Rather, memories involve the dynamic enfolding of space, time, matter, thoughts, feelings and experiences. As we remember, we enliven past, present and future
251 entanglements. Remembering involves intra-action. Peter’s tears were not simply triggered by the memory, but the enlivening of that memory within the entangled intra-action of the interview and all that it involved. I became entangled with this memory and this memory became entangled with me. Within and through the affectively charged site of the interview, memories are enlivened and the emotions and affects of that moment press upon those memories creating new and different embodied experiences.
In the affectively charged site of the interview, the enlivening of a memory moved both Peter and me. My embodied engagement with this enlivening of a felt entanglement, and the affective shift it triggered, brought on forceful feelings of discomfort and unease and, as a result, I purposefully moved the interview in a different direction. I tried to restore the previous and more mundane affectivity of the space, or neutralize the affective charge of the moment. Such movements profoundly affect and shape the co-production of data within the interview. Recognising and exploring these movements and moments of tension within an interview are essential to considering interviews as an entangled process.
Being alive to the entanglements of crying
Ingold’s (2011a) notion of being alive to the world, as discussed in Chapter 5, involves an attunement, a heightened awareness and responsiveness to the dynamism of one’s environment. Peter’s interview demonstrates that, as researchers, we must embody Ingold’s (2006) notion of being alive to the world within the interview space.
The interview, like all other environments we inhabit and are entangled with, is a site, an encounter that is always in flux. The researcher needs to be alive to the world and
252 requires what Ingold (2006, p.9) describes as ‘a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action.’ Within the intra-action of the interview and then again in the intra-action involved in writing up, this heightened sensitivity and responsiveness must be applied not only to the movements, words and emotional displays of the participant but also to one’s own embodied experience and how that influences, presses upon and moves the various intra-actions. In Lewis’s interview, and in particular in his discussion of being moved to tears at a live music event, a series of entangling tensions emerged. Exploring these tensions in relation to movement through the interview demonstrates the significance of liveness to Lewis and the importance for researchers of being alive to the world.
I met the twenty-year-old Lewis on the train home from Splendour in the Grass. He was eager to participate in an interview and we met on a sunny, though chilly day at
Manly Beach. I felt the interview was progressing well and a good rapport had been established between us. Around forty minutes into the interview, I asked Lewis what I considered to be one of my most important questions: whether he had any particularly vivid memories of being in a crowd, either positive or negative. He took a short moment to think then responded,
Particularly positive, I mean Laura Marling at um Splendour this year was
like, probably I’d say like the best live act I’ve ever, ever seen, like she was, I
dunno, I was really tired at this stage of the day, like it was like eleven
o’clock, and it was like a really small crowd because everyone was off seeing
Of Monsters and Men and I dunno, it was just such a gnarly gig. I felt really,
really, really good at that gig.
253 Lewis then moved on to speak more generally about the positive feeling of being in a mosh and the negative experience of losing his wallet at a festival.
After a couple of minutes, I asked Lewis about his best experiences in a crowd and prompted him about his recent experience at Splendour. He simply responded, ‘Yeah
Laura Marling yeah’, but stopped after this acknowledgment. I enquired, ‘were there any others?’, and he looked toward the ocean seeming deep in thought as he said,
‘um’. I waited for his response, but when nothing came I felt the weight of the empty space and an awkwardness trickling in. Seconds seemed to expand and drag, so I asked, ‘Did you want to say anything else about that one?’ Lewis again sat in silence, seeming lost in thought or unable to give words to those thoughts. Again I prompted,
‘Was the crowd particularly good for that, or was it just her performance?’ Lewis replied, ‘Yeah it was pretty much just her performance, um it was just an unbelievable performance um, let’s see, who else…’. He then moved quickly onto a discussion of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
A couple of minutes later, Lewis again returned to the Laura Marling experience after a question relating to the affect fandom has on experiences of live music, saying,
It is a better experience if I am already, like I dunno, that whole thing with
Laura Marling her music has always been pretty important to me, like I’ve
always really, really liked her and that was the first time I’ve seen her live, um
so that was for me, like, that made the festival based on that fact sort of thing.
Again the conversation veered away from this experience. However, toward the end of the interview, when I asked Lewis how important live music was to him, he returned to his memory of seeing Laura Marling and gave a more detailed description
254 of the event. The following excerpt from the interview is somewhat lengthy, but I believe significant to demonstrate the way in which Lewis’s response gradually unfolded and developed in relation to my reactions and questions and in terms of the intra-action:
Me: And how important is live music to your relationship with music?
Lewis: I would say it is pretty important, um it’s just, it’s a whole, another
level of experience, another level of focus. Um and I dunno it’s always fun
like and it’s different, [slight pause] it’s a different atmosphere, a different
environment, it’s not the same, although all the lyrics and the chords and
everything, they’re all the same, there’s a different level they put into live acts
you know.
Me: Someone described it in one of the other interviews as having more of an
emotional connection when you’re there
Lewis: Yeah.
Me: Would you agree with that?
Lewis: I’d definitely agree with that you know, that’s part of the reason I
liked, I keep going back to it but the Laura Marling act at the end was just like
I dunno like, I don’t want, I don’t want to seem like a pussy or anything, like I
cried in the last, like in the middle of it, because I swear, I swear she looked at
me, I was in like the third row, people are like that’s bullshit but I swear she
looked at me [laughs].
Me: Na I believe it, and why do you think you cried, were you just, [slight
pause] overwhelmed?
Lewis: Ah yeah I was pretty overwhelmed at it.
Me: [After a pause] Were you like, caught up in the moment?
255 Lewis: Exactly! You know you’re right in the middle of it. I had a really busy
day up until that point you know, that was...
Me: Which day was it?
Lewis: That was the last day, the very last day, when all the big acts were sort
of playing. Um, and I guess, I dunno I was pretty tired at that stage, um but
yeah like it felt really, really good, just really good. Like it’s a whole different
experience, when you’re sitting at home. Because like I do sit at home and just
listen to it, because it’s pretty quiet music, so I dunno you don’t really focus
on it, you don’t have the same, I mean I don’t cry every time I listen to Laura
Marling, you know what I mean [laughs].
Me: And do you think also because you were by yourself?
Lewis: Yeah, yeah.
Me: You maybe had more freedom to have that reaction?
Lewis: Yeah exactly, yeah exactly! I mean I probably wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t
be telling that to anyone [laughs] I haven’t told anyone about that you know
what I mean. So um yeah it’s, it’s [short pause]. You don’t really talk about
your emotional experiences with your friends, but you do have them, you
absolutely have them.
As discussed through Chapter 2, diffraction involves attending to the movement of energies and forces within an intra-action. A diffractive approach draws attention to the ways the discussion unfolded, developed and was co-produced through an entangled intra-action that involved the experience of crying at a live music event, the affective atmosphere of the interview and the shifting affective charge of the space.
Of course, all the feelings, thoughts, forces and things that contributed to Lewis’s
256 experience of crying during Laura Marling’s performance cannot be covered here.
However, from Lewis’s discussion of his embodied experience, a number of factors seem relevant. The performance was at the end of the last day of a three-day festival, and Lewis was physically and emotionally exhausted. He attended the festival alone, providing a level of anonymity, but was constantly surrounded by shifting, moving crowds of unknown others. Lewis felt a connection to those crowds, saying that, at
Splendour, ‘everyone has the same mentality, we’re just [t]here to have fun and listen to music’. This particular crowd was relatively small, as a headliner played on a bigger stage at the same time. It was the first time Lewis had seen this artist perform live and her music was already important to him. He was positioned near the front of the crowd, in close proximity to the performer, and experienced a felt connection through eye contact. Lewis’s face was mostly covered by darkness. Laura Marling’s music is quiet and live music spaces afford Lewis ‘another level of focus’, unobtainable when listening to recorded music in everyday life. He is attuned to the
‘different atmosphere’ and ‘different environment’ of live music spaces, and he is aware and attentive to his ‘emotional experiences’, even though he doesn’t usually talk about them. Each of these details, the emotional, the bodily, the affective, the atmospheric and the musical, intricately entangled to create, trigger or contribute to
Lewis’s emotional and affective engagement.
Lewis’s tears provide an example of this participant being alive to the world. The specific circumstances of that moment allowed for a deep emotional engagement, not just with the music or the performer, but also with that particular and specific moment. Lewis acknowledges that, in a different context, he does not tear up at the same music. Live music spaces draw attention to what Ingold (2006, p.10) describes
257 as the ‘dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations’. The fleeting nature of live music environments brings on, or contributes to, a heightened sensitivity to the constantly shifting aliveness of that environment and our entanglement within it.
Lewis spoke about Laura Marling’s live performance four times through his interview, but only mentioned crying in the last instance. When he first spoke about this experience, Lewis was fairly brief, though even at that point he acknowledged the deep and embodied impact the performance had on him, through repetition and his changing tone of voice. However, even in his first mention of Laura Marling, I felt a certain tension in his words. I interpreted Lewis’s repetition, coupled with his use of the words, ‘I dunno’, as emphasizing his point and the inadequacy of the word ‘good’, as well as demonstrating that he was still thinking about the experience, felt uncertain about that experience and how to talk about it. As the interview continued, a hint of frustration seemed discernible in his tone of voice as he struggled to make his words fit with his experience. As he continually tried to explain the feeling he had during the performance, a series of tensions emerged.
Lewis was articulate and talkative. Unlike some other interviews that are permeated by silence (sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes not) and other participants that require a constant prompting or re-wording of questions, Lewis’s responses were quick and generally detailed or lengthy. He had a level of comfort within the interview space that is not always reached by participants. The pattern of quick and comfortable responses drew attention to those moments of difference, in which that pattern was disrupted, and highlights their significance. Lewis paused for a significant
258 time and remained silent after a question only once during the hour-long interview and that was when I asked about Laura Marling. This pause created a tension that could have been triggered by a number of conflicting feelings: a desire to express something and an inability to do so, or an inability to do so adequately; a hesitation to share what was a private moment of intense emotional engagement; an embarrassment or discomfort at his tears and discussing them; or, a combination of all these things.
Lewis embodied these tensions, not only in the words he spoke, but also in his repetitions, hesitations, pauses and silence, and these were palpable during the interview. Furthermore, these tensions were embodied by me and demonstrated through my guiding interventions as I tried to move the conversation toward Lewis’s experience of Laura Marling and prompt him into a deeper discussion of that experience. Lewis’s discussion of his crying functioned to alleviate some of that tension by demonstrating the deep, felt significance of his experience. Discussion of his crying during the performance acted to emphasise his point; talk of his tears provided physical proof of his deep emotional engagement, something tangible and understandable. Yet, within that discussion of tears, new tensions arose in relation to gendered performance and a discomfort arising from discussing emotional experiences.
Lewis prefaced his admission of crying with the words, ‘I don’t want to seem like a pussy or anything’. He was aware of the expectations that produce and constitute the performance of dominant forms of masculinity and how his tears have transgressed them. As Watkins (2011, p.141) suggests, the affective response of crying, possessed
259 by all infants, ‘over time is weakened through social conditioning to the point where few adult males cry in public’. However, more than this, the sentence through which he first mentions crying, with all its uncertainty, doubt, repetition and shifting direction, demonstrates Lewis’s discomfort at discussing the topic.
As I tried to encourage Lewis’s discussion of crying, his discomfort permeated the space and shaped the intra-action. What should have been follow-up questions from me were more like suggested excuses. Unintentionally, I was explaining his tears for him as I waded through my own discomfort, and tried to minimise any awkwardness for the participant. I suggested that he was perhaps overwhelmed, caught up in the moment, and felt freer on his own, all of which he agreed with. This is not to dismiss
Lewis’s responses or claim he did not actually feel those things, but instead to recognise the specific influence I had on this section of the interview and the experience of discomfort as a shared affective response. The shifting affective atmosphere and the emotionality of researcher and participant combine to shape and direct the interview and the material produced. Recognising and exploring how both participant and researcher intervene in, shift, intensify or neutralise particular experiences of affect is crucial in understanding the interview as an unfolding, co- produced intra-action, which exceeds the words that are spoken. This example from
Lewis’s interview demonstrates the importance of researchers actively interrogating their embodied experience of the interview as an entangled intra-action.
Rather than allowing Lewis and myself to sit with this shared discomfort and explore it, I moved the discussion back toward comfortable ground. This movement was not as swift or obvious as my manoeuvre during Peter’s interview. Informed by my past
260 frustration, I did not simply race toward an unrelated topic. I wanted to know more about Lewis’s experience and had a genuine interest, but again allowed my discomfort to direct the intra-action. Such movements must be acknowledged and interrogated to actively maintain and continually produce and re-produce the integrity of that entanglement between researcher and participant. The interview as a whole is a co-production, an intra-action; meaning and knowledge emerge through an ‘entangled inter-relating’ (Barad 2007, p.ix). As explained through Chapter 1, in Barad’s (2007) discussion of intra-action, agency is spread and diffused between the human and nonhuman. However, this diffusion is not always equal or ideal; rather, agency bunches, compresses and intensifies in certain moments, sticks to certain words, feelings, and things.
Barad (2007, p.ix) suggests that all intra-actions involve ‘entanglements and responsibilities of which one is a part’. Here I interpret Barad’s (2007, p.x) words to mean that, as active and informed entities within our own research projects, we must continually strive to not only be ‘open and alive to each meeting’, but also to provide spaces both in the field, and in our intra-active writing, in which participants can actively contribute to and share that entanglement. Through the process of writing, the moments of tension and affective movements can be acknowledged and explored, rather than smoothed over or dismissed.
Unexpected movements
Abby’s interview provides another example of the significance of movement and the importance of being attentive to movements, not only during interviews but also through the process of writing up. Abby’s interview was the fifth I had conducted and
261 it took place in a group study room in a Western Sydney University campus library.
Abby was also a WSU student at the time, so we were both on familiar ground. As with all interviews, I had arrived early to pick my position and arrange the room. For all indoor interviews, I positioned the seats and myself so the participant would know exactly where to sit as soon as they entered and would not have an awkward moment of hesitation when they walked in. I moved the chairs apart or together to create a comfortable distance. I altered the lighting, opening or closing blinds when possible.
For Abby’s interview I felt immediately comfortable in the space. The room was brightly lit and had glass walls; the air felt fresh and light, not stale and thick as it often does in dimly lit and enclosed rooms. We were in the middle of the library in a visually open, yet acoustically enclosed and private space. I always felt nervous, a bubbling in my stomach, as I waited for participants to arrive. In the first moments of the interview my nerves usually dissipated, but in the case of awkward or standoffish participants, they tended to settle but stay bubbling slightly in my stomach.
Interviewing Abby felt easy. At the time of her interview she was twenty years old, enthusiastic, bright eyed and thoughtful; she spoke loudly, clearly and quickly when confident of her answers, slowing down and clarifying details of the question when unsure. She often lent forward in her chair, relaxing on the table between us, and moved her hands and arms to emphasise a point or demonstrate shape, size and space.
I had adopted a somewhat standard posture or bodily position for interviews in WSU rooms. I sat back in my chair, trying to look relaxed but mostly wanting to subtly shield my notes from the participant’s view. I did not want them getting distracted or sidetracked by what I was writing or what the next question might be. As mentioned through Chapter 2, in my notes I recorded anything that I observed that would not be
262 picked up through the recording, but could be significant, such as facial expressions, hand gestures, movements, distractions, as well as any words or phrases that were mumbled by the participant or that stood out to me in the participant’s response. I tried hard to maintain eye contact, nod often, smile or laugh at any jokes, and make only quick notes. I made an effort to talk more slowly and loudly than usual, adding ums and ahs to my questions, aware that my habit of speaking too quickly and too quietly could create a nervous energy in the room or lead to mishearing and miscommunications.
Abby spoke about her attendance at small local gigs, as well as larger concerts and festivals. She had a dedication to attending these live music events, even when doing so was not fiscally prudent. She had previously played guitar and sung in high school bands, and listened to music everyday: a mix of “old stuff” from the nineties and early two thousands, newer artists on the radio, and emerging artists on Soundcloud and social media, giving feedback and suggestions to these young musicians. Abby also recorded video at live music events and, after the event, reviewed and edited the recording to create videos she would share online and with friends she attended the event with.
When we started the interview, Abby’s passion and enthusiasm for music, live music, and speaking about her experiences, were obvious through her answers, and also her upbeat energy. However, by the time I asked one of my final questions, ‘how important is live music to your relationship with music?’ she said:
I don’t think it’s that important, I mean like it’s good because you know, like
seeing Blink 182 was good for nostalgic reasons, you know you have to go see
263 them because you used to listen to them when you were a kid and like the
Offspring, so it’s good to revisit um yourself, from like back then and then it
reminds you to download all these songs.
The first part of Abby’s response, ‘I don’t think it’s that important’, landed like a kick in the guts. My attention, which had been sitting with the ecstatic body and projected toward Abby, her responses, and my thesis argument, oscillated swiftly back toward my body from the depths to the surface. I felt a heat rise in my cheeks as my stomach tightened. I focused on keeping my face neutral. I was disappointed, frustrated and felt something close to, but not quite, embarrassment. My whole thesis had stemmed from my belief that live music is important, very important, and now a participant had said the opposite. I had only half concentrated on the rest of her answer, which at the time seemed to reduce live music to an exercise that helped expand her playlist.
My thoughts were jammed from her unexpected response and my very bodily reaction to it. In that moment I wanted to move on, move past her response. After the interview, as I thanked Abby for her participation, she asked if her responses had been good and if she had answered the questions right. I assured her she had, but, still focused on the final moments of the interview, I left feeling discouraged. However, the process of transcribing, listening and re-listening to the sound recording from the interview triggered memories of the embodied experience and I began to think about everything else, everything that led up to Abby’s response toward the end of the interview and her question to me after the interview.
Abby’s statement about live music – ‘I don’t think it’s that important’ – did not occur in isolation. Rather, it occurred after fifty-five minutes of discussion about Abby’s
264 experiences at live music events. These fifty-five minutes of lived experience in the interview involved the enlivening, compressing and entangling of memories with
Abby’s feelings on that day, in that moment. That moment is structured and unfolds within an affectively charged space, shared with me and produced through our intra- action. To separate out a section of a single response in Abby’s transcript, and simply state that live music is insignificant to this participant, misrepresents and oversimplifies Abby’s active contribution to the project and my embodied experience of her interview. The interview is also reduced to the transcript and the complexity, richness and thickness of the interview, as an embodied research method, are lost.
Abby’s response was produced through several entangled factors, including her previous discussion, particularly the remembering and enlivening of negative experiences; the way she talked about these experiences; the structure of the interview schedule; repetition, and elaboration of certain memories; my reactions to her discussion; and how the emotion and affective atmosphere of the interview changed.
In the affectively charged site of the interview, the unfolding intra-action involving
Abby and me shifted the affective atmosphere. Here, I understand the experience as a shift in atmosphere rather than an affective charge as the feeling was vague and indefinite, not a specific moment of intensity, as in Peter’s interview, but a growing, morphing and shifting intensity. A diffractive approach to my analysis of Abby’s interview drew my attention toward these moments of shifting intensities, as well as patterns and rhythms of interaction. This approach does not simply pull attention away from the spoken content of the interview, displacing it elsewhere; instead, it spreads the focus of attention in my analysis and reveals agency as dispersed. With
265 this approach what a participant has said does not lose value; instead, all other forces, entities and entanglements within the interview take on value.
As the interview with Abby unfolded, her responses repeatedly veered toward negative memories, experiences and concerns, even early in the interview, when my expectations were for more general answers. I thought Abby’s responses were good; they were interesting and detailed, involving specific memories and emotional states.
Whereas other participants would give very general answers at the start of their interview, unattached to any particular lived experience, even early on Abby spoke in more detail. Pleased with Abby’s data-rich responses, I did not notice the pattern that had formed, through which Abby recalled negative experiences and then with my responses and follow up questions I moved the discussion back toward these memories and by doing so emphasised and accentuated them.
Early in Abby’s interview, around six minutes in, when I asked whether she attended events with others or on her own, her response turned toward her personal safety and a concern around that safety being potentially compromised if she was alone. This response in itself was not uncommon, particularly with female participants, who often discussed safety as a reason for attending live music events with others. However, within Abby’s interview, this response served as the first marker of the pattern that would emerge. When I asked why she would not attend an event by herself, Abby said,
Um I think I just, I would feel uncomfortable being on my own, mainly
because, you know, I know people who have gone on their own, um because
they’re more confident about, you know being around people who like, they
266 could trust. But I think like, it’s been in my head that you can’t really trust a
lot of people around those kind of conditions, you could get lost or someone
could steal your things or anything like that.
Abby’s words, ‘it’s been in my head’, seem to signal that this concern stems not from an actual experience or a new concern, but an embedded felt vulnerability. It also identifies the concern as her own. Rather than describing a general lack of safety at live music events, Abby contrasts other people’s confidence with her own lack of trust in others. It is an emotional state, rather than an experienced threat. She also specifies that she cannot trust ‘a lot of people’ in ‘those kind of conditions’. For Abby, live music events involve a lot of people, who, when combined with a specific set of conditions, result in a potential threat. After the above response from Abby, I asked,
‘so you always stay with the group?’ and she responded, ‘Yeah, well I try and stay with at least someone, because of that whole trust issue’, and then laughed. Abby’s laughter and use of the term ‘trust issue’, which appears often in pop psychology and mainstream media, seems to minimise or trivialize her worries.
Before starting my research I had shared Abby’s concerns; I always made a conscious effort to stay with at least one friend during live music events. Although male friends seemed more confident moving solo around these spaces, I had only one female friend who was comfortable and confident venturing into these spaces on her own. For most of my female friends and me, even trips to the bathroom and bar were a group endeavour. As I attended more live music events for my thesis, I gained a confidence and a greater level of comfort within these spaces and, although I still always travelled to and from events with others, I began to move around live music events on my own. Prior to researching my experiences of live music events, I had accepted my
267 felt vulnerability, and that of others, as normal. It was only when I started moving around these spaces on my own that I began to recognise and question my previous feelings of vulnerability.
So, at the time of Abby’s interview, her response seemed perfectly normal, even expected. Indeed, during the interview, I accepted Abby’s response without asking any further questions. However, as I looked back over Abby’s interview in the later stages of my research, I understood her early response as a marker of the moment at which feelings of vulnerability – both hers and mine – were acknowledged, entered the space and became entangled in the unfolding intra-action. This felt vulnerability, mentioned after only six minutes, is woven throughout Abby’s transcript and permeated the intra-action of the interview. Abby’s demeanour became more subdued and serious as the discussion progressed and issues of vulnerability and discomfort were emphasised and, as a result, shifted the affective atmosphere within the space.
In each interview I asked participants about their movement within live music spaces, whether they danced, moshed, crowd surfed, or participated in death circles or similar activities. Abby spoke about her participation in mosh pits, which has become ‘less than what [it] was before’, laughed at the unpleasant experience of people crowd surfing over her and having ‘people’s butts and feet in [her] face’ and mentioned ‘an unfortunate situation’, during which she was unintentionally in the centre of a ‘death wall’. During a death wall (also known as a wall of death), a section of the crowd, usually toward the front in the mosh pit, splits down the centre. Attendees all move as far as they can to the left of the stage or the right of the stage, on either side of this split. A large empty space is left in front of centre stage. At a given signal, either by
268 the band, a moment in the song, or a member of the crowd, attendees on both sides run toward the centre in a crush of frantic, flailing arms and legs.
Death walls are, according to Hartmann (2014, p.1), an infamous activity, and ‘the most bad ass and dangerous ritual you can experience in a mosh pit’. Of her experience, Abby initially said, ‘everyone ran into each other, but I was that sucker that was right there where that strip was open, so I got hit quite hard from that’. The interview soon returned to this experience, as I asked Abby if she had any particularly vivid memories at a live music event, either positive or negative. Despite Abby’s previous discussion of ‘trust issue[s]’ and feeling ‘suffocated’ in crowds, she said:
I don’t think I really have any negative experiences apart from that wall hitting
thing, that was terrifying, but I think it’s just, I don’t really have anything too
crazy that’s happened. I guess like seeing a band and having my friends dance
around and just be so happy, that’s a really good memory to have, I like to see
people happy, so if bands and you know festivals can do that to people then
that’s good.
Abby’s response here was almost completely positive, despite my question directly asking her to think about the negative. However, I moved the discussion away from her positive experiences back toward the ‘terrifying’ experience of the death wall and did not return later to follow up on those happy memories. By doing so, I unintentionally, and at the time unknowingly, emphasised Abby’s negative experiences at live music events and did not prompt or provide the space for her to discuss the positive. By purposefully shifting Abby’s focus, I intervened in the affective atmosphere of the interview and contributed to an increasingly negative feel.
269 This experience demonstrates the importance of attending to the shifting affectivity of the interview, and the embodied experience of the interview, just as we would attend to the unfolding discussion. In an interview, if the discussion veers toward an irrelevant or inappropriate topic, interviewers will commonly steer conversation in the desired direction. The affective atmosphere of an interview could be treated in the same way. This is not to suggest that negative or uncomfortable experiences of affect should be avoided, but that researchers should be aware of their own interventions and how those interventions press upon and permeate the unfolding intra-action. Of course, the affectivity of the interview may not be immediately palpable, or its palpability may not immediately register as significant. The researcher must attune to the affectivity of an interview also after the event, during analysis, and the process of writing. It must also be noted here that the experience of affect generated through an interview does not assume a static state once the interview is completed. The affective experience of the interview continues to unfold and shift in my intra-active remembering of the interview. My discussion of Abby’s interview is inevitably influenced by my experience during the interview and my experiences reading, writing, analysing and remembering that entangle together after the interview and that contributes to the ongoing emergence of affect and meaning.
Colliding bodies and patterns of movement
As I moved Abby toward the specifics of her negative experience, she went on to detail her memory of the death wall, saying:
Well I was thirteen at the time and um basically I didn’t know what was going
on because everyone just kind of split, but I didn’t hear what was happening
because I was too busy trying to find my sister, it wasn’t just me on my own, it
270 was me in a group, but the group left and so I was like trying to find them and
then I noticed there was this big space. And as I went closer and closer to it I
started listening and he was saying ‘ok on the count of three; one, two’ and I
remember looking and across from the stage there was a girl around, say my
age, or a little bit older and we were both just looking at each other like, she
was terrified, I didn’t know what was going on, I was confused and terrified
because I just wasn’t sure, like are we going to hit each other? Are there going
to be people hitting people? We just kind of clenched in, in that little area
while everyone was just sort of stumbling over us and around us, so we were
just kind of just like going with it but at the same time trying to seclude, or
keeping ourselves tight, trying to be like that.
As Abby said ‘keeping ourselves tight’, she pulled her arms in front of her chest, clenched her hands, bowing her head and hunching her back to demonstrate this
‘clenching in’. As she discussed her experience of being unintentionally and unwillingly at the centre of a wall of death, Abby became more serious, still speaking quickly, but with a different tone. A hint of her past fear seemed to creep into her voice, as long sentences spilt forward into the space before she drew a breath.
The way Abby discussed her memory moved and shifted with each remembering, as did her emotionality. At first, she simply described an ‘unfortunate situation’ and herself as ‘the sucker that was right there’. Use of the word ‘unfortunate’ seemed to describe an unlucky, though ultimately inconsequential experience, something trivial.
By describing herself as a ‘sucker’, Abby indicated that she believed her own lack of experience led to the incident, and again trivialized or minimized that experience. In the first discussion of the death wall memory, Abby moved on quickly without giving
271 any detail and the conversation took a different direction. When asked about positive or negative memories of being in a crowd, Abby brought up the death wall again only briefly, but described it in that instance as terrifying. Her use of the highly emotive word ‘terrifying’ drew my attention toward that particular memory and sparked an interest. This type of highly emotive experience and memory was exactly what I had been hoping for in interviews. However, for Abby, recounting and revisiting her memories of the terrifying experience produced a negative emotionality, which functioned to shift the affective atmosphere of the interview.
Contrasting Abby’s discussion of the death wall – and considering her emotionality as part of that discussion – with discussion by other participants of incidences of injury and even assault, as well as my own experiences, draws attention to and emphasizes the particular emotionality of her recounting. Ada and Lewis each discussed incident and injury; however, their displays of emotion and the affective atmosphere of the interviews remained light and upbeat. Ada spoke about her injuries in mosh pits, some purposively caused by other attendees as well as her own mishaps. She said:
A guy wanted to get in front of me at one gig and he bit me on the shoulder in
order to do so… I’ve been punched in the face at a festival because I was
standing behind a D barrier and the guy wanted to get in front … I’ve hurt
myself or slipped over or done something where I’m in pain and it hinders the
rest of my experience.
In spite of my looks of shock, disgust and mutterings of ‘ew’, Ada spoke about these experiences with the same energy as the rest of her interview. She seemed unperturbed by what, to me, seemed traumatic. When I asked further about these memories, she said, ‘at first of course it’s shock and then I just, the punch was a bit
272 scary because I didn’t know what else was going to happen’. For a moment, Ada identifies a fear and felt vulnerability, brought on by the uncontrollable bodies of others around her. However, as she continued to speak, she laughed at her experiences and exclaimed that such incidences are ‘very rare!’. Whereas these incidences were described by Ada as a ‘bit scary’, Abby remembered the death wall as ‘terrifying’.
Lewis spoke about participating in a death circle when he was seventeen. He laughed as he described the experience as ‘pretty bad’ and pointed out a scar on his forehead: a permanent marker of the incident. He said:
I actually got like a cut, I dunno if you can see it, but just there, it’s pretty
small, but it was bleeding really heavily at the time…I clashed heads with
some guy... I stayed [in] for a little while, but then I was like nah I’ve got a
massive headache guys I’m gonna meet you outside. But that was like a one
off.
Lewis laughed again, as he said ‘it’s always fun like participating in that sort of stuff, in the heat of the moment you’re just like “yeah!” And then the next day you’re like,
“probably shouldn’t have”’. Unlike Abby and Ada who felt terrified and scared respectively and had concerns for their safety in the moment, Lewis seemed concerned merely with the physical pain from his injury and only after the event reconsidered his actions. However, like Ada, Lewis declared the incident as a rarity rather than a regular concern and laughed whilst discussing the memory. Both Ada and Lewis described these negative experiences without shifting toward a negative emotionality.
273 Furthermore, in actively remembering my own negative experiences in a crowd, I do not experience any significant emotional shift. In Chapter 4, I detailed my own experiences of being unexpectedly caught up in a crowd of thrashing bodies that were all bigger and more powerful than mine. The experience, in the moment, was overwhelming and frightening. However, as long as I am not in a tightly packed crowd, remembering and even discussing the experience does not cause me any feelings of unease or anxiety. Importantly, particularities of my experience differ significantly to that of Abby; I was separated from my friends for only a very short period, I was helped by strangers within the crowd immediately, the negative experience in the crowd was short-lived, and the incident occurred about eleven years ago. For these reasons, amongst many others, I believe that during the moments in which Abby discussed her experience of the death wall, I thought about her experience in relation to my own. As I remember my experience in an aggressive crowd, it does not carry any residual anxiety, or trigger the production of any stress, unease or discomfort for me. During the interview, I perhaps assumed that Abby’s experience was the same, and that the unpleasantness of the past experience had dissipated over time.
After the interviews, when reading back through transcripts and my accompanying notes, I realised how different Ada’s and Lewis’s discussion of injury and crowd aggression was, both to my own experience and that of Abby. Ada and Lewis each provided an alternative emotional response to a seemingly similar experience of the crowd. This alternative response drew my attention to the specificity of Abby’s discussion. Details of each interview, not present in the resulting transcript, were highly significant in shaping and directing the intra-action. In contrast to the
274 experiences discussed by Lewis and Ada, as well as my own experience, Abby’s detailed discussion of the death wall involved confusion, uncertainty, and fear. For
Abby, a moment alone in a crowd, combined with her inexperience, triggered a felt vulnerability and led to a situation in which the uncontrollable, unstoppable movement of bodies toward her was shared with another. With each remembering of the incident, Abby’s past experience became more intensely enlivened and took on new and different meanings through her interaction with me as a researcher, the entanglement of other memories, her day, the space and other factors.
As I considered and remembered Abby’s interview more deeply, through new and different lenses, I easily recalled her facial expressions, the changing tones of her voice, the laughter and then lack of laughter for sections of the interview, and how all of this combined with my actions to contribute to the feeling of the interview shifting.
When considering all of this, Abby’s response about live music as unimportant no longer seemed like a kick in the gut, but instead like the culmination of an hour recounting details in a way that enlivened them. Many of these details related to unpleasant experiences for Abby. The affective atmosphere of the intra-action shifted and, by not attending to those shifts in the moment, I accentuated or reinforced that atmosphere.
Anderson (2009) suggests that affective atmospheres emanate from assembling bodies and exert a force upon them, but also exceed them. The force exerted by affective atmospheres does not press upon each body equally. Furthermore, these atmospheres are always in flux, they are ‘perpetually forming and deforming, appearing and disappearing as bodies enter into relation with one another. They are never finished,
275 static or at rest’ (Anderson 2009, p.79). Affective atmospheres move within and through the interview, shifting and sticking here and there. They colour and condition the interview, what is said, emphasised, asked and avoided. Action and discussion are shaped in relation to the felt force of affective atmospheres. However, participant and researcher do not always feel or register affect in the same way.
Through the intra-active interview, affective atmospheres become entangled and these entanglements are felt and embodied in different ways by the bodies from which they emanate and exceed. Atmospheres occupy an ambiguous position. As discussed through Chapter 5, they are ‘real phenomena’ and press with a specific and unique
‘force from all sides’; yet on the other hand, they are not always ‘sensible phenomena’ (Anderson 2009, p.78). During Abby’s interview I felt the affective shifts, but did not attend to those shifts until later when I began considering the interview as an embodied experience. If I had approached the interviews as intra- actions and, instead of trying to steer the discussion toward “good” responses, had simply tried to encourage an enlivened remembering, a very different result would have been produced. A focus upon an enlivened remembering could encourage participants to speak about specific memories, instead of simply providing answers to pre-determined questions.
Of course anxieties and tensions would still permeate the researcher’s experience as they negotiate topics they want to cover, whilst keeping an eye on the time and their thoughts on their research questions and aims. However, the interview space would be more open for both researcher and participant to recall particularly vivid memories.
With attention focused more intensely on the unfolding discussion, the emotionality
276 of the participant and the affective atmosphere of the interview would become more easily, or more powerfully felt. The ambiguities of affect and the embodied experience of affect would remain; however, those ambiguities would be registered and could even be discussed with the participant during the interview, or in a follow- up interview.
Anderson (2009, p.78) suggests that holding onto the ambiguities that imbue the concept and embodiment of atmosphere is essential to ‘learn to attend to collective affects.’ These collective affects are not simply or always experienced through our entanglement with them, but require an embodied attentiveness and openness to that entanglement. A similar argument can be made for the affective experience or feeling between two people. Attending to affective atmospheres is not simple or straightforward, but must be learnt. By doing so, research could ‘help awaken’, enliven and open up the liveliness of the world, not just within the academic community, but also for our participants. This idea will be explored further through the conclusion of my thesis as I discuss potential directions for research as a lively and enlivening process.
Conclusion
Movement and being moved are central to any discussion of embodiment. At live music events, movement fills and constitutes the space. The embodied experience of liveness involves being attuned to this constant movement and dynamism. Moreover, research as an entangled process is characterised by movement. Through the intra- action of the interview and the enlivening of memories, a participant’s responses are
277 actively produced in situ. These responses cannot be understood as some absolute truth, or fixed opinion, but rather as the product of their entanglement at that moment.
The active, entangled remembering involved does not simply apply to the interview, but also how that interview is remembered, analysed and written about by the researcher. For the participant, the interview and this entanglement may be experienced as fleeting, done in around an hour. However, for the researcher, that interview is enlivened over and over. For months or years after the event, the material and memories of the interview are analysed, picked at, pulled apart and pieced back together. Meanings shift and change, as the researcher continually engages with the interview material, embodied memories and all other tangling and untangling matter, thoughts, feelings, and forces.
Considering research as an embodied endeavour requires one to be open to one’s surrounds and alive to the intricacies, tensions, differences and movements of an entangled experience. Transcripts should not be dismissed as inadequate or irrelevant, but instead, everything else that happened through, underneath and around those words must be considered, interrogated and explored. An embodied researcher must engage in an enlivened remembering and be aware of that engagement. This idea will be explored further through the following conclusion of my thesis.
278 Conclusion: Ongoing entanglements
The primary aim of this thesis was to examine the embodied experiences of young people at youth-oriented live music events and in doing so, to draw attention to the complex, and fundamentally embodied, nature of the experience of live music. As my research progressed, these embodied experiences emerged as fluid, complex and multifaceted, bound to a series of dynamic tensions that intricately entwine body, environment and things, both human and nonhuman. To examine and interrogate the embodied experience of liveness I focused upon the central concepts of embodiment, entanglement and liveness and through this focus came to understand these concepts as interconnected and equally important to both my theoretical framework and my understanding of the research process. Using these central concepts I expanded on existing definitions of liveness by demonstrating that it always involves dynamic embodied entanglements. With this focus, my research also extended outward, beyond the concept of liveness; by developing the concept of entanglement in this thesis, I shifted the way I think about research practices and my position in the research.
This chapter provides a summary of the thesis and demonstrates how the core concepts of embodiment, entanglement and liveness developed through my theoretical engagements, interviews with participants and experiences at youth-oriented live music events. I then address the areas in my research that I would now approach differently. At the end of this project I more fully understand the inseparability of knowing and being and realise the practical ramifications this has for the research process. The processes of interviewing and writing up, if considered from an
279 entangled and intra-active perspective, have the potential to open up and enliven research practises for both researchers and participants. In doing so, the separation between the researcher and the researched is further collapsed and diminished as the active contribution of each party is more comprehensively interrogated. Moreover, through this approach the liveliness of the research process is actively pursued and shared.
Finally, I discuss technology and the highly dynamic technological engagements of attendees, as an area relating to liveness and the experience of live music, which I believe, requires further consideration. The ways that attendees use and experience technologies and the ways that these experiences have altered through the course of my research will be considered as I suggest the rapidly changing body-technic relationship at live music events requires further, broader and more in depth consideration.
Entangling the embodied experience of liveness
At youth-oriented live music events, bodies move through and mesh with highly dynamic environments and produce hubs of transient intensities. The multiple and shifting experiences of young people at these live events allows for and triggers physical, emotional and affective experiences that are heightened and amplified by their entangling with each other and with the live environment. Using the works of
Leder (1990) and Ingold (2000; 2006; 2011a; 2011b), I developed a conceptual framework that allows for the complexity and dynamism of embodied experience and understands the senses as extending outward into the environment, and continually entangling body and environment in an unfolding engagement. Furthermore, Leder’s
280 (1990) work draws attention toward bodily capacities and sensations that exceed conventional understandings of the senses and move toward the corporeal depths. By utilising this aspect of Leder’s (1990) work, the embodied experience of liveness was demonstrated as involving the body as a whole, functioning as a synergistic system within its dynamic environment.
Indeed, both Leder and Ingold understand the body as always and already entangled with the environment. Barad’s (2007) specific focus on entanglement allowed me to clarify and expand my understanding of this concept. Barad’s (2007) concept of intra- action, which she differentiates from interaction, was central in the way that I developed my understanding of liveness as an unfolding entwinement. According to
Barad (2007), body and environment do not interact as two separate and formed entities, but intra-actively form through their mutual engagement. Body and environment are not temporarily connected; rather, body and environment are co- constituted through their unfolding intra-action.
Although Ingold (2011a) in particular, but also Leder (1990), discuss a similar idea using different terms – that the body and environment mutually emerge – it was
Barad’s (2007) work that most clearly iterated this idea in my understanding. At live music events, through the embodied experience of liveness, an unfolding intra-action occurs in ways that rupture the mundane routines of everyday life, and powerfully push aspects of one’s body and environment into one’s focus. The movement of affect between, in and through bodies and environment at these events, contributes to, shapes and shifts the experience of liveness. Through the specificities and particularities of these youth-oriented events, things, feelings and forces that structure
281 bodies and environment entwine, and through this entwinement affects develop, diminish and move. Using Anderson’s (2014) work on affect, I have argued that young people attending live music events can become attuned to these affective shifts, which colour, amplify and give texture to the embodied experience of liveness.
Barad’s (2007) work on diffraction provided a critical lens through which to examine these affective shifts, and indeed actively drew my attention toward the movements, shifts, and engagements that permeate and produce embodied experience as an entangled phenomenon.
Liveness is not simply experienced when one attends a live music event; rather, liveness involves an ongoing entanglement that manifests and unfolds as bodies and environment mesh. It involves an active attunement and openness to the dynamism and liveliness of the event. It is not simply or only an individual or collective experience of music but an entangled way-of-being within and because of, a particular environment. At youth-oriented live music events the environment is produced through and structured by technological things, which mesh with bodies, other things, forces, ideas and feelings to create the experience of liveness. Despite this, traditional definitions and understandings of liveness have depended upon a perceived eschewal of particular technologies, specifically those with recording capabilities. However, as technologies have diversified and advanced the technosomatic involvements of young people have altered and with this, the usage and understandings of personal technologies has shifted, becoming increasingly dynamic and complex. Our intercorporeality involves the dynamic incorporation of particular technologies and does not only shift or alter the experience of liveness, but intra-actively produces the embodied experience of liveness. Participants in my research discussed specific
282 actions they took or avoided, such as recording, to purposefully produce or maintain the experience of liveness. Liveness involves an active and purposeful ‘being in the moment’ and participants discussed negotiating their technosomatic involvements in ways that aligned with this idea and allowed for or accentuated this experience.
This embodied experience produces a series of shifting intensities. Heat is an example of one such intensity and at outdoor live music events, heat can function as a tactile intensity, affective force and an intensity registered and felt through the corporeal depths. In the blistering heat of Australian summers, the festival season takes place, and as attendees negotiate their embodied entanglement with the weather, this aspect of the environment, which is often ignored or dismissed in accounts of embodiment, transforms the experience of the live event physically and emotionally, shaping one’s memories of the event. The physical and emotional touch of heat imprints upon the body and memories are created, in which the immediacy of the physical touch of heat becomes entwined with the emotional experience of that entwinement.
The experience of heat does not simply encompass individual bodies and does not simply emanate from the environment. Rather, heat emerges through the meshing of bodies, environment, things and forces as an affective intensity. It has a shifting materiality that presses upon and permeates bodies in different ways, stagnating or energising, and can be experienced as both a bodily capacity and collective condition.
Through this experience, the attendee can attune to the affectivity of the live environment and by doing so establish a felt intertwinement with the bodies and environment that fill and structure the event.
283 The experience of heat is multidimensional and multidirectional; it registers on and in the body, from the outside in, and the inside out. At live music events, heat can be internally produced as an intensity or energy force, or felt as a quality of the air and registered within the respiratory system. Through purposeful movement, attendees intra-actively engage with the internally oriented somatic senses and produce heat as a way of negotiating their engagement with the live environment and enlivening that engagement. The experience of liveness draws attention to the lively entangling of bodies and environment from the surface of the body to the corporeal depths. At live music events, the respiratory system and the felt qualities of the air, which usually recede from attention and are usually absent in accounts of embodiment, can move into one’s embodied focus. The heat of the air, created through the weather, movement of bodies cramming into small spaces, the design of the venue, the frenzied energy of the crowd, the lack of ventilation and so forth, registers in the corporeal depths and produces an embodied experience of one’s entanglement. An attendee does not feel their respiratory system, but elements of that system interacting with elements of the live environment.
People’s embodied experiences at live music events do not occur neatly along the lines of the five senses, but involve the body as a whole moving within a constantly shifting environment. In the perpetual unfolding of body and environment, heat intra- actively emerges. The embodied experience of liveness involves the constant and ongoing negotiation of one’s entanglement at live music events and this negotiation requires an attuned and lively bodily readiness. Through this attunement, attendees can experience moments of intense embodiment, in which a heightened experience of
284 one’s body is produced. The embodied experience of liveness involves attendees becoming and being alive to the highly dynamic live music environment.
This lively entangling involves atmospheres that continually form, shift and diminish and at outdoor events, these atmospheres are both meteorological and affective.
Atmospheres envelop bodies and things and create, intensify and colour the embodied experience of liveness. Through the meshing of bodies, things, energies, ideas and feelings, live music events become atmospheric hubs in which bodies attune to affective shifts. Through the intra-active becoming that is the embodied experience of liveness, affective atmospheres are produced, intensified and diminished. The transient nature of live music events amplifies the dynamic qualities of environment, body, and the entanglement of the two. This transience is central to the embodied experience of liveness and is constituted and structured, at least in part, by constantly shifting affective atmospheres.
As young people move through live music events, the specificities and particularities of the event combine with and contribute to shifting affective atmospheres, to produce moments of heightened awareness. These moments not only involve the body and intensify one’s embodied experience, but also intensify the felt entanglement between body and environment. The experience of liveness is intra-actively shaped and re- shaped through the affectively charged entanglement enabled and produced at youth- oriented live music events. The shifting and diverse experiences of affective atmospheres are fundamental to the experience of liveness and as such, exploring these phenomena is crucial in developing the concept of liveness as a complex and multifaceted area of study.
285 Moreover, interrogating the experience of affective atmospheres is important in the study of liveness as it draws attention to the series of tensions that affect and atmosphere are always bound to, and which occupy, mesh and give texture to, the space between experience and expression. Recognising and dwelling within this space and within these tensions is essential, as it is a defining aspect of the experience of liveness. The experience of liveness is definite and palpable, but at the same time it is not simple, straightforward or graspable. In all the complexities, intricacies and subtleties of the body, environment and the way they mesh, shift and unfold, liveness is produced, triggered or enabled. The way we talk about, write about and research the experience of liveness must allow for and explore those complexities, rather than reducing or simplifying them.
Open interviews and co-constitution of meaning
Outside of the academic realm, research is often understood as finding or establishing facts and incontrovertible truths. When dealing with embodied experiences, and in particular when dealing with embodied experiences such as liveness, that are not regularly discussed in everyday life and involve experiences that are often difficult to describe, a very different approach to research is, of course, required. As discussed by
Vannini (2015, p.6), a non-representationalist approach to research provides the necessary methodological framework, through which the embodied, the ‘not quite graspable’, and the ephemeral can be explored. However, forms of research utilised by those who adhere to, or are oriented toward a non-representationalist approach, are not widely or commonly understood outside of the specific academic community that utilises them.
286 At the outset of my work I would not have described my approach as non- representationalist. Initially I thought of embodied experience as concrete and definite and research as a straightforward and obvious practice. However, as my research developed and I paid more attention to the contradictions, subtleties, complexities and tensions of embodied experience, and indeed the research process, I moved further toward a non-representationalist understanding. Moreover, Vannini’s 2015 work on non-representationalist methodologies resonated with my shifting understanding of the research process. However, I have described my work as having a non- representationalist orientation, rather than fitting exactly into this category as my shifting understanding occurred late in my project and was not a guiding principle from the outset. If it had been, my research and thesis would have altered significantly. The practicalities and time restraints of this research meant in its late stages a significant overhaul was not feasible.
I believe that the common and narrow conceptualisation of research as the pursuit of
‘facts’, could lead participants to understand the interview process as involving correct and incorrect responses. This could create a particular emotional engagement for participants and contribute to a certain affective charge within the interview environment. At times during my research, I think this emotional engagement and affective charge could have influenced participant responses, forcing them to hesitate, rethink, or reformulate aspects of their discussion. Lewis’s hesitation to discuss his tears provided probably the most obvious example of this; he discussed the Laura
Marling performance several times before finally discussing tearing up. Peter also hesitated in discussing his emotional experience and only did so after I mentioned another participant discussing tears. In addition, John and Lily were both uncertain
287 and hesitant when talking about their experiences of atmosphere. Several participants also asked after interviews if their responses were similar to what other people had said. If participants understand the interview as the collection of facts or correct answers then this interaction carries with it the potential to fail or get it wrong, and as such could produce or amplify feelings of anxiety and nervousness.
Furthermore, several participants asked me only after the interview what exactly a
PhD is and what the process involved. Information sheets were provided to all participants before they agreed to participate. However, the questions I received about my research after some interviews demonstrated that participants either did not fully understand the information provided, or perhaps did not think to question the process until after completing the interview. I realised that, for some participants, the interview involved many factors that were either unknown, or only vaguely understood. Such factors could combine with the unusualness or atypical experience of the interview, to create an intimidating or uncomfortable experience.
I realise now, at the end of the process, that during interviews I focused on my demeanour, the questions I would ask, and even the furniture arrangements, in an effort to make participants feel comfortable. However, I did not consider, or did not consider in enough depth, how participants understood their contribution to the research and indeed whether or not they understood my approach to research. This situation was undoubtedly exacerbated by my own uncertainty at the start of my research, my shifting understandings of research, and a lack of confidence in my interviewing skills. In spite of these factors, I believe I could have, and in the future will endeavour to, create a more open interview environment.
288 An open interview environment could be achieved, in part, by purposefully dedicating time at the start of the interview to explain at least the basic principles of one’s research. For example, I could have told participants there are no correct or incorrect answers and that the point of the interview was to discuss their experiences at live music events and understand aspects of those experiences that were significant to them. I could have explained that, in my research, I would not be analysing their responses for some hidden or unconscious meaning, and not trying to uncover some facts or truths about live music events. Instead, I would be considering their emotional and physical experiences of live music events in relation to certain topics, whilst also using their discussion to better understand my own experiences.
I believe that this approach could have provided a more relaxed and open interview environment, in which participants would not feel an unnecessary pressure to answer correctly, and their expectations of the interview would more closely align with the aims of the research. The embodied experience of liveness involves a series of complex, messy and intricate entanglements. Feelings, thoughts, things and forces mesh and combine in contradictory ways. Examining these experiences involves abandoning ideas of correct or incorrect and embracing the unfolding, shifting, and often confusing, nature of entanglements. If I had explained to participants that ambiguity, uncertainty, contradiction and even difficulty in describing things were all perfectly acceptable in their responses, participants may have discussed their experiences differently.
I believe that follow-up interviews could have further developed the interview environment as open and, in doing so, allowed participants to play a more active role
289 in the co-constitution of meaning. This idea was particularly evident in relation to
Tim’s discussion of heat and his experience of an ‘underlying anger’, which I discussed in relation to affect in Chapter 4. I found the concept of affect and the experience of affective atmospheres particularly difficult to deal with in interviews and then also through the process of analysis and writing.
Assuming participants would not understand the concept of affect in the particular way that I was intending to use it, I instead asked participants about emotional experiences, feelings of connection and disconnection and vivid memories. I used these more familiar terms to try and steer discussion toward moments that I could identify as relating to affect. Now, I feel somewhat, or almost, uneasy about this practice. To sit in interviews and speak to participants in one way, purposefully using particular terms and omitting others, and then to retreat into the writing process and apply those omitted terms onto the participants’ words seems somewhat problematic, especially when considering the interview as involving a co-production.
Whilst writing about Tim’s discussion, I began to think about that interview and alternative approaches I could have taken. I realised I could have explained to Tim the concept of affect. I could have explained that there are different perspectives, and the one I am most interested in involves the idea of shifting intensities that flow through life, producing a palpable force. I could have asked Tim if he thought this underlying anger related to this concept of affect. The ability to recognise connections between ideas, experiences and concepts in situ is not an easy task. Apart from what a participant is saying, numerous things catch and hold one’s attention during an interview.
290 When I interviewed Tim, I was focused on the time, my next questions, how uncomfortable the seat in the park was, holding down my notepad as the breeze picked up, the way Tim moved his hands to emphasise a point, the way his eyes widened when he was caught up in discussing particular experiences, and on the periphery of my focus were the kids nosily playing around us and the possibility of their soccer balls flying through the air toward me. A follow-up interview with Tim could have allowed for an openness to develop between him and me, would have given me the time to identify parts of his interviews that I believed were significant and enabled a more open discussion about Tim’s experience. Interviews are lively encounters in which bodies, things, forces, feelings and ideas entangle. Attuning to the liveliness of these encounters is important. Providing or producing particular conditions in which both participant and researcher can feel open to the process is another important consideration.
To acknowledge that research, particularly interviews, involves a co-constitution with participants, whilst purposefully excluding particular concepts from interviews, closes off aspects of the research to those participants. A more open and inclusive approach to interviews is of course not feasible or appropriate for all forms of research.
However, I believe that for research such as mine, in which participants are discussing a fairly benign topic, this approach would have been suitable and would have produced very different material. To acknowledge interviews, and research more broadly, as involving a co-constitution is only an initial step. To actively and purposefully involve participants in the process is the next step, and unfortunately a step I understood too late.
291 The focus of research should not only, or even primarily, be on opening up the theoretical considerations for the academic world, but also opening up various ideas and ways of thinking for participants. The gap between researcher and the researched should be bridged from the perspective of the researcher and also the participant.
Participants should feel like active contributors and this could potentially be achieved by actively and purposefully entangling the participant within the research process.
Researchers must continuously push forward, outward and upward, extending and expanding the ways research is practised and communicated, not only within the somewhat or sometimes enclosed world of academics, but also within the world we research. Understanding the research process as an embodied entanglement that is intra-actively produced could encourage the researcher toward a more open approach, in which the aliveness of the process is interrogated and purposefully utilised in the co-constitution of meaning. Understanding meaning as co-constituted should not only influence and alter the ways interviews are conducted and analysed, but also the ways in which that meaning is written about.
Entangling writing
The most challenging part of this thesis was the process of writing it. As discussed through Chapter 2 the process of writing up has traditionally been understood as a straightforward practice that follows on in a linear progression from the collection and analysis of data. However, the process of writing involves a shifting entanglement that intra-actively forms and re-forms throughout the research process and is bound to the emotions, affects, ideas, feelings and things that structure the research as a whole. To write this thesis in a way that is generally expected and accepted involved continually trying to untangle ideas, experiences and feelings in order to present a neatly formed
292 thesis that has a clear and sequential progression. Unpicking the various theoretical threads that became tightly woven into my understanding of embodiment, entanglement and liveness was fraught with difficulty, and often, frustration.
Organising and structuring those threads into a neatly packed, smoothly flowing piece of writing often seemed impossible, and perhaps is.
Over the years this thesis has morphed and transformed, it has been re-shaped and rewritten countless times. Theorists and ideas that seemed full of significance at the outset of my work receded into the background of my thoughts, whilst others moved into my attention. My theoretical framework continually shifted and was shaped and directed by the entangling of certain ideas and concepts with my experiences at live music events, participant discussion through interviews, reading, forgetting and remembering, feedback and guidance from my supervisors and a range of other events, things, feelings and forces.
The writing of this thesis involved a series of shifting entanglements as ways of knowing and being meshed, overlapped and intertwined. To approach this research again from an entangled perspective would not only involve an intra-active approach to interviews but the research project as a whole, and the practice of writing as part of that process. Through Chapter 6 I was able to write in a way that purposefully included the felt experience of researching, theoretical concerns and my experience of participant discussion. I would suggest that including larger sections of interview material as well as descriptions of those interviews, fleshes out the research topic, those doing the research and those contributing to it. By including these details the participant, researcher and their entanglement are re-enlivened through the unfolding
293 of the thesis. In turn, the reader becomes actively entangled as their own understandings and experiences mesh, clash or coalesce with the written words. The ways in which researchers conduct their research perhaps should not be relegated to an isolated chapter that discusses methodology, but instead integrated into the research as a whole. Ways of knowing and being are entangled, not separable. The research process involves continual overlapping and circular movements, backward and forward between theory, experience and understanding. The end product of one’s research could explore and interrogate that entangling through the process of writing and by doing so enliven the text and topic.
Technological entanglements
A group of four –two males, two females –sat just in front of me watching and listening to Australian rock band Kingswood. The hills of the natural amphitheatre were bathed in the morning sun and attendees were scattered across the grass relaxing to the energy-fuelled music. The opening guitar of a hit song snarled through the crisp air and one of the females immediately sprang into action. She rifled hurriedly through her bag, grabbed a small camera, and some black straps. She quickly clipped one strap around her chest and pulled her arms through two others, together they were stretched across her chest, forming a harness. She then fixed a small camera in the centre. The well-rehearsed manoeuvre took only seconds. With her GoPro camera secured to her chest she pressed record, ran down the hill and was quickly swallowed into the mass of thrashing, moshing bodies.
Developed from field notes produced at Splendour in the Grass, North Byron
Parklands, 25th-27th of July 2014.
294 I wrote the field notes above in 2014 after attending Splendour in the Grass, however, since 2016 GoPro cameras and similar devices have been banned from many festivals and venues, including Splendour in the Grass, Laneway Festival and the Metro
Theatre (Palmer 2016). At the time, of writing these notes, I believed these and other similar cameras, had the potential to significantly shift the way recording was experienced and understood by youths within live music spaces and the ways youths create and share memories of such events. Despite the ban on these devices the existence, capabilities and potentialities of such technologies are important to consider as they have the potential to shift or reconfigure the technosomatic involvement of attendees and contribute to or alter the experience of liveness.
These cameras are small, light weight and very durable. They are designed to capture sharp images, whilst being able to withstand most forms of action in most environmental conditions. GoPro and other similar devices can easily fit into one’s hand or pocket, can withstand falls in the mud, or even a slight trampling in a mosh pit, making them a seemingly ideal device for live music events. As illustrated through my field notes, these devices can also be mounted upon the body. The capabilities of the camera and the accompanying accessories enable uninterrupted filming, and filming that does not interrupt any activity that the user may be involved in. The unknown female in my field notes was able to strap her camera to her body and enter the mosh pit, without being interrupted or impeded by the recording device.
These devices also have the capacity to film continuously over long periods of time and connect directly to Wi-Fi, allowing for easy and fast sharing of materials.
295 Furthermore, by viewing the short films created by friends who use GoPro cameras, I noticed that the material produced differed significantly from the usual videos people record at live music events. Rather than attempting to capture or reproduce the live performance, these GoPro users made personalised short films, featuring montages of video and music depicting their own experiences. Snippets of performances featured alongside recordings of the audience, video of friends walking together through the site, dancing together in the crowd, or simply enjoying drinks. These video montages were often sound-tracked by one or more songs.
In addition, when strapped to the head or chest these devices captured aspects of the natural movement and rhythm of bodies at live music events, a quality often lost or unobtainable when filming with a phone in hand. The technology for uninterrupted, continuous, high quality filming exists, and at some point could potentially work its way back into live music events in the form of a different device, or an already existing device, such as the smartphone. Importantly, this example demonstrates how rapidly the relationship between bodies and technologies can alter in relation to live music events and that the embodied experience of liveness will continue to shift in the midst of, and because of, ongoing entanglements involving the human, the nonhuman and all the complexities and intricacies of those mutually emerging categories. As younger generations, who have grown up with a digitised technosomatic involvement, begin to enter live music events, understandings of liveness based on an avoidance of recording technologies could be further eroded and the embodied experience of liveness will become increasingly complex and technologically involved.
296 Usage of social media has also changed since I interviewed participants. During interviews I asked each participant about their usage of social media at live music events, and while a few spoke about using various social media applications such as
Instagram or Facebook, before or after the event, they all said they did not use it during the event. A few participants commented that the internet reception was generally so bad inside venues that it was not even a possibility. Since conducting interviews I have found internet reception in many venues has noticeably improved, and Cell on Wheels towers are now commonly used at sites that have previously had poor internet connectivity (such as Splendour in the Grass). The increased accessibility of the Internet during live music events means that, since I conducted interviews, the potentialities of youths’ technosomatic involvements have expanded and altered.
In addition, the application Snapchat has rapidly and dramatically increased in popularity, even in just the last twelve months. At the time of conducting interviews, few of my friends used Snapchat; now, whenever a festival is underway my Snapchat feed becomes full of friends ‘snapping’ their experiences. The app works by users sending photographs and videos to each other either privately, by choosing specific users to send the material to, or publically by sharing the material on their ‘story’, making it accessible to any user that follows them. Private videos play once and are then inaccessible; private photographs can be viewed for up to ten seconds and then also become automatically inaccessible. If videos and photographs are shared to a user’s ‘story’ they can be viewed for a certain period (around twenty-four hours) and are then also inaccessible. In January 2016, it was reported that the app had a hundred million users, sending seven billion video clips per day (Frier and Chang 2016). In
297 comparison, Facebook has fifteen times more users, though only eight billion views per day (Frier and Chang 2016). Snapchat has increased its number of users, and users have a relatively high level of engagement with the app. Snapchat also features ‘Our
Story’, through which a temporary curated channel is created for large events, cities, or occasions. For example, the American music festival, Coachella, featured on ‘Our
Story’. Users submit images and videos to the channel. Selected images and videos are added to the channel and they play one after the other, and can be accessed by every Snapchat user for a period of time, usually the duration of the event. A temporary collage of photographs and videos is created by hundreds of different attendees. In addition, in April 2016 Facebook launched the feature, ‘Facebook Live’, through which users can live stream footage to their Facebook friends. Every
Facebook user now has the ability to live broadcast.
Furthermore, most festivals now generally release an application specifically designed for people attending that particular event. These apps provide information before and during the event, including event maps, transport details, personalised timetables and reminders as well as links to social media and various ways of connecting with other attendees through the app. For example, attendees can post photographs and video to the app, which other users can view. These developing apps are particularly interesting in terms of liveness and live music events. On Snapchat, users create material in a particular time and place, and that material is shared, but only momentarily. This app and the content shared have a transient quality. It provides only a fleeting snapshot of the user’s experience and through the Our Story feature can connect images and videos from different attendees.
298 As these forms of social media and other technologies rapidly and consistently alter and gain or lose popularity, the technological entanglements of attendees constantly shift, and the experience of liveness extends, stretches, or diminishes. These technologies, which are available before and after events and allow attendees to technologically connect with each other, function to produce, amplify and temper experiences of emotion and affect. The notion of festivalization could be utilised to explore this developing phenomenon. Duffy (2014, p.230) explains that through the process of festivalization, the ‘effects and influences’ of the festival event spill out of its spatial and temporal boundaries and can seep into everyday life. As attendees engage more and more with various technologies, the affectivity and emotionality of liveness shifts, disperses and entangles new and different things, feelings and forces.
Technology is not an automatic threat to liveness, and I believe that as new and developing technologies continually become incorporated into our experiential field, and expand our capabilities, they could hold the potential to meaningfully reconfigure and intensify the embodied experience of liveness. As demonstrated through the discussion of Steve’s experience in Chapter 3, technology has the potential to amplify the engagements between performer and audience members and extend the affective and emotional reach of the performer’s body and the music they create. If this potential is tapped into and explored further by more artists and audiences the intensities that constitute, imbue and permeate live music events could be actively and purposefully utilised and heighten and vitalise the experience of liveness. The entangling of bodies and technologies must be consistently interrogated and explored in any consideration of liveness and this is an area of inquiry that demands further attention.
299 As technological advances, such as widespread internet access and increasing internet speeds, shift and alter our recreational practices, the experience of liveness can take on new and different forms. For example, Sanden (2013) discusses how people often associate a form of liveness with the original broadcast of a television show. As the internet has become increasingly incorporated into our viewing practices (for instance, through streaming services such as Netflix), and our listening practices
(through podcasts), relatively new ‘live’ practices have emerged, such as listening and viewing parties, in which fans gather in a shared location to watch or listen to a program, podcast or new album, at the time it is released or available for streaming.
Such gatherings are of course vastly different from a live music event, and would involve their own historical, cultural, social, physical, emotional and affective specificities and particularities, but do involve a spatial and temporal co-presence with other emotionally engaged individuals. These listening and watching parties differ from other more traditional ways of viewing, for example watching a film, as a shared engagement and connectedness is encouraged and pursued. Whereas the silence, darkness and orientation of the chairs and bodies toward the screen at movie cinemas encourage individual viewing, listening and watching parties encourage a shared experience and often include participation in online discussions at the same time as viewing or watching, entangling those that share a spatial co-presence with others that share a temporal co-presence. Things and forces entangle and affective atmospheres form, intensify and diminish, sticking to bodies, rupturing everyday experiences and creating an enlivened, shared, and individual experience in the moment.
For the young people that participated in this research and myself, live music events provide and produce important and meaningful experiences that disrupt the mundane
300 routines of everyday life and by doing so physically, emotionally and affectively entangle body and environment in ways that energise and vitalise. Live music events reveal the liveliness of the world, but also generate moments of felt liveliness that imprint upon the body and create powerful memories. The value of youth-oriented live music events must be recognised and explored, not just from an economic or social perspective, but also for the way these events make youths feel and the felt entanglements they engender. Such recognition and exploration is particularly pressing at this time, during which, many of Sydney’s events and venues are under threat.
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315 Appendix A: Participant Details
Pseudonym Age Occupation Place of Involvement Face-to- residence with music in Face (F) or addition to event Online (O) attendance Interview Ada 26 Office Blue Volunteer for F worker Mountains community radio station & has volunteered at events. Lucy 25 University Wollongong Partner in a band. F student John 25 University Guildford F student Cameron 29 University Campbell- Works casually as F student town a music tutor Abby 20 University Epping Has been in bands F student recreationally. Jane 25 Event Blue F Planner Mountains Eric 28 Disability Blue Volunteer for F support Mountains community radio worker station. Kate 30 Works for Inner West of Studied Music O telecommuni- Sydney Industry course at cations TAFE. company Max 18 High school Terrigal O student Lewis 20 University Manly Vale F student Joel 23 Primary Erskine Park O
316 teacher Grant 22 Technical Strathfield F support worker for Apple Jack 25 Musician & Blue As stated in F Music Mountains occupation. producer Tim 25 University Strathfield Plays in bands F student recreationally. Dave 26 Works in Blue F recruitment. Mountains Peter 25 Tradesman Blue F Mountains Marion 26 Administra- Blue F tion worker Mountains Tom 26 University Chippendale Plays in bands O student recreationally. Studying a Bachelor’s degree in Music. Joan 26 Teacher Blue O Mountains Luke 25 Arborist Inner West of O Sydney Steve 28 High school Blue Studied a O music teacher Mountains Bachelor’s degree in Music. Lily 24 University Blue F student Mountains
317 Appendix B: Sample Interview Schedule
The following questions were used as an interview schedule. As previously mentioned various questions were omitted, added or expanded upon during interviews.
• In your everyday life what style/s of music do you listen to?
• How often do you listen to music?
And in what ways, online, radio, iPod?
• Do you ever watch or listen to the broadcasting of live events, like Triple J’s
live at the wireless or if a band broadcasts something online?
• How often do you attend live music events?
• What sort of events do you attend? For example small local shows, festivals,
arena shows, a mix?
• Do you have a favourite venue or festival?
• Do you usually attend events on your own or with others? If with others,
would you ever attend alone?
• How do you usually choose your positioning within the crowd?
Do you like to have a good view, be close to the stage, have space around you
etc.?
• Do you go down the front at shows? If yes, what is it like?
• Do you watch the crowd or focus mostly on the performer?
• In the venue or festival, if there is seating available are you more likely to sit
or stand?
318 Do you experience the event differently if you are sitting or standing and if so
how?
• Do you have a preference for festivals or venues and if so why?
• Do you think whether the event is indoors or outdoors effects the way that you
experience the event?
Ask about: weather, atmosphere, amount of space around you, the way the
crowd behaves/acts?
Do you have a preference for indoor or outdoor shows?
• How do you experience your personal space at live music events, do you
experience it differently than in everyday life?
• Do you use social media before during or after an event in relation to the
show? For example, to check in, post photos etc.?
• Do you think using technology before, during or after an event affects how
you experience the event?
• Do you think technology adds anything to these events, or enhances the
experience in anyway? In terms of lighting, sound etc.
• Do you like to dance?
What factors contribute to whether you’ll dance? eg. style of music, size of crowd,
others dancing, day or night, amount of space.
And did it improve upon or add to your experience of the event?
319 • In terms of the way you experience your body physically and emotionally, is
there a noticeable difference between festivals and venue based events?
• Could you describe some of your best experiences at live music events?
• Have you had any negative experiences, or experiences that made you
uncomfortable at live music events?
• Do you think your level of fandom for a band or performer affects your
experience physically or emotionally?
• Some people talk about getting shivers down their spines during
performances, have you ever experienced any intense emotional or physical
reactions to a performance?
• When you have been part of a crowd do you tend to feel connected to those
around you or disconnected and separate?
And does this experience alter depending on certain factors such as the size of
the crowd, the music being played etc.?
• Have you experienced pain or exhaustion during an event, or after, or even the
next day?
• As is well known, many young people drink alcohol or take recreational drugs
to enhance their experience of live music events, how do you think that
alcohol and/or drugs shape people's experience of the music, the space, and
other festival-goers?
320 • How important is live music to your relationship with music? And in what
ways do you feel the live experience differs from listening to music in
everyday life physically and emotionally?
• When attending youth oriented live music events, do you feel you identify
more strongly as part of this group? Or alternatively do such events make you
feel disengaged from the category of youth?
• So that was my last question, was there anything that wasn’t covered through
the interview that you would like to discuss which you consider significant to
your experience of live music events?
321 Appendix C: Participant Information Sheet
Human Research Ethics Committee Office of Research Services
Project Title: Musical Entanglements: The embodied experience of youth-oriented live music events (Please note: the title of the thesis was changed after interviews were conducted).
Who is carrying out the study? Jacinta Herborn, chief investigator.
You are invited to participate in a study conducted by Jacinta Herborn, PhD Candidate, School of Humanities and Communication Arts at University of Western Sydney.
What is the study about? The purpose is to investigate the embodied experiences of young people at youth- oriented live music events, including music festivals and venue based events. The research explores the way in which young people experience live music events socially, physically and musically.
What does the study involve? Should you wish to participate in this study you will be asked to participate in a one- on-one interview with the researcher, either face-to-face or online. The interview will be semi-structured, which means that while the focus of the interview will be directed toward certain topics and aspects of your experience as an attendee, the atmosphere will be relaxed with broad questions to allow for a conversational like structure. With the permission of participants the interview will be sound recorded and transcribed. All personal information provided will remain confidential and no participants will be personally identified in any way.
How much time will the study take? The duration of the interview will be largely determined by you comfort and willingness to provide detailed responses, on average it is expected that the interview will last be approximately sixty minutes.
Will the study benefit me? The study is unlikely to benefit you specifically. This research will benefit the wider community by contributing to scholarly understandings of youth-oriented live music events.
Will the study involve any discomfort for me? It is unlikely this study will cause you any discomfort. Every effort will be made to minimise any potential discomfort to participants. If you choose to participate in an
322 interview you may terminate the interview or discussion of any topic at any time. If you choose to withdraw from the study any contribution will be erased and will not be used in any aspect of the research. The researcher is not investigating participants’ involvement in indictable offences (that is drug trafficking or serious assaults) that may occur at live music events. Questions will not be asked about such matters and researchers have a legal obligation to report participation in indictable offences.
How is this study being paid for? The study is being sponsored by the University of Western Sydney.
Will anyone else know the results? How will the results be disseminated? All aspects of the study, including results, will be confidential and only the researchers will have access to information on participants.
Can I withdraw from the study? Participation is entirely voluntary: you are not obliged to be involved and - if you do participate - you can withdraw at any time without giving any reason and without any consequences and all information that has been provided by you will be erased.
Can I tell other people about the study? Yes, you can tell other people about the study by providing them with the chief investigator's contact details. They can contact the chief investigator to discuss their participation in the research project and obtain an information sheet.
What if I require further information? When you have read this information, Jacinta Herborn will discuss it with you further and answer any questions you may have. If you would like to know more at any stage, please feel free to contact Jacinta Herborn, [contact details have been removed for the purpose of this thesis].
What if I have a complaint? If you have any complaints or reservations about the ethical conduct of this research, you may contact the Ethics Committee through the Office of Research Services on [contact details have been removed for the purpose of this thesis] Any issues you raise will be treated in confidence and investigated fully, and you will be informed of the outcome. If you agree to participate in this study, you will be asked to sign the Participant Consent Form.
323 Appendix D: Event and Venue Information
Big Day Out
Big Day Out was an annual touring festival, held in Australia’s major cities and
Auckland in New Zealand. The festival was traditionally a one-day event, though occasionally was held over two days, for example, during 2011. The Sydney event took place at Olympic Park, usually at the end of January, on or near Australia Day.
This site is easily accessed by train, car or bus and is used for many different events including regular sporting events, large music performances (such as the Lady Gaga concert) and other annual events such as the Royal Easter Show. Attendance levels at
Big Day Out varied year-to-year, however during the relatively successful 2012
Sydney event, fifty-seven thousand people attended (Mann, 2014). Big Day Out featured multiple stages and a range of both international and Australian acts. This festival featured performers in a range of genres and styles of music including rock, pop rock, indie, electronic dance music and hip hop. Big Day Out famously featured
Nirvana in its first event in 1992, just as they were gaining ‘mainstream’ success
(Cummings 2007, p.34) and was well known for featuring commercially successful artists in more recent times. For example, recent headliners included Kanye West
(2012), the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (2013) and Pearl Jam (2014). The last Big Day
Out event was held in 2014. The festival was then sold to American promoter C3
(Vincent 2014), and was subsequently cancelled in 2015.
Soundwave
Like Big Day Out, Soundwave festival was an annual one-day touring event held in
Australia’s major cities, as well as Auckland, during summer. The Sydney event was also held in Olympic Park. Soundwave was focused on hard rock, punk and metal
324 performers and featured Australian and international acts across several stages. This festival was previously one of Australia’s most successful festival events drawing crowds of up to seventy-three thousand attendees in Sydney during 2013 when
Metallica headlined the event (Vincent 2015). Indeed, it had become Australia’s largest rock festival before being cancelled in 2015 after a string of problematic business deals involving festival promoter AJ Maddah and as a consequence,
Soundwave’s operating company entering voluntary administration (Vincent 2015).
Splendour in the Grass
Splendour in the Grass is a three-day annual festival, which is currently held in the
North Byron Parklands in Yelgun in the Byron Shire in Northern New South Wales.
The festival site is surrounded by bush and accessible only by car or bus. In 2016 approximately thirty-three thousand people attended the event and usually sells out within minutes (Hohnen 2016). This festival takes place during winter, usually on the last weekend in July. Splendour in the Grass features campgrounds, however these are not large enough for all attendees and so many stay in nearby towns over the course of the event. This festival features a range of performers, both international and
Australian, in different styles and genres. Splendour in the Grass also typically features a range of non-musical events and activities such as yoga sessions, comedy performances, film screenings, art installations, debates and a craft area. The festival also encourages a broader range of attendees by having a child-care area and also offers discounted tickets to locals.
325 Laneway
Laneway, or St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival as it is officially known, is an annual one- day touring event that takes place in Australia’s major cities, Auckland, and
Singapore. It is held during summer and originated in a Melbourne CBD Laneway.
The Sydney event is held at Callan Park in Rozelle in the grounds of the Sydney
College of the Arts. The capacity of this venue is twelve thousand five hundred and the event generally sells out. Laneway festival features acts from Australia and overseas and has a strong focus on ‘new and revered seminal music’
(lanewayfestival.com 2017). This event tends to feature lesser known, independent and new artists.
Metro Theatre
The Metro Theatre is located on George Street in Sydney’s CBD. The Metro Theatre holds a range of performances featuring Australian and international performers that are either well established or up and coming. The venue can hold around one thousand three hundred and fifty attendees (metrotheatre.com.au 2017). The venue features a small bar; however, this can only be accessed with a ticket to a show. The
Metro Theatre holds mostly over eighteen’s events, though also features some all ages events.
Hordern Pavilion
The Hordern Pavilion is located in Moore Park in Sydney. It is a larger venue with a capacity of five thousand five hundred (playbillvenues.com.au 2017) and so features well-known and popular musicians and bands. Both over eighteen’s and all ages events are held at the Hordern Pavilion.
326 Oxford Arts Factory
The Oxford Arts Factory is located on Oxford Street in Darlinghurst, Sydney. This venue is described as a ‘two room, multi-functional venue… inspired by Andy
Warhol’s Factory in New York during the 60’s’ (oxfordartfactory.com 2017). The venue features a public bar, band room dedicated to live performances and DJ sets and an art gallery space. The venue holds around five hundred people and usually features up and coming Australian artists.
Annandale Hotel
The Annandale Hotel in Annandale was previously one of Sydney’s most well established venues for live music and featured a mix of well known and newer artists, both from around Australia and overseas. At its peak, the Annandale Hotel could hold up to four hundred people and this venue had both all ages and over eighteen’s events.
During 2013 the venue was sold and when reopened, the of amount live music performances was dramatically reduced with the new owners focusing instead on developing the food service and bar (Baroni 2014).
Good God Small Club
Good God Small Club was located on Liverpool Street in Chinatown, Sydney. This venue featured a designated live music room, the ‘Danceteria’ that was located at the back of the venue behind the public bar. The Danceteria featured musicians and DJs from Wednesday to Sunday. As the name suggests, this was a small venue; it fitted only a couple of hundred people, and generally featured new and up and coming
Australian artists, although some well known international acts, such as the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs, also graced the stage. Good God Small Club was sold in December
327 2015. The venue still features live music on weekends and is now named the Hudson
Ballroom.
Newtown Social Club
This venue is located on King Street in Newtown, an area in Sydney’s Inner West that is well known for its alternative and youth culture. Newtown Social Club featured a mix of both well-established and new musicians and bands in both ticketed events and free shows. Performances took place in a designated upstairs area, which was separate to the public bar downstairs. However, this venue is set to close during April 2017.
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