interactivecultures

I attended an event in Copenhagen back in March this year. It was organised by Jazz Danmark, a government funded body whose role it is to promote and foster Danish jazz. My keynote was about how musicians could use the opportunities of the internet, and it seemed to go down reasonably well.

Through that connection, I was invited to be a guest of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, which finished today (I’ve just returned home).

Naturally, I was delighted to attend. Of course, there would be a lot of great music and events – but it also gave me an opportunity to research and consider the ways in which a festival like that could communicate online.

I thought of it as a natural extension of the Aftershock Project for me. How do you take those ideas and begin to apply them elsewhere?

But although it’s still very much about live music, it’s configured very differently. So the frame through which I saw the event was one of digital narrative, and how you could BE a jazz festival online – without simply making a brochure or an online programme. In that sense, the approach, at least, remained.

And this was timely, because this week, we’re off to talk to the organisers of the Scarborough Jazz Festival to discuss just that issue.

While I was there, I captured some video, and talked to a few people – but it’s the way that this could all be assembled that interests me. And I came up with a concept that is helping me think through the ways in which events could be considered.

The digital narrative matrix
Essentially, the digital narrative matrix is an interwoven series of frameworks through which an event can be viewed – the overlapping threads of story that can be signposted and brought to the attention of the site visitor. For instance, with the Aftershock Project, those key narrative threads are character, chronology and song development. But there are all sorts of different ways in which you could build a matrix (not The Matrix – that’s a film. Just a matrix).

When building a matrix, I think the key questions that need to be considered should include the following:

- What are the possible stories?
- Who are those stories for?
- What is interesting to them?
- How can they be involved in that storytelling?
- What is important to communicate?
- What can be done in the digital realm that could not be done in any other way?
- What else, other than the obvious, could be interesting?
- What else is going on? (eg: off-stage, behind the scenes, amongst the audience)?
- What does it all sound / look / feel like?
- What do you have to be respectful of that would lead you to a different way of working?

The things to avoid are mere reproduction of an audience experience (ie: filming a concert and putting it online), reportage, and fixed delineation by subgenre or music type. Instead, a successful matrix would tease out opportunities for surprise, delight, conversation, and human interaction.

Of course, I have pages of notes about how that could be translated as an online digital narrative matrix in the particular instance of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, which differs markedly from any other event – and I will type up and send a report to the festival organisers in thanks for my invitation, in the hopes that will be helpful to them.

But as a result of these conversations, and many more I had with other festival guests, I’m looking at working with a few other festivals and organisations on this sort of thing. Which is great on two important levels: first, that this sort of research can have direct and helpful benefits to cultural industries; and second, going to jazz festivals is cool.