Producing Liveness: The Trials of Moving Folk Clubs Online During the Global Pandemic

Title of the Paper

"Producing Liveness: The Trials of Moving Folk Clubs Online During the Global Pandemic"

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Music and Sociology
• Keywords: Liveness, Performance, Folk Music, Ethnography, Social Media, Appropriation, Recording, Zoom, Facebook, YouTube, Delay, Latency, Audio, Oral Tradition

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges: During the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional folk music clubs had to transition online but faced technical challenges such as network latency and audio quality, making synchronous singing impossible.
• Significance: Live music performances are crucial for emotional, social connection, and health benefits. The pandemic forced a significant shift of music practices to online platforms, marking a critical transformation in the digital age.
• Research Motivation and Related Work: This study examines how two UK-based traditional folk music clubs adapted to online practices during the pandemic and explores the nature of "online liveness."

Solutions

• Proposed Methods or Solutions:
  1. Users creatively utilized existing digital platforms (Zoom, Facebook, YouTube) to achieve a certain degree of musical liveness.
  2. One club adopted a "round-robin mode" via video conferencing, while the other evolved into a "co-produced pre-recorded program."
• Innovations:
  • Redefining "liveness" as a state co-created through participatory structures, rather than a simple binary of "live" versus "recorded."
  • Breaking traditional boundaries between performers and audiences.
• Implementation Steps and Techniques:
  • Innovative use of existing tools, such as Zoom's "original audio" option, virtual backgrounds, and recording features.
  • Employing Facebook Watch Party for multi-user video playback and interaction.
  • Providing audio optimization recommendations, including hardware adjustments and software settings.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Results:
  • Online music clubs conducted over 40 sessions in total.
  • Introduced and balanced various participation modes, such as live performances, pre-recorded videos, and live text chats.
  • Achieved interaction within confined spaces through innovative techniques like home "bubble" recordings and composite videos.
• Advantages:
  • Creatively adapted existing digital platforms to maintain the vitality of music communities within network constraints.
  • Emerged new forms of participation, such as the semi-synchronous mode of "performers self-accompanying."
• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  • Successfully created an online form of live music experience.
  • The Folk Beeston club attracted 30 to 40 participants weekly and reached a broader audience through YouTube content.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Performer fatigue due to continuous recording.
  • Musical interaction remains constrained by limited network bandwidth and latency.
  • Future designs need to further develop digital tools supporting real-time, layered recording and diverse mixing.

Conclusion and Future Work

• Main Conclusions:
  • Online liveness is a phenomenon co-created through complex participatory structures, and its experience can be enhanced through more flexible tool design.
  • Online music practices may continue to influence traditional models in the post-pandemic era, particularly in promoting "hybrid online-offline" formats.
• Future Research Directions:
  • Explore technological advancements, such as stronger audio optimization and multi-mode switching.
  • Investigate the long-term impact of online practices on traditional folk music clubs and their transition to hybrid formats.
  • Generalize findings to apply to other music forms or performance practices.