Research Into the Psychology of "presence"

This entry will discuss a piece of literature i found using the University of Abertay's online library called "Summon":

Media psychology  "is not yet there"- Introducing theories on the media entertainment to the presence debate by Christof Klimmt, Presence. Vol. 12 No. 4, August 2003, pg. 346-359

The concept for this project is about recreating the affect of being present at a music event; in doing this i will need to think about a person's state of involvement with receptive media.

"Based on conceptualizations from the psychology of literature (cf. Groeben & Vorderer, 1988), the sociology of culture (cf. Bourdieu, 1987), and from communication research (cf. McQuail, 1985; Liebes & Katz, 1986), Vorderer (1992) differen- tiates two levels of involvement and, accordingly, two modes of reception: a distant, analytical way of witnessing the events presented by the medium (low involve- ment) and, in contrast, a fascinated, emotionally and cognitively engaged way of enjoying the presentation (high involvement)... Analytical reception requires expertise and substantial knowledge about the media content and particularly about the media form." Christof Klimmt, Aug 2003, pg. 347-348

Klimmt talks about two modes of reception, a distant and analytical way of witnessing the medium which requires knowledge about the media content/form and a fascitnated and engaged way of witnessing the medium. In reference to my project concept i will be producing a listening test of the various microphone techniques i will be using, as a way of determining which is best at recreating the event in its entirety. The test subjects will have to come from a variety of backgrounds, some with knowledge of sound reproduction and some without to produce a more accurate representation of the general public as some will have knowledge of this media form and some will not. 

"Both the state of presence and the experience of involvement include the perceptual focus on mediated information and the avoidance of stimuli that do not belong to the media offering, such as unrelated own cognitions or external cues that undermine the nonmediation experience. Ideally, involvement and presence describe states in which all perceptions, thoughts, and emotions are directed towards the media environment. For this reason, involvement could be conceptualized as one dimension of presence (cf. Witmer & Singer, 1998; Biocca, Burgoon, Harms, & Stoner, 2001) or presence could be modeled as a special case of involvement." Christof Klimmt, Aug 2003, pg. 348

In reference to my project concept and recreating the state of presence, during the listening test i will have to ensure that no other stimuli or external cues are present in the testing space to allow "perceptual focus on the mediated information". From this extract of Klimmt's article we can see that perception and involvement are strongly linked, thus to recreate a state of presence we have to ensure that the subjects involvement directed to the mediated information and no where else. 

To summarise what i gathered from Klimmt's article in reference to my project concept, i need to minimise the amount of unrelated stimuli in the testing room to ensure the subjects involvement with the mediated information is the highest it can be. Also i need to ensure that my test subjects come from a variety of backgrounds some with sound production knowledge and some without.

Draft Project Objectives

• Research surround microphone techniques which have the appropriate attributes for the use in recording live music to find out what techniques to employ in my project.

• Produce a test of these microphone techniques where the subject is assessing them in terms of presence.

• Analyse the results of the test to form a conclusion about each microphone technique's use in recording live events.

First Concepts for Research Project

My first concept for the project came to me while researching how the music industry has changed over the past years due to technological advancements that allow the public access artists work for free or at very low prices. This has resulted in a huge rise in the live music industry as the public are now more inclined to go see and experience their favourite artists performing live when their music is so easily accessible. Simon Frith 2010 (Analysing live music in the UK: findings one year into a three-year research project)

The concept I derived from the information i found out about how the music industry has changed was to be able to recreate a live event so that it could be experienced again and again. This project will be based around using a variety of 5.1 Surround Sound production techniques to record live music events and find out which best recreates the event in terms of presence/feeling of being at the original event. 

Further Research:

• What 5.1 recording techniques should i implement in the project?

• How do i rate evaluate each recording technique? Questionnaire? If so who participates in the questionnaire and how do the participants measure the level of presence?

Introduction

During the development of this honours project i will be using this blog as a way of logging the development of my ideas and the research i carry out. Throughout the project i will be analysing texts and carrying out practical based research, i will describe and evaluate all these activities.

The honours project is an opportunity to explore and research a specialist subject area within your field. This blog will describe what intrigues me about Audio and Music and how i develop my interests into an academic research based project.