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As designers, we are interested in the artifacts that complement an experience. At many classical music performances, the program is an artifact that does some heavy lifting: greets audience members at the door, guides them through the experience (sometimes as the only context they’ll get!), and comes home with them to remember the event. Since the performances we put together aren’t like your typical classical music performance, we want to make sure the program is aligned with that. Though the variables we’ve played with each year have been different the overall goal has remained the same: create an artifact that delights the audiences and reinforces the spirit of the evening.
In addition to the “traditional program,” audience members at the 2023 Chamber 2.0 performance were invited to pick up an interactive program. This program engaged audiences’ senses beyond just sight and sound by inviting them to be part of shaping their experience of the performance through suggested activity pairings for each piece.
Each page of the program corresponded to a piece being played in the Showcase and included a prompt inspired by the fellows’ interpretation of their piece. Prompts ranged from “playing along” on corrugated paper to tasting dark chocolate to sketching what they heard.
Anticipating some resistance from audiences since we were in a traditional music hall, we were pleasantly surprised when, at intermission, people who had initially declined the interactive program started coming up to us asking for the fun program they had seen their neighbors using. Looking around the concert hall, audience members ranging from young children to long-time NOI donors to other fellows — and everyone in between — could be spotted wearing refraction glasses, popping bubble wrap, and using clapper hands during the applause.
Check out the program and it's contents in this video!
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