Scientific Methods of Studying Audience Reaction in Drum Corps

[charlie1223]

It does not.

It does not show that, but that is a possibility.

Did you mess up your negative operator parity there? You're stating that taste has nothing to do how people react to a moment, but I disagree in that there are varying degrees in which it contributes, some much more so than others.

You haven't made yourself clear in this post at ALL.

What exactly do you mean by this in your signiture:

"Notice the consistency in the emotional effect achieved as dictated by a quantitative mapping from auditory and visual perception to chemical releases and neurological processes. The notion of "taste" is almost entirely absent from this process."

And the dictionary and I are both defining taste as: "one's personal attitude or reaction toward an aesthetic phenomenon or social situation, regarded as either good or bad."

Edited January 11, 2011 by charlie1223

[Hrothgar15]

You haven't made yourself clear in this post at ALL.

What exactly do you mean by this in your signiture:

"Notice the consistency in the emotional effect achieved as dictated by a quantitative mapping from auditory and visual perception to chemical releases and neurological processes. The notion of "taste" is almost entirely absent from this process."

And the dictionary and I are both defining taste as: "one's personal attitude or reaction toward an aesthetic phenomenon or social situation, regarded as either good or bad."

I'm saying in that moment in particular, taste does not play a significant role. (By taste I mean, within drum corps; obviously the people that don't like drum corps for whatever reason won't have the same reaction).

[Hrothgar15]

NO! no one believes that! What have you been reading!? Everyone understands the science. What they don't like is the science being used to create drum corps shows.

For me I wouldn't mind if science was used to create drum corps shows but I think that such studies would take so much time that the information would be restrictive. It puts literal restrictions on what can go into a drum corps. It will limit the possibility of experiencing NEW elements that can stimulate a response instead of variations on OLD elements to stimulate the response since the experiment will be based on the viewing of passed shows.

It categorizes what the drum corps fan base should be based on who is being tested. It does not expand the audience to people outside of drum corps. If DCI really wanted to be sustainable and create more revenue (the goal of these tests) then they should test people who have never seen or heard of drum corps and try to appeal to those people aswell...

It just seems like in order to do this experiment and use the data from this experiment you need a clear idea of what kind of people you want drum corps to be for, the kind of reaction you specifically want to have in drum corps, The number of people you want to have the reaction for etc. And frankly even WITH science on their sides I don't trust a single person in DCI to tell me what to expect from a drum corps show. I don't need someone telling me how I should be reacting to something (I get enough of that already with advertisements!).

I appreciate the designers blind judgment on what they think will please the audience. Hrothgar15, if you are so happy about the way corps were way back when the you should appreciate that drum corps can make audiences jump out of their seat without the use of an long winded study.

I don't want to go through this entire post, so I'll have you do it. Wherever you make an assumption or claim or concern about my study in the above, realize that it's wrong and does not apply to what I'm proposing. Although I do agree that the tests should in no way be limited to only people already familiar with drum corps.

Designers use elements that they think will get people excited all the time! The only purpose of this study is to analyze them, and use why they work to find new ones. There's only room for growth, not restriction.

Is that clearer?

Edited January 11, 2011 by Hrothgar15

[charlie1223]

I'm saying in that moment in particular, taste does not play a significant role. (By taste I mean, within drum corps; obviously the people that don't like drum corps for whatever reason won't have the same reaction).

okay... so you're assuming that those people in your clip all liked that moment for exactly the same reasons?

How do you know that taste does not play a significant role? It seems to me that taste as everything to do with it. Those people needed to have the taste for drum corps in order to have that reaction, no?

Edited January 11, 2011 by charlie1223

[Hrothgar15]

okay... so you're assuming that those people in your clip all liked that moment for exactly the same reasons?

Again with the absolutes! Start thinking in distributions! The reason why they liked it is distributed around several main factors, with some variation. So yes, it's the geometric properties of the visual formation of the company front, the acoustic properties of the music and the horns used to play it, the progression of build-up and then release, etc., that's mostly responsible for why they liked it and reacted so uniformly (along a distribution, of course!). It's not magic...what else would cause them to react that way?

If taste played a significant role in the appreciation of that one moment (not talking about others here), what would that taste be in? Drum corps? Songs featured in movies about ice skating? Company fronts?

Edited January 11, 2011 by Hrothgar15

[charlie1223]

I don't want to go through this entire post, so I'll have you do it. Wherever you make an assumption or claim or concern about my study in the above, realize that it's wrong and does not apply to what I'm proposing.

But I feel those are legitimate complications to the study and do apply. Maybe you could clarify what exactly you're proposing? You want to find out what makes a drum corps fan tick. And I'm simply stating that your definition of the drum corps fan, and the aspects that make them tick, are huge variables of complication.

Designers use elements that they think will get people excited all the time! The only purpose of this study is to analyze them, and use why they work to find new ones. There's only room for growth, not restriction.

Right... its not the purpose of the study that I have a problem with. It's the actual process that you would have to undergo to get the data and eventually interpret the data. In theory, I think its a novel idea... but in practice, I can only find infinite complications... The limitations you would need to put on the sampled group, and the variables, is nearly impossible. Understanding the variables that exist in the person's mind even more impossible. I mean, the different chemicals in the brain you would need to analyze and measure based on preconceieved notions of the kinds of feelings people even want to experience in drum corps. That's very subjective and has nothing to do with science. Meaning, that people subjectively decide the meaning of drum corps and then scientifically try to replicate that... there's open loop holes around their somewhere...

I mean, drum corps is probably the last place you'd see a study like this.

[Hrothgar15]

I assume "euphoria" is pretty high up there on the on the list of types of emotions people want to experience. That one's pretty easy to classify, and more uniform than you would think. And of course there are others, like rage, or pensiveness, or awe, or what-have-you, that yes, would be more complicated but still analyzable.

[charlie1223]

Again with the absolutes! Start thinking in distributions! The reason why they liked it is distributed around several main factors, with some variation. So yes, it's the geometric properties of the visual formation of the company front, the acoustic properties of the music and the horns used to play it, the progression of build-up and then release, etc., that's mostly responsible for why they liked it and reacted so uniformly (along a distribution, of course!). It's not magic...what else would cause them to react that way?

On top of everything you said? Their relative mood that day. Their personal history of drum corps and how those physical elements interacted with their memories of music, formations, shapes, archetypes of awe and wonder. Their personal preferences to those physical aesthetic qualities. I find that the individuals and the way they interpret those outside physical stimulants is more important than the formation of the stimulants themselves.

Not everyone was born with the characteristics to love a moment like in your signature. It was learned through out their lives and that moment happened to make a lot of people excited. But I don't imagine that that same crowd was reacting like that to even similar instances that night. As I remember Madison Scouts were extremely popular back then as they are now, and the fact that the corps WAS the Madison Scouts also had to do with receiving that kind of reaction. I believe that if that exact corps played in front of a different audience, maybe today's audience that the reaction would be different, not better or worse because idk, but just different and for different reasons.

BTW I would probably guess that you are huge fan of Carl Jung and the idea of the collective unconscious.

If taste played a significant role in the appreciation of that one moment (not talking about others here), what would that taste be in? Drum corps? Songs featured in movies about ice skating? Company fronts?

Yes, taste in drum corps, loud brass music and drum lines, being in outdoors in a stadium, uniformed marching units... it goes on and on IMO.

Edited January 11, 2011 by charlie1223

[charlie1223]

I assume "euphoria" is pretty high up there on the on the list of types of emotions people want to experience. That one's pretty easy to classify, and more uniform than you would think. And of course there are others, like rage, or pensiveness, or awe, or what-have-you, that yes, would be more complicated but still analyzable.

Of course, I don't doubt you.

Edited January 11, 2011 by charlie1223

[DrillmanSop06]

I'm still getting the impression that people think our bodies are somehow "magic" and our emotional responses are arbitrary and not governed by any understandable processes.

That is absolutely not the case.

You're totally right. That's EXACTLY what everyone has said. If you don't want people to do it to you, don't do it to them. I don't think ANYONE denies that premise. But good try.