Something I’ve been trying to work around in my head lately is the concept of web interactivity manifesting itself in the “real world.” An example: the past three indie rock shows I’ve been to have involved some element of crowd participation on stage, and/or artists venturing into the audience to do their shit. We’ve also touched on this lately with our discussion on copyright/left/centre/whatever.
To me, this is the same as the principle of participatory journalism that has been popularized by blogs and bulletin boards and employed to some degree by other sites that allow comments on each story, such as The Tyee and even tsn.ca. Are we entering a new age where the boundary between audience and producer is breaking down? What implications does it have, especially for art?