The Kaleidoscopic Beauty of Crowds
In an age of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, it’s worth reconsidering the timeless power of the gathering: human bodies and minds congregated around a shared creative intent.
Whether it's the intimacy of watching a small band in a local pub or joining in the rapturous applause bursting forth from an audience held on the edge of their seats in a West End theatre, there's a connectivity that grows between humans concentrating on the same moment, in the same space which technology has not (yet) come close to replicating.
I can only guess at what forces are in play when this happens or how one measures them. But just as experiences like 'love' or 'atmosphere' are almost universally accepted phenomena despite being challenging to rationalise, I would argue that few experiences are as ‘real,’ engaging, and absorbing as being part of an embodied gathering that shares time, space, and the collective joy that comes from helping to bring a story to life.
KMA’s interactive installation work between 2005 and 2017 explored this dynamic between audience and performer but reformulated it in a radical way that I haven't seen replicated before or since.
Our premise was extremely simple and based on one question:
Can a compelling theatrical event be created in which there is no distinction between performer and audience?
Let’s define that a bit more clearly:
Although our installations took place outdoors and were unticketed, relying entirely for their engagement upon the curiosity of passing strangers, we used the term “theatrical event” to describe them as live embodied performances with underlying stories. These narratives, however simple, had ambitions that lay beyond the playful call and response that we knew our interactive environments could deliver when rubbed up against curiosity. To qualify as ‘compelling’, we aimed to create an experience capable of providing an emotional reaction that reached out towards that shared moment of joy described above, felt when a story’s relevance — and our part in the making of it — is collectively recognised.
What do we mean by ‘there is no distinction between performer and audience?’ Well, these events drew crowds, some members of whom ‘performed’ while others watched, but no one person was in control. A constant organic ebb and flow existed between those actively participating and interested bystanders. It was a guiding principle of the work that nobody was ever enlisted to explain or to corral people into action. Curiosity was the only driver.
All of KMA’s installations met our self-imposed definition of a theatrical event that removed the distinction between the roles of audience and performer. However, only one, Congregation (first performed in 2010), came close to answering the entirety of our question successfully.
“I say installation, and that’s what KMA call it, but really it’s a gathering of curious individuals, a conflation of single humans that, in coming together, at the behest of some strange centrally placed creature, use light to create patterns of connections that demonstrate in no uncertain terms the kaleidoscopic beauty of crowds.
Congregation rewards our curiosity with the satisfaction of having helped make beauty, and at the same time it performs a feat of magic: It makes collective joy from that most unlikely of postmodern ingredients: the neurosis of the terminally individual. ”
It was the only installation we made that provoked a compelling and emotionally resonant experience among its participants with any degree of regularity. Witnessing an assortment of urban pedestrians brought together in a moment of shared meaning was extraordinary and beautiful when it occurred. Still, it proved difficult to ‘choreograph’ these emotional highs into a structured, reproducible narrative. Although we tried many approaches to overcome this impasse, we never improved on the emotional impact of Congregation. In 2018, Tom and I agreed to leave the question: Can a compelling theatrical event be created in which there is no distinction between performer and audience? only partially answered.
I met with Tom Wexler the other day, and we revisited the question for the first time in years with the benefit of a fresh perspective born from time.
The premise still feels radical and exciting. I’d love to see a body of work emerge in which user interaction becomes the primary driver of story and meaning; that concept not only feels very modern but—in this world of AI-generated content—affirms the significance of us humans, not just as individual material bodies but as a collective gathering capable of conjuring beauty out of nothing more tangible than our shared curiosity and willingness to engage with one another.
It’s with that spirit of enthusiasm, along with an openness about what any future work might look like, that I’m excited to begin a collaborative R&D conversation between KMA, Viridian Lab, XR Stories, AudioLab (the University of York) and CoSTAR Live Lab to look into new ways of approaching that question.
I have no idea where this conversation may lead, but I’m thrilled to be a part of it and delighted that the heart of the research will take place in York, UNESCO City of Media Arts, where the KMA journey began.
