Visuals within Classical music concerts - How can we attract young audience?

Abstract

This thesis strives to answer questions regarding the drop that is observed in the number of young concertgoers in Classical music performances the last decades in the USA and many European countries and to propose ways, which can alter the downward trend. A focal point of this paper is to stress that the rise of digitization favoured the dominance of the visual sense over the others and that modern society became habituated into using digital technology. I support that in order to attract young audience, which is the future audience of Classical music, we need to cope with fundamental needs and features of the young generation and therefore, include more intensively visual and digital elements within Classical music performances. To prove my point, I analyse and compare three case studies which experimented with alternative stimuli of digital visualisation within Classical music performances. In that extent, I make evident the potentials and utilises of the enhancement of visualisation of Classical music concerts through diverse and different mediums of digital technology. Moreover, through the demonstration of the case studies a collection of artistic projects is available for cultural institutions, which aim to attract new and young audience.