One of the most important aspects that makes festivals a ‘time out of time’ experience is the world you live in for the time you are there. Lowlands welcomes you with lighthouses, as if you are coming home after a long trip, Paaspop gives you an all over view on the field when you arrive. Some festivals have the city as a décor , others have fences around it. But all of them have one thing in common; they have an original identity which they want to send out.
This is exactly the thing that interests me as a student of Cultural Studies. How do you define a festival identity and how do you translate that into the field layout? You can see the festival as a person, for example Rabobank Amersfoort Jazz would be a Jazz loving man, interested in talent, quality and new experiences, drinking his beer in the pub. Festival Classique describes itself as a woman, which also returns in the layout as a silhouette of a girl. People, and festivals too, have a personality and express that in their appearance. The appearance of a festival is seen in the advertising up to the field layout. With the use of particular colors, the arrangement of things like stages, food service and toilets, return of artifacts and symbols, names, a new world is made. 
After forming a theory for festival identity analysis the outcome will be combined with a description of field layout and a case study. With this I hope to make a good base in this social-esthetical research to festivals.

Last Friday, March the 8th 2013, The New Institute and SNS Reaal Fund organized a seminar called “Moving Stories” in Rotterdam. This event was organized for museum professionals and other interested parties to share knowledge about narrative experiences and digital innovation in museums and learn more about the developments of the projects of SNS Reaal Fund. The program ‘Digital Innovation in Museums’ by SNS Reaal Fund was created in 2012. Harry van Vliet was part of the evaluation committee. Over 90 proposals were handed in and 13 of them are honored. Due to the success of the first edition SNS Reaal Fund decided to give museums an second opportunity to hand in a (new) proposal they have to submit in June 2013.

I love reading. One of my earliest memories is sitting in first grade on the first day and holding up the word “boom” (tree) every time the teacher said it. That was my very first official reading lesson. Ever since, I’ve read each and every letter my eyes fell on. Magazines, news papers, leaflets, the cereal box at breakfast, but most of all books.
I have to admit I’m a bit suspicious of e-readers and i-pads. Secretly, I think they’re ok to use for online activities, but reading? Actual books? Oh no, that cannot possibly be as good as reading a good old fashioned book. Books are the real thing, stories are supposed to be published on paper. Books have that tactile experience,  that smell of paper. You don’t need to recharge your book. You can read everywhere. Books are simply beautiful. That’s why I just had to have “It’s a book” by Lane Smith, when I came across it a couple of weeks ago in (naturally) a lovely little bookshop. “It’s a book” is a funny picture book about a book loving monkey and a more digitally minded donkey, reading Treasure Island.
Then my colleague Dick Swart presented his thesis about the new reading experience. His idea is that new(ish) phenomena such as gaming, internet and new reading devices will influence the way stories will be written and read in the (near) future.  That could lead to new genres like the transmedial novel, time driven novel and the spaghetti novel. Thinking about what these novels would look like made me realize that maybe I wasn’t such a booklover after all. I had to admit that about 90-95% of what I read for entertainment, is found online. Digital magazines, forums and personal blogs, that’s what I’m curled up on the couch with, not my piles and piles of books. I read for pleasure on a daily basis, but books get relegated to the holidays. Fortunately, their advantages still apply there. Have a look at “It’s a book”  for the mind refresher! (And, yes, I’m aware of the irony of watching a trailer for that specific book!) Oh, and I’ll get over my aversion to e-readers.

Looking for a subject to write about in this blog post, I decided to visit ‘Het Scheepvaartmuseum’.  The museum started a renovation in 2007 and a year ago there was a grand reopening. Not only  were the exterior and interior of the building renovated, but in addition the exhibition concept was changed. Even the visual identity of the museum was renewed. The museum was converted from ‘classical’ maritime museum to a place for a maritime experience. You can see the complete collection online, but I wanted to experience the experience!

In about one and a half week Crossmedialab proudly presents its book about festivalexperience at the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht. Like in Harry van Vliet’s blog (15 September 2012), I would like to focus here on a part of the content. After a few years of measuring the motivations of people to go to a festival, measuring the use of social media before, during and after a festival and the satisfaction of the visitors, I thought it was time to measure my own festivalexperience. What are my motivations to go to a festival and which media do I use during the festival? The surveyresearch in our book focuses on four national festivals. My own festivalsummer, however, was national (Lowlands festival) and international (Les Ardentes in Liege Belgium and Outsidelands in San Francisco USA).

Since we are finalizing our current research on festivals and working towards a publication in September, we are coming out of our research closet! Last week a ‘snippet’ of our research was presented at the international ASCA meeting in Amsterdam by Jelke de Boer en Michiel Rovers. This concerned the somewhat surprising result of social media users having lower scores on motivation question, before as well as during the festival. Could it be that social media users are less intrinsically motivated and more ‘instrumental’, scanning what leisure opportunities are available and choosing which one fits most conveniently? And are social media users during a festival more pre-occupied with showing they are ‘there’ at the festival (‘look at me!’) instead of being in the moment of experiencing the festival? Putting a mobile phone between you and the performing artist is a physical act of distancing yourself from what is happening around you by literally putting media between you and your surroundings. Adformatie also picked up these surprising results, and although being wrongly quoted on it, was further evidence for us that people are interested in our research.

It is a well known fact that the internet has brought with it many changes to the world economy, society and the daily lives of people. As people use the media and applications to define their identities (as I argued in my last blog), these developments and opportunities that accompany them might even be important for people’s perceptions and values. The popularity of internet applications results in their being used regularly to provide services for the general public. Besides that, the interactivity also creates opportunities for consumers to be proactive in gaining new experiences. As a result, the ways people choose to attend, prepare and experience events have changed.

Today, at the festival DeBeschaving members of the Crossmedialab were present to promote their concepts (among them BandSpot). Also a survey was held among the festival visitors, a survey (the ‘eventmonitor’) that is being developed by researchers of the Crossmedialab. A publication on the experience of festivals, with data from this survey will be published shortly. Furthermore, we also had fun watching DazzledKid, Kensington and so many other acts (a snail race, and of course Elvis lives….)