Audience Participation: Super Bowl Halftime Show

Music innovator John Cage once said that music could no longer be seen as something separate and detached from its listeners and from its context. Rather, creating music was a process that initiated by the composer or performer, but completed by the audience.

As technology advanced, performances with spectacular lighting, stereo, and visual effects are common nowadays. But the more I experience it, the more I feel like we are only receivers to these technological platforms. For example, in 2012 Super bowl halftime performance, the special effects of projecting and lights, and performers are spectacular. But there is a one-way direction to the audience. Another Super Bowl halftime performance in 1993 shows different interaction between audience and performer Michael Jackson. In “Heal The World,” audience in the stadium is part of the show. They are given certain color papers so they can lift them up to become the portraits of children. This corresponded to what John Cage’s idea of the performance should be completed by the audience.