ianeva: December 2007 Archives
Problem Definition: How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?
It is our third week of research and the project now has a solid structure. We have formed a basic script and our first interviews have gone very well. In terms of research, we are completely focused on hotels and interior designers. The formulation of identity through architecture mixed with music within the modern hotel has become really intriguing. Following the interviews today, we are completely on track and up to date with out research. The interviews were informative, clear and useful, providing us with excellent material to use with our documentary. Thus far, all of our aims have been achieved. With the addition of our script (which we shall prepare in detail during the coming days), the documentary is on schedule and shaping nicely.
Extension and elaboration of the project
The most crucial aspect of this project is the script itself. This is the factor that binds everything else together. It was crucial that we organized a script early in order to give the project direction and structure. It is the building block. Seen as the documentary will last fifteen minutes, we decided to split our script into five different parts, each one lasting at least three minutes. This allows us to control our own input and keep track of various research material. It also eliminates any errors or mix ups of information.
Part 1
For the introduction, we had the idea to interview our fellow classmates about their views on identity construction with regards to hotels and musical architecture. The perceptions and associations of our culturally varied class will form the basis of our introduction, after which a more in depth and theoretical approach will become more central. The views of our fellow students on different music played in different hotels in various countries will form a nice introductory point upon which to expand. The placement of this point in the documentary will be subject to change as the final draught of the script takes shape. The particular question that we ask is “How do you imagine the person sitting in the lobby of a hotel playing this music? What is he wearing? What is he doing?” By asking these questions we aim to demonstrate the power of music to make us visualize the specificities of a setting. This is essential for the arguments we make in the rest of the documentary. Also, this approach allows us to combine theoretical information with practical demonstration on how the processes described in the readings we have done, actually work.
Part 2
The second part of the documentary will focus on music as an extension of interior design. This includes our interview with an individual involved in interior design who possesses an in depth knowledge of the industry and how it is intimately tied to music.
· Interview taken in the Coen Gorter Interieur Concepten
The manner in which the technical equipment used to generate music is placed inside a modern example of architecture is interesting. A CD player has now become a stylish accessory or addition to the private living space – maybe even a status symbol. Different music will generate a different atmosphere, in turn leading to various feelings about the space. This is especially important with regards to hotels where such an atmosphere can become the difference between customer satisfaction and revulsion.
Part 3
Part three of our research diary will deal with the historical aspect of background music. We will perform an in depth analysis of background music. This will include an overview of the development of such trends like Erik Satie’s “Furniture Music”. He was an avante-garde artist who experimented with music played during the intermission in the theatre. This is an important material for our documentary because it reveals important aspects of the development of background music. We will contrast today’s perceptions of background music with its initial reception. We will also use New York Times articles from the 40s and the 50s to analyze the growth of background music and the way in which it spread to factories and other public spaces. We will briefly introduce the history of the MUZAK corporation. Finally, we will talk about contemporary Muzak and it’s success. We will also mention “NO MUZAK”, an anti background music movement.
Part 4
Part four will be a comparative study. We intend to compare and contrast background music in two public spaces and how it affects customers in different ways. This will be achieved by observing music played in supermarkets and then comparing this to music played in hotels. The more relaxed music of the hotel environment functions in a different way. It constructs identity in a different way. Supermarkets tend to use more frantic or energetic tunes to stimulate their customers while hotels use relaxing music to allow their guests to feel at home. We will introduce the concept of “time inconsistency” in order to explain how music in stores operates.
Part 5
The final element of our rough script will be the interviews themselves. This means the people – the staff and the guests of the hotels as well as interior designers and other thoughtful contributors. Keep in mind that this is a rough idea of our script structure and it is highly likely that our interviews will be widely distributed throughout the documentary.
Research Strategy:
Our research strategy remains relatively unchanged from our last entry. We have tirelessly contacted hotels and arranged interviews as often as possible. Unfortunately, many hotel managers were unavailable but we managed to contact the most important ones. We introduced ourselves and asked our list of pre written questions, adding and querying whenever possible and appropriate. At all times, we made out subjects feel at home and comfortable, resulting in a large amount of accurate information. We have also searched the Internet and university libraries for sources on our topic and this led to the discovery of the New York Times articles dating from 1941. We are also trying to incorporate a technological aspect into our study and we will soon visit an interior design agency catered explicitly to technology mixed with lavish interiors. We are also working hard on our script but this is a time consuming and lengthy undertaking. The structure of the script was outlined above and we will continue to work on actual dialogue throughout the coming days. With regards to the interviews themselves, we asked several questions and they are outlined below. We altered the questions significantly from last weeks blog entry as objectives and aims became clearer.
Questions:
At what stage will you integrate music into your design plans?
Is there communication between the Interior Design artist and the music company?
Why do you change your CD every month?
What is the technical set up for music in your hotel?
Who determines the volume level and what are the factors?
How do you visualize the guests?
How has technology changed in your hotel?
Who communicates with the music company?
Research Results:
The results of our work cannot yet be analyzed but we are extremely satisfied with the way our interviews have transpired. We visited a hotel and an interior design office today and both participants gave lengthy detailed answers to our questions.
Hotels: Amrath Grand Hotel de l`Empereur, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Kruisherenhotel Maastricht
Interior Design Bureau: Coen Gorter Interieur Concepten
They spoke at length about their own feelings with regards to music and identity and how this is tied to interior design. The woman interviewed in the interior design office was most helpful and interesting, providing us with details of new developments in music and the interior, how her customers felt about music and the entire notion of musical architecture. She spoke about the finished product of interior design and how music can transform public spaces.
We also interviewed one staff member in a hotel. She spoke about different music being played at different times of the day and in different seasons. Additionally, she provided a thorough overview of the corporate process of music within the hotel industry and how different forms of music related to her guests. The research results were satisfactory. The sources are also excellent. The New York Times articles and the history of Erik Satie allow us to document the emergence of this unique form of music. Contemporary “Muzak” is present on many websites that we have found.
With regards to the technical work on our documentary we considered the following aspects:
-reflecting on our observations from Vincent van M.’s session we thought about the compatibility of our voices and considered using a different speaker in order to make the audio more harmonic and clear.
-As we are from different countries, we were worried that the unusual mixture of a Bulgarian and Irish accent may not function effectively and aimed to find voices with the most powerful effect on the listener. Reliability is important and a voice must be trustworthy. A listener must feel attracted to a voice and not distracted by it.
-Finally we decided that the documentary should be more personal and we decided to use our own voices.
-We also want to use background sounds to transport the listener into the world of our topic.
The literature, script and interviews must be combined however, for all of our research to bare fruit. At this stage, we are working well and on track. We plan several more interviews over the next few days and when these are completed, we will devote more time to the script and finally begin the editing process.
Problem Definition: How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?
It has been one week since the submission of our basic proposal for the creation of a fifteen minute long radio documentary. Since then, the project has developed even further and the idea has become even more refined. After examining certain areas of the basic proposal, we decided to carry out our research in some key public spaces where the notion of identity construction is driven by different styles of architecture and interior design, intertwined with various forms of music. How do different kinds of music and interior design work together to forge different forms of identity? In order to answer this question we decided to look at some of
Places to examine:
-Amrath Grand Hotel de L’Empereur (interview appointed for Tuesday 11.12.07)
-Crowne Plaza Hotel
-Kruisherenhotel Maastricht (interview appointed for Tuesday 11.12.07)
-Novotel Maastricht
-Hotel Riche Valkenburg
While we intend to take interviews from the people in charge of the music selection in these hotels we will only use selected parts from two/three interviews as materials for our documentary. We will be careful not to overload it with factual information provided by various personalities. Instead, we will limit ourselves to presenting only two or three key figures introducing their experience to the listener.
Extension and elaboration of the project
During our visit in some of the abovementioned hotels, and as a result of the conversations we had with the representatives of the institutions, we observed several important details which made us re-consider the dimensions and some of the aspects of the project proposal we introduced last week. We came up with new ideas for the directions our documentary can take and for the issues to be discussed in it:
- We decided to focus specifically on the companies which provide the hotels with a selection of background music. Both in Amrath Grand Hotel and in Kruisherenhotel, CDs containing various music compilations are sent monthly.
- Therefore, in the interviews we have appointed for next week, we intend to find out more about the communication between the hotels and the companies in charge of preparing their background music. What are they looking for from a specific music selection to provide?/ What directions do they give to the companies in requesting music and what are their main requirements?/ What reasons do they have to adopt the monthly cycle scheme in the selection and change of background music (especially when considering that 1) this change will probably remain unnoticed by the guests whose visits, we assume, are less frequent, and that 2) the music is played so low that one can hardly hear it/focus on it/ listen to it and therefore notice that it has been changed). Who is in charge of communicating with the music companies and what is his position in the hotel? Do interior designers and music designers collaborate in constructing the experience of interior space? Or, do music designers complement the space constructed by interior designers being guided by the identity the latter have already created?
- We will attempt to contact some of the companies in charge of the background music in some hotels
- We will include a short presentation of the MUZAK company which first introduced this type of service in the
Research Strategy:
In order to explore the manner in which identity is created through music in these hotels, we plan to interview the guests in order to document their thoughts on the role of music and how they are influenced by it. The next step will involve finding the individuals who are in charge of the music selection. We intend to ask them why they desire to play certain songs, how they act as an extension of interior design and of course, the desired effects on the guests.
We will also focus on the technological aspect of identity construction in these public spaces. We intend to ask questions about the audio techniques in use. What technologies are used in constructing the experience of interior space through music? How is music manipulated in order to produce a specific effect and to influence the experience of the guests in the desired way? Additionally, the notion of volume is very important. How do you choose between the adoption of music as an unostentatious background or as something immediate and having noticeable effects?
Questions:
What types of music do you choose to play in your institution and why?
What is the origin of your music?
To what extent can your music be considered and extension of the interior design of your institution?
Can you comment on the audio technology in use?
Do you alter the volume of the music?
What role does music play in constructing the experience of your hotel?
Why is music so low? And how exactly does it function if it is not designed to be listened to?
Do you think that your choice of music constructs a certain identity within your institution?
The script for this project will be presented in detail in the following entries of this weblog.
Literature:
“Time-inconsistent preferences and Consumer Self-Control”- Stephen Hoch and George Loewenstein
“
Those will be useful in comparing the traditional purposes and strategies of Muzak as applied to places such as stores and supermarkets, with the employment of music in hotels. We will distinguish between two different types of Muzak in which the effects of music are designed to operate in different ways. We will compare the dynamics of these places as specifically determined by the music played in them.
(Chapter 12) “The Meaning of Music” in Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music- Simon Frith
-deals with the problem of the “meaning” of music/ aesthetic listening/ music and identity/ the application of adjectives in experiencing and interpreting music
(Chapter 12) “Visual and Acoustic Space”- M.McLuhan in Audio Culture:
John Blacking!
“Musical Meaning and its Social Determinants” -Derrick Wright , Sociology 9(3) (1975) (paid article, not in the library!)
We will also focus on texts which regard the consummators of music as listeners and examine/challenge the notion of the listener in a hotel environment. What is the new position/role/meaning of music once it is not listened to?
Research Results:
Our project now has a solid structure and we want to visit these locations tomorrow in order to arrange interviews. Once this has been achieved, we intend to compile a series of questions. Once we have recorded all of the information required, we will then write a script and get to work on editing the radio documentary, putting together a comprehensive analysis of music's strategic role in constructing our experience of interior space.
How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?
It has been one week since the submission of our basic proposal for the creation of a fifteen minute long radio documentary. Since then, the project has developed even further and the idea has become even more refined. After examining certain areas of the basic proposal, we decided to carry out our research in some key public spaces where the notion of identity construction is driven by different styles of architecture intertwined with various forms of music. Do different kinds of music and interior design work together to forge different forms of identity? This is one of the key questions that needs to be answered and where better to begin than
What role does music play within these establishments? Is it a factor that will lure guests into the hotel, reassuring them of their place in society and the quality of their accommodation? Or on the other hand, does a certain form of music upset the atmosphere and lead to discontent? In order to explore the manner in which identity is created through music in these hotels, we plan to interview the guests in order to document their thoughts on the role of music and how they are influenced by it. The next step will involve finding the individuals who are in charge of the music selection. We intend to ask them why they desire to play certain songs, how they act as an extension of interior design and of course, the desired effects on the guests. We hope to involve hotels like Amrath Grand Hotel de L`Empereur, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Novotel and Hotel Riche Valkenburg.
After researching the role of music in hotels, we intend to move in a completely different direction. How is identity constructed in the pubs of
Our project now has a solid structure and we want to visit these locations tomorrow in order to arrange interviews. Once this has been achieved, we intend to compile a series of questions. Once we have recorded all of the information required, we will then write a script and get to work on editing the radio documentary, putting together a comprehensive analysis of music's strategic role in constructing our experience of interior space.
