BREAKING DOWN THE FOURTH WALL
Image via WIRED
Being able to connect with your audience can make or break a musician’s career and these days, social media is breaking down the “fourth wall” which traditionally separated performers from their fans. However, beyond celebrity Twitter feeds and Reddit interviews, some musicians are taking this newfound interactivity even further.
Some might call it a soundtrack for these ultra-connected times, but Lucky Dragons’ Luke Fischbeck doesn’t just make music for his fans—he makes music with them. He transforms concert spaces into hard-wired electronic orchestras where audience members are linked with wires that produce tones when people interact.
As a kid, Fischbeck was introduced to computers through the now-defunct computing language Logo which many thirtysomethings will remember. Unlike a spreadsheet program, this simple computing language allowed users to move a turtle around a screen without a clear goal—purely tointeraction with a new technology. Today Fischbeck channels this same whimsy into user-generated music, which is similar to the way musicians interacted in the jazz clubs he hung out in as a teen. In a way, what Fischbeck does is like melodic tweeting. In that case, #thefourthwallhascomedown.
