LightSoundJournal.com: Restart-19 is an evidence-based scientific study conducted by the University Medical Center, Halle, in conjunction with regional government, aimed at investigating the Coronavirus risks associated with staging major cultural or sporting events in indoor arenas. The project has received almost a million euros in funding, a measure of just how desperate the situation facing the future of such events has become. The principle aim of the study was to determine which technical and organisational actions can most effectively minimise the risk of infection.
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This article seemed like it was going to discuss the findings of the tests the scientists carry out but instead focused on the sound system that they used which I thought was quite strange. Although having a lossless sound is important for a concert, I thought the primary purpose of this concert was to research the most effective way of social distancing in a concert setting. I think that maybe they should have changed their title to be more specific about what they were talking about. It almost seemed like an add for CODA audio because of how often the name was mentioned. Maybe this was purposeful or the author just really likes talking about the specifics of sound systems. It could have been that the purpose of this article was to try and explain how different a sound system might be due to the fact there will be fewer people in the audience but I don’t think that was clear from the title. Overall, I think the writing was almost all over the place with trying to give information about the experiment while immediately following it with information about the sound system.
This article details a solution to a problem that I had not even thought of: if in-person performance can happen if audience sizes are reduced, there are substantial ramifications for audio engineering in particular. It seems like they worked it all out, but it took a significant amount of careful consideration. If audience seating can be centralized in an arena, this all seems like it could be fairly readily adapted for touring; an empty cube is an empty cube regardless of what surrounds it. However, if audience must be in the risers, audio engineers may have to come up with solutions that are highly customized for each venue. I don’t know enough about audio to guess at what it might take to do this, but my guess is that venues would develop their own systems based on their unique setups, and visiting shows would have to use what was already in place.
I found it interesting to get a more in-depth article on a couple experiments I have heard about in passing, especially the one that measured disease transmission amongst audience members under various scenarios. The experiment featured in the article, about tuning sound systems with reduced crowd density, was really fascinating as well. During my summer internship with Arup, we talked a lot about creating artificial crowd noise and similar solutions to simulate atmosphere at events, but did not do as much research into acoustics of lower crowd densities, as we typically worked on permanent installations, rather than per event. However, when discussing what venues of the future, with Covid in mind, might look like, we did discuss at a surface level how we might design a space to be tuned for varying crowd densities and use cases. This was a lot more in our wheelhouse, and much of the technology for tuning mixed-use spaces already exists, so it will be interesting to see if touring events adopt traditional architectural acoustic design in order to combat lower crowd densities.
It is quite interesting to see the advancements and experimentation of technology with this study, but it makes me wonder if this experimentation is practical, or if we can expect a solution to the virus sooner than this will be viable. What the organization experimented with seems very technical, and outside of the coronavirus situation I am not sure if this technique will have much use. This article did not really address the methods of social distancing in the crowd either, it only addressed the technicalities of the sound system. Sure, it is a very important aspect of the concert, but if we only have that going for us and no other proven, safe socially distant protocols in place the technology once again becomes obsolete. Overall, I understand the need to experiment and find alternatives, but I wonder how practical this discovery will prove itself to be in the long run.
I think that articles and studies like this are really important to be paying attention to as we all make plans to bring the world of entertainment back. This sort of experiment shows how different parts of our industry, here audio engineers will have to rethink and re consider normal conventions in order to provide audiences with a similar experience. All of these technologies though and these approaches are working with and towards things that engineers have never faced. Such large spaces with plans for empty seats I imagine will present them with things that they have never seen or heard before in their mixes and may lead to different new solutions. In this article they seemed to work through these kind of problems but I imagine as more and more companies open in different circumstances more problems will arise. Being adaptable and prepared for the unexpected is going to be crucial for all of our departments to open back up during Covid-19.
Since the title of the article was "Experiment Targets Safe Resumption of Live Concerts", I thought that the article would cover more information on the scientific experiment that dealt with the biology and spread prevention of covid-19. I think that it is quite astonishing that they were funded 1 million euros for this project, which just goes to prove how important it is for entertainment to find a way to survive in this climate. However, they did not provide information on where they received this funding or who is supporting them. The article mainly discusses the speakers and sound systems, but never clearly communicated to the reader as to how that would stop the spread of covid in an indoor entertainment space. This article just seems very unreliable with little logic or background credibility. Also, just as a pet peeve, why are they calling it Reaserch-19? Is it just to mimic Covid-19? Because Covid-19 is "19" since it started in 2019. Since this started in 2020, shouldn't it be Research-20??
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