At what point does the audience start to affect the artist?

There are many levels to the involvement of an audience in multimedia artwork. With Wagner, the audience merely was hit from multiple fronts and was not particularly involved in the outcome of the piece itself. As time went on though, artists like John Cage helped the development of methods that involved the participation of the audience and added a factor of "indeterminacy and chance operations" to his work. Artists today range greatly in their inclusion of the audience, from simple multimedia performances with traditional audiences to performance comedy like that seen on "Who's line is it anyway?" where the audience directly affects the outcome of each skit.
I think that it is imporant to note that the artist chooses the level of involvement the audience has, but as soon as the audience is given any sort of choice to affect the outcome of the performance or piece, the artist is subject to their whim. If nobody that showed up to telesymphony had a cell phone, or had the correct brand, Golan Levin would have had to abandon his original plan for the cell phone musical performance. Technology opens the door to new methods of integration between artist and audience, but also forces the artist to often relinquish full control of the situation to gain that interactive spark.


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I chose the Lincoln Memorial because it represents a number of things depending on who is there. To most, it is a representation of the authority of liberty and justice and the solidarity of our nation following the civil war. Many of the people found visiting do so out of ritual purpose, usually related to education. I know certainly that many of my friends and myself included made school trips to the national mall, but to the lincoln memorial inparticular to catch a glimpse into our country's history.