When you go to concerts today, you will find people looking at their phones. We could complain about that, or we could realize that there are two potential ways to deal with it.
The first way is to realize that, since they’re going to be looking at their phones anyway, you could just make them part of the show.
Some artists and venues already encourage fans to tweet pictures, upload videos and vote on song requests. This allows younger fans to scratch their gnawing phone itch while still participating actively in the show.
But why stop there? You could even have audiences download an app to interact with the concert: If everyone’s got a high-powered computing device in their pocket anyway, why not give each of them control over a handful of pixels of projected abstract image and see what might unfold?
There are brilliant and unrealized possibilities here. Good excuses to make better art.
The second path is to make music that’s more interesting than the phone. This is more difficult. But it’s a welcome challenge.
If you take this approach, you could even go as far as to prohibit people’s phone usage. (This is already common at the opera, symphonic concerts and anywhere an older audience can be found.)
But if you have moratorium on phone usage, and you find that people stop showing up because they can’t stand to be in the room with only your music to pass the time, then you can’t blame them for it.
Both of these paths are valid. Either one can spur you on to be ever-more creative and inventive than you have been. In either case, if people end up just scrolling through their Facebook feeds, you lose. And either way, just blaming them for it won’t change a damn thing.