Ghost games and a Simulated Audience
Image: Martin Meissner / AP
written by Katharine Matthias - June 29, 2020
While sports are returning and are broadcasted, fans are unable to attend, which leads to quiet stadiums all over the world. However, one does not hear the quiet of those stadiums if you tune into a sports game, whether it be Hungarian soccer, South Korean baseball, or Australian rugby. While these sports are disparate, one of the striking similarities that has occurred during this pandemic has been their use of crowd audio tracks in the stadium. These audio tracks sound so real that it is surprising when the camera flashes thousands of empty seats while broadcasting games.
Like something coming from Jean Baudrillard’s dream (or nightmare), this simulated crowd noise has been developed with help from Electronic Arts’s “FIFA” soccer video game. While responses to the simulated crowd audio have been mixed, it highlights the need for audience response and feedback in sports. The players in the stadium are unable to hear the noise; however, broadcasts for the fans are automatically accompanied by the simulated crowd sound.
There is an opportunity for the performing arts, both live virtual performance and socially-distanced in-person theater, to experiment with using video game techniques and simulated audio to generate and play with what it means to be a part of an audience. Taking a cue from the tradition of laugh tracks, simulated crowd noise becomes necessary on Zoom, since the sound of loud and vigorous live applause cancels out over Zoom. Certain projects, such as in White Snake Projects’ live virtual classical music concert “Sing Out Strong: DeColonized Voices” utilized simulated applause in order to generate the feedback loop between performers and audience.
