The Justice Syndicate: Using iPads to increase the intensity of participation, conduct agency and encourage flow in live interactive performance

The Justice Syndicate is an interactive performance, featuring an audience who take on the role of jurors considering a difficult case. Participants receive evidence, witness testimonies and prompts to vote and discuss the case on iPads. With this practice-as-research project we sought to explore what are the most effective means of inviting people to participate; how to widen their “horizon of participation”; how to increase the intensity of interaction in order to increase the level of “agentive behaviour” of the participants; and how to create a sense of flow in participants. We found that an effective solution to the fear of experiencing or causing embarrassment is for the invitation to participate to come from a machine and for there to be no distinction between “audience” and “participants.” The use of machines to stimulate interaction in the absence of live performers also proved an effective way of stimulating a high intensity of “agentive behaviour” among audience members, although it did not automatically lead to a greater feeling of agency. Applying an adapted version of Lindinger and colleagues’ (2013) codification of how to stimulate a state of flow in audience members also proved effective in creating a highly immersive experience. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media on 06/02/2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14794713.2020.1722916