Why being there still matters

A recording can preserve a performance. It can make it available to someone who could never attend and allow a listener to return to a moment they missed.

The room offers something else.

People have set aside the same period of time. They can hear the response around them. The performer can react to that response. Nobody knows exactly how the evening will unfold.

These are different experiences with different strengths. Improving one does not necessarily replace the other.

Participation changes the event

Consider a meal with friends. A description can preserve what was served. Photographs can show the table. A recording can capture parts of the conversation.

None can give a later viewer the opportunity to change that conversation.

Participation involves reciprocity. Other people notice whether we are there, hear what we say and respond to it. The experience develops partly because we contribute.

That quality is easy to overlook when we describe experiences mainly through the content they contain. A gathering might include stories, music or information, but those are only part of what people have come for.

They may also want to take part in something that includes them.

Shared time is a commitment

A common time creates inconvenience. People have to travel, coordinate and decline something else.

It also creates a visible commitment. The people present have arranged part of their lives around being there.

That does not make every meeting valuable. An unnecessary meeting can waste precisely the resource it demands. A compulsory gathering may communicate obligation rather than care.

But when attendance is chosen and the occasion is worthwhile, the commitment contributes to its meaning. Someone has made room for other people.

As recorded and generated material becomes more plentiful, that deliberate allocation of time may become more noticeable.

Presence need not mean a building

A meaningful shared experience can happen online.

A live conversation between distant friends allows each person to influence what happens. A small group learning together can recognise progress, offer encouragement and establish expectations that solitary material does not provide.

Physical presence adds qualities of its own, including bodily activity and the experience of a place. But the distinction between participation and consumption cuts across the distinction between online and offline.

A large room can leave someone feeling anonymous. A remote conversation can make them feel closely attended to.

What matters is how the experience allows people to encounter and affect one another.

The risk of exclusivity

Limited places can acquire status. An event can become desirable because many people cannot attend.

That is a different source of value from a good shared experience. Confusing them encourages us to make things exclusive rather than worthwhile.

There is also a practical issue of access. Travel, caring responsibilities, disability and cost can prevent people from being present. A recording or remote option can open a door that would otherwise remain closed.

The aim should be to preserve the qualities of participation while widening the ways people can participate.

An experience does not become meaningful simply by becoming scarce.

What cannot be replayed

Some of the value of an occasion comes from its particularity. These people met at this time. Someone asked an unexpected question. A plan changed. A small incident became a memory they now share.

A recording can help preserve the occasion. It cannot create another opportunity to be part of that same unfolding moment.

There is something encouraging here for a world with abundant content. We do not have to compete with every available image, story or performance to make an encounter worthwhile.

We can create conditions in which people attend to one another and something happens between them.

There will always be more to watch. There is still a reason to be there.