Yarra, Australia, music venue owners can now apply for a grant to help soundproof their rooms when they receive noise complaints. In addition to soundproofing a room, owners can use the grant for acoustic measuring and consulting, town planning, and building surveryors’ fees.

“Live music is an important part of Yarra’s culture,” Yarra City Councillor Simon Huggins told The Herald Sun. “The scheme allows the City of Yarra to act quickly to help venues out where issues arise.”

The newspaper reported that the city council received 138 complaints about music and attendee noise last fiscal year. For the record, Yarra houses 500 venues, 50 of them live music venues.

The state government also announced a similar grant in September.

“My suggestion is that venues apply for acoustic reports through City of Yarra funding,” Music Victoria Spokesman Patrick Donovan told the newspaper. “They could then take that independent consultant’s report to the government and use that as part of a submission saying here is what we need.”

Please visit The Herald Sun for more on the story.

(photo credit: Sentience via photopin cc)

Here’s some support on the value of live experiences. Researchers from Yale University have shown that sharing an experience with another person intensifies the experience for both individuals.

“We often think that what matters in social life is being together with others, but we’ve found it also really matters what those people are doing,” said Erica Boothy, a psychological scientist at Yale University and the study’s lead researcher. “When people are paying attention to the same pleasant thing, whether the Mona Lisa or a song on the radio, our research shows that the experience is much more pleasurable. And the reverse is true of unpleasant experiences—not sharing them makes them more pleasurable, while sharing them makes them worse.”

Boothy and her colleagues had study participants tastes chocolate samples while engaging in a shared activity of looking at a book of paintings. The researchers told them the samples were different, but they were really from the same bar. Participants liked the chocolate more when they each tasted it at the same time compared to when one person tasted the sample while the other looked at the book. In fact, the “shared” chocolate was described as more flavorful. Remember, all the samples were from the same bar.

The researchers think that sharing an experience with another person—even in silence—focuses our attention and causes us to be more aware of what we’re sensing.

“When people think of shared experience, what usually comes to mind is being with close others, such as friends or family, and talking with them,” Boothby said. “We don’t realize the extent to which we are influenced by people around us whom we don’t know and aren’t even communicating with.”

These findings may have impact our multi-tasking social life, too.

“We text friends while at a party, check our Twitter feed while out to dinner, and play Sudoku while watching TV with family—without meaning to, we are unsharing experiences with the people around us,” Boothby said. “A pleasant experience that goes unshared is a missed opportunity to focus on the activity we and others are doing and give it a boost.”

(photo credit: yashima via photopin cc)

I’m not comics connoisseur. If you quizzed me on which characters belong in a Marvel or D.C. world, I’d have to call a lifeline help. What I do love, though, is interactive experiences. So maybe it’s time I start to figure out Iron Man from Aquaman, because The Marvel Experience is coming to a parking lot near you (well, just four parking lots for now).

“The Marvel Experience: The World’s First Hyper-Reality Tour will bring to life all the heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe and put throw them all together in a new, part film, part carnival and part interactive event that will cover 2 acres, 7 giant domes and the world’s only 360-degree, 3-D stereoscopic full-Dome attraction and a state-of-the-art 4-D motion ride,” Steve Buja reported for Game & Guide. “Digital versions of all your favorite characters (regardless of who owns the film rights to them) will fly, fight and live all around you. Want Iron Man and MODOK to fight? That will probably happen.”

I don’t know who MODOK is but that doesn’t matter. I’m in this for the interactive elements. Augmented reality, multiperson gaming, and RFID tracking? My heart’s all a-fluttered!

“With this dynamic new way to experience entertainment, you’re actually in the middle of the action from start to finish,” said Rick Licht, CEO of Hero Ventures, in a press release. “While I’m sure kids will eat this up, we know that there is an extensive Marvel fan base over the age of 25—and we’ve created this event with them in mind. The grown-ups are going to absolutely love The Marvel Experience!”

Hero Ventures is producing the event, and a preview will take place at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick in Phoenix, Arizona, from Dec. 12, 2014 to Jan. 3, 2015. A red-carpet event is scheduled for Jan. 9, 2015, at the Cotton Bowl at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas. Tickets go on sale October 10.

Buja reported that the largest dome stands 65-feet tall and that because the footprint is so large that is why it’s being place in parking lots instead of inside stadiums.

“The experience will never repeat itself, so every room you go into will feature a new gadget or gizmo of bleeding edge technology,” Buja wrote. “All of it will be seamlessly woven together to craft a ‘new world of storytelling’ where the action takes place not only in front of you, but behind, above and all around.”

The Marvel Experience: North American dates and venues (subject to change)

Phoenix, Arizona Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, 12/12/14–1/3/15
Dallas, Texas The Cotton Bowl at Fairpark, 1/9/14–2/1/15
SanDiego, California Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2/7/15–2/22/15
SanFrancisco, California AT&T Park – Lot A, 2/27/15–3/22/15

(Image: The Marvel Experience)

The Miami Herald reports that the Miami City Commission has approved plans for a downtown convention center and a 1,800-room hotel on the site of the old Miami Arena.

“The commission’s approval of MDM Development’s $600 million Marriott Marquis Miami World Center clears an important hurdle for the developer, which can now pursue permits and tax rebates, and push to break ground before the end of the year,” David Smiley wrote. “The privately financed project has been long-desired by downtown business boosters, who say a convention center will help flush businesses, restaurants and hotels with customers.”

The convention center will feature 350,000 square feet of meeting space, a 100,000-square-foot exhibit hall, and a 60,000-square-foot ballroom.

Please visit the Miami Herald website for the full story.

(Image: Miami Wordcenter)

With its new project named Neo-Ticketing, The Firestation Centre for Arts & Culture wants to find out if it will sell more tickets, if guests will get better deals, and if artists will earn more.

The project recently received a £122,877 (US$198,701) grant by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts for development and implementation.

“You’ve probably come across something a bit like this before, maybe buying airline tickets, or if you’re a bit global—baseball tickets,” the Windsor, England-based venue wrote on its website. “Easyjet, for example, make a number of tickets available at very low prices early to stimulate sales or reward advance purchase customers, whilst letting the price rise steadily over time. Their prices also change according to levels of demand or time of year.”

Firestation will experiment in three ways: rising prices, moving prices, and random price crash.

Rising Prices
“The price of your ticket will start very low, as much as 50 percent lower than we would normally charge, and increase slowly over time to a maximum of 50 percent more than we would normally charge. So the earlier you buy your ticket, the better deal you get.”

Moving Prices
“The price goes up AND down right up until the event, depending on how many tickets are sold and how quickly you’re buying them. So if the price is higher than you expected, you can always check back tomorrow.”

Random Price Crash
“Every now and then, perhaps to stimulate interest, perhaps to reward you for following us on Facebook or Twitter, perhaps just for fun on a Friday night, we’ll crash the price right down and see what happens. So if you hear us say ‘Tickets for New Years Eve are 10p for the next 10 minutes,’ get in there!”

The project is in partnership with Monad Software (the venue’s box office builder) and the Royal Holloway University of London, whose economics department will create the experiments and analyze the data.

“We’re very excited about Neo-Ticketing and really looking forward to seeing how it works,” the venue wrote. “We have a Tumblr blog at neoticketing.tumblr.com where we’ll post loads of updates and project news. Plus, we’d love to hear what you think about any of it—did it work for you? Have we missed something? Who else does it?”

(photo credit: drewm via photopin cc)