All That JASSS

Quick - this diagram analyzes what festival?

On our Home Page you can see a few of this week’s highlights. As the web’s main resource for information about performing arts festivals, we have to cover what is perhaps the biggest event of the week. How big? The event includes acts from 37 nations. Millions will watch on television. Many of them will be on the edge of their seats until it is declared who is the winner of — the Eurovision Song Contest.

This year’s contest takes place in Athens, home of last year’s winner. (In last week’s interview, Staniewski proposed that Athens will, once again, become the world’s cultural destination. Could this be proof?)

The semi-finals take place during the week — you can watch on television or see rehearsals on the web. The final is on May 20.

Inspired by the San Remo Festival in Italy, the Eurovision song contest has, over the last fifty years, continued to grow in its popularity, participation, and pop culture fun. Some cool facts:

• The most used word in connection with the song contest is “Abba.” (They were winners in 1974 with Waterloo.)
• Sweden did not win again until 1984 with the song, Diggo-loo-diggi-ley.
• The most covered Eurovision hit song is Volare. (How many other songs can you name that were recorded by both Dean Martin and David Bowie?)
• What other festival gets analyzed by the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation?

That’s right. In the most recent publication of JASSS - the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Vol. 9, No. 2 - Derek Gatherer compares the voting results from Eurovision song contests.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at his article, Comparison of Eurovision Song Contest Simulation with Actual Results Reveals Shifting Patterns of Collusive Voting Alliances. The Venn diagram above represents the “collusive voting partnerships, significant at the 5% level, for a 5-year window between 2001 and 2005.” Sounds like each region’s nations like to band together to support their own.

Gee, and I would have abandoned my own national family to vote for ABBA!

- Bill Reichblum

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 5:51 pm and is filed under On Culture - . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.