Thought experiment: artistic judges

[4everchan]

Didn't the current judging system evolve because people were concerned the prior system had too much leeway for bias, including national style bias? It seems like you are trying to bring that back.

Now, perhaps we could have the artistic judging done by an AI, which is available to the whole skating community, so everyone can test how well their routines is likely to be judged before the competition.

Or we could make it more like certain reality TV artistic shows, in which the person who's fans shout the loudest wins. Gee, can you think of any possible problems with that?

We could also have performances be judged by the Internet audience - and the fans can buy votes. No possible bias with that at all!

Art is never going to be unbiased. There are always many schools of thought in the arts about how things should be done. And there are often regional biases in those schools of thought.

To me, the problem with figure skating is that there is a competition. Sports should be done for the joy of movement, not for beating someone else. Shows and theatric productions come a lot closer to the way things should be.

There are objective ways to judge art. Not all of it is subjective and biased.

 

[Mathman]

There are objective ways to judge art. Not all of it is subjective and biased.

I think that the problem is that in esthetic matters fans and casual observers do not generally accept the "objective expertise" of professional evaluators.

In contrast, in tennis, if the Hawk Eye Electronic Line Calling Apparatus shows a computer-generated picture displaying a ball landing out of bounds, not even there most partisan and invested fan is likely to shout, "SEZ YOU."

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Let’s imagine that the ISU has decided to split judging panels into Technical judges (responsible for assessing element GOEs and Skating Skills) vs. Artistic judges (responsible for evaluating the performance qualities of whole programs).

Artistic judges should already have some high-level expertise in evalution of movement-based performing arts and related fields. They do not need to have prior knowledge of figure skating before starting to train as artistic skating judges.

We can figure details later about the logistics of recruiting and deploying this new group of judges, such as what levels of skating it would apply to, how many such judges would be needed, whether they would be paid.

Let’s say there will be online training and also at least one in-person judging school either at a live competition or at a rink with live demonstrations.


I want to start by discussing what kind of shared knowledge base we want to develop among this judging pool.

Feel free to respond to any or all of the following questions:

1) If someone who considers themselves qualified to judge skating from an artistic perspective wants to apply for this kind of judging appointment, what kind of previous experience would be positively considered for acceptance into the artistic judging program?

2) What facts about skating technique do artistic judges new to the skating world need to understand, as context for their evaluations?

3) What facts about current and historical skating rules that affect performance options should these judges be familiar with?

4) What iconic historical skating performances should these judges be familiar with? Maybe broken down, for singles, into figures-era free skating, post-figures 6.0-era freeskating, and IJS era.

5) Should the same judges be trained to judge both singles and pairs? Or start with singles and get an additional appointment for pairs after they’re more experienced? Ice dance would be separate from the beginning.

6) Should the definitions and descriptions of the Composition and Performance program components remain as is? Would it be better to split Interpretation separate from Performance again? Should the component scores be totally rewritten entirely from scratch, and if so, how?

Have fun!

LOL! I see you created this thread based on a comment I made about the need for performance experts on judging panels (mentioned in the thread about the rules effects on performances lacking creativity).

I did not have an opportunity to respond to your initial post in the other thread questioning my comment. I appreciate your questions in that thread, so I will follow-up when I get a chance, and further engage here as well. Thanks @gkelly.