NCRM International Visitor Exchange Scheme (IVES)

New Methods for Tracking Immediate Audience Reaction to Performances (2016 - 2017)

Michael Schober (New School for Social Reslearch, NY) (schober@newschool.edu) visited Patrick Healey (Queen Mary University of London) (p.healey@qmul.ac.uk).

The primary scientific objective of this visitor exchange was to plan and develop a collaborative research proposal for substantial joint UK/US funding that explores immediate audience reactions to live performances, integrating multiple methods that have not yet been combined. The goal is to identify opportunities for connection with live performance venues in London and New York, to explore and potentially pilot the use of mobile survey techniques for collecting concurrent and immediately retrospective accounts and judgments by performers and audience members, to explore the feasibility of using the range of nonintrusive sensing methods for tracking visible audience responses in live performance situations, and to think through how the audience members' self-report (as identified via survey) and continuous overt responses can best be quantitatively connected.

The training and networking objectives include facilitating knowledge exchange between the PI's and co-investigator's labs, with training opportunities for graduate students; and holding one or more joint public seminars about these methodological questions to be held at Queen Mary, with the purpose of stimulating debate and promoting richer thought about the complexity and social dynamics of audience responses, as well as inspiring new thinking about how diverse methods across disciplines might connect.

MethodsNews 2017: 2 article: New methods for tracking immediate audience reaction to performances