A Web Application for Audience Participation in Live Music Performance: The Open Symphony Use Case

Abstract

This paper presents a web-based application enabling au- diences to collaboratively contribute to the creative pro- cess during live music performances. The system aims at enhancing audience engagement and creating new forms of live music experiences. Interaction between audience and performers is made possible through a client/server architecture enabling bidirectional communication of cre- ative data. Audience members can vote for pre-determined musical attributes using a smartphone-friendly and cross- platform web application. The system gathers audience members' votes and provide feedback through visualisations that can be tailored for speci c needs. In order to sup- port multiple performers and large audiences, automatic audience-to-performer groupings are handled by the appli- cation. The framework was applied to support live interac- tive musical improvisations where creative roles are shared amongst audience and performers (Open Symphony). Qual- itative analyses of user surveys highlighted very positive feedback related to themes such as engagement and cre- ativity and also identi ed further design challenges around audience sense of control and latency.