Immersion and Togetherness: How Live Visualization of Audience Engagement Can Enhance Music Events

This paper evaluates the influence of an additional visual aesthetic layer on the experience of concert goers during a live event. The additional visual layer incorporates musical features as well as biosensing data collected during the concert, which is coordinated by our audience engagement monitoring technology. This technology was used during a real Jazz concert. The collected measurements were used in an experiment with 32 participants, where two different forms of visualization were compared: one factoring in music amplitude, audience engagement collected by the sensors and the dynamic atmosphere of the event, the other one purely relying on the beat of the music. The findings indicate that the visual layer could add value to the experience if used during a live concert, providing a higher level of immersion and feeling of togetherness among the audience.