Real-Time Measurement and Analysis of Audience Response

How do you harness a “level” of emotional connectivity from audience/participants? Questionnaires, focus group discussions, interviews and other qualitative methods gather retrospective thoughts of the participant and may miss important insights or connections that could be discovered if a real-time response is recorded. The aspiration for real-time audience data recording is problematic in many areas of research, in particular performing arts where the work/research presented is time bound. In addressing this problem within research into the design of novel musical controllers, custom “sliders” were used to measure and examine real-time audience response to short musical performances. The audience moved their sliders in response to the performance, producing continuous data that was recorded into music software and timestamped. The initial test results have shown promising insights and usefulness for real-time data collection and examination. These results and possible methods of data analysis are presented along with discussion on how this approach may be applied in other research contexts.