What distinguishes live performances?

Audiences and performers alike talk of a unique ‘buzz’ and ‘crackle’ created by successful live performance. Live drama, live music, live dance, live comedy seem to deliver a quality of experience that is not fully reproduced in their recorded, streamed or projected forms.

This symposium will explore different methods for analysing, measuring and understanding the live experience, ranging from large scale automatic sensing of audience responses to the fine-grained moments of interaction between audiences, between audiences and performers and between performers.

Speakers

Prof. Pat Healey, Queen Mary, University of London. “Sensing Audience Engagement”

Prof. Michael Schober, The New School, New York. “Do Audiences and Performers Agree on What Happened?”

Dr Penelope Woods, Queen Mary, University of London. “Many Audiences for Hamlet: Australia, New Zealand & the Pacific Isles, May-June 2015”

Prof. Christian Heath, Kings College London. “Audience Participation, Impression Management and the Legitimacy of Transactions”