Togetherness in expressive musical interaction: Effects of social presence on head motion, gaze, and arousal
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Performing musicians' ancillary body motion is expressive of their cognitive and emotional engagement with the music. The quality of their motion shows their understanding of the musical structure, and is aesthetically meaningful for observers. Some studies have shown that musicians move differently when playing with others or for an audience than when playing solo or in private. Our research addresses the question of how changes in the social demands of a performance environment affect musicians' head motion, gaze, and cognitive arousal. We have carried out experiments with small ensembles using motion capture, gaze tracking, and pupillometry. Our results show that musicians move more in the presence of observers than when they are visually isolated. When they can see their co-performers, they can spend substantial time watching them. Coordinated head motion can emerge between ensemble members. Our pupillometry results suggest that cognitive arousal is linked with body motion and technical and expressive difficulty of the music, and may heighten during public performance, especially for musicians in a more-demanding or leading role (e.g., the first violinist of a string quartet). We argue that body-based interaction between ensemble musicians and/or between musicians and audience members promotes rewarding experiences of "togetherness".