SIEMPRE - Social Interaction Entertainment Using Music Performance

Description / Scenarios

In the SIEMPRE project three different experimental research scenarios will be faced to show the subtle and complex social interactions taking place:

  1. 1. between expert as well as non expert string quartet musicians during live musical performance,
  2. 2. during the communicative process of orchestra conduction of an orchestra section, and
  3. 3. in audiences assisting to music performances.

The scenarios 1 and 2 explore the entrainment and emotional contagion between small and medium numbers of expert performers. The third is implemented to understand what happens among large groups of listeners, i.e what happens in the live-performance scenario and if there is an emotional contagion between performers and their audience. Each scenario has specific challenges and common visions below described.

String Quartet: (see setup explanatory video)

  1. Do the expressive, emotional and social contexts affect the interpersonal entrainment and emotional contagion observed across the various modalities or in a combination of the modalities?
  2. In the case of changes in the context, is the group of musicians able to find strategies in order to re-establish the feeling of synchronisation and group cohesion? How does this affect emotional contagion as indicated by the autonomic physiological signals?
  3. Does entrainment observed in one modality influence entrainment in the other modalities? E.g., breath cycle entrainment entrains behavioural entrainment?
  4. In the case the leading music score, usually played by the first violin, is switched to the second violin, is it still possible to determine the leadership in the group?
  5. Can the motoric component alone (see Scherer's "Component Process Model", Scherer, 2001) explain the entrainment or does autonomic activity (as effected by emotion) play a role?

Orchestra Conduction:

  1. What kind of communication is achieved during conduction?
  2. How does the conductor motorically drive the orchestra?
  3. Is there any relationship between the efficiency of this communication, the degree of interindividual synchronisation, the amount of entrainment, and the quality of musical production?
  4. From a neurophysiological point of view, what are the common neuronal substrate and cognitive processes shared by action, language, and music?

Audience experience:

  1. How can we measure the quality of audience experience?
  2. How does entrainment among performers affect audience experience?
  3. How does emotion among performers affect audience experience?
  4. How does co-creation by the audience affect audience experience?