Sensing a live audience.

Psychophysiological measurement has the potential to play an important role in audience research. Currently, such research is still in its infancy and it usually involves collecting data in the laboratory, where during each experimental session one individual watches a video recording of a performance. We extend the experimental paradigm by simultaneously measuring Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) of a group of participants during a live performance. GSR data were synchronized with video footage of performers and audience. In conjunction with questionnaire data, this enabled us to identify a strongly correlated main group of participants, describe the nature of their theatre experience and map out a minute-by-minute unfolding of the performance in terms of psycho-physiological engagement. The benefits of our approach are twofold. It provides us a robust and accurate mechanism for assessing a performance. Moreover, our infrastructure can enable, in the future, real-time feedback from remote audiences for online performances. We are currently scaling up the system allowing for simultaneous GSR measurement of larger audiences