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Abstract
Most music is played socially—in a group with others, in front of an audience, or both. On one hand, musical interaction between people can be highly rewarding and lead to strong feelings of “togetherness”. On the other hand, frustration can arise when interaction partners have different ideas about how to play or are not adequately attending to each other. The presence of an audience may magnify both positive feelings of excitement and negative feelings of frustration or anxiety.
In this talk, I will present a study that investigated how classical string quartet musicians are affected by playing conditions designed to enable, perturb, or enhance experiences of musical togetherness. The playing conditions either allowed for normal visual communication between quartet members or disrupted communication to varying degrees. We also manipulated whether or not an audience was present. Two string quartets (one student group and one expert group) performed the same piece of music in each of the different conditions, as audio, pupillometry, body motion, and heart rate data were recorded. This combination of measures gave us a comprehensive look at how the quartets were affected by the manipulation of playing conditions, in terms of behaviour (audio and body motion) and internal state (pupillometry and heart rate).
Our results suggest that the student quartet was more affected by disruptions to their visual communication than the expert quartet. However, the expert quartet showed evidence of reduced cognitive engagement (i.e., smaller average pupil size) in conditions where they could not see each other, in line with our hypothesis that these conditions would be less stimulating and engender weakened experiences of togetherness.
About the speaker
Laura Bishop is a researcher at the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion and the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. She is also PI of an Austrian Science Fund project on musical togetherness, run in collaboration with the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Her research focuses on attention and body expressivity in music performance, with a particular focus on how music ensembles coordinate. She uses a range of methods, including motion capture, eye-tracking/pupillometry, and physiological measures, to capture different aspects of musical performance and interaction.
The event is open for everyone - no registration needed.