When and How the Audience Moves

Audience motion is a defining component of the face-to-face concert experience. Motion is also a common component of individual audience members’ reactions and actions to live performances. This article investigates patterns in chest-mounted accelerometer measurements from audience members at a chamber music concert experiment. The aim is to contextualize their behavior during music performance using a sequence of exploratory analyses. Combining insight from subjective reports of audience motion; musical, environmental, and biological frequencies; and similarity of motion timing with neighbors or more distant participants, both in-hall audience participants and live-stream viewers show two distinct music–motion patterns: either unobtrusive dynamic stilling or noticeable tempo-matched bouncing. Audience motion outside of music, during applause, speeches, or survey writing, also shows distinct average quantities of motion and degrees of shared information between seat neighbors, prompting a discussion on the constrained opportunities for audience action and social interaction at live classical concerts. Although exploratory, these extensive analyses provide a useful foundation for future work to further understand audience behaviors in concert music settings and beyond.