Facilitating the Musician's Engagement with New Musical Interfaces: Counteractions in Music Performance

The level of engagement of a musician performing on an instrument is related to the degree of satisfaction derived from that activity. With our work, we aim to assist musicians performing live on a new musical instrument, Network of Interactive Sonic Agents (NOISA), by helping them maintain or increase their level of engagement with the activity. The NOISA system can learn from performers through observation and estimate their engagement level in real time. The new response module, which includes new sound design, comparison of gestures, and audio-analysis features, can also decide what action to take, and when to implement it, to help the performer recover from lowering engagement levels. We report on a formative user study that evaluates the impact of this response module.