Audience synchronies in live concerts illustrate the embodiment of music experience

A study of 132 audience members of three classical public concerts (all three staged the same chamber music pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brett Dean, and Johannes Brahms) had the goal of analyzing the physiological and motor responses of audiences. It was assumed that the music would induce synchronous physiology and movement in listeners (induction synchrony). In addition to hypothesizing that such synchronies would be present, we expected that they were linked to participants' aesthetic experiences, their affect and personality traits, which were assessed by questionnaires before and after the concerts. Clear evidence was found of physiological synchrony (heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance response) as well as movement synchrony of the audiences, whereas breathing behavior was not synchronized. Thus the audiences of the three concerts resonated with the music, their music perception was embodied. There were links between the bodily synchrony and aesthetic experiences: synchrony, especially heart-rate synchrony, was higher when listeners felt moved emotionally and inspired by a piece, and were immersed in the music. Personality traits were also associated with the individual contributions to induction synchrony

The Influence of Formats and Preferences on the Aesthetic Experience of Classical Music Concert Streams

Music is listened to in many different situational and media frames that can be expected to shape its experience. In this study, we were interested in the effects that different formats of audiovisual streaming of classical concerts can have on the aesthetic experience of their audience. We also investigated the effects of preferences for streaming features. A total of N =525 participants watched one of four chamber music concert streams and reported their expectations, appreciation, and experiences. Overall, participants liked the concerts and reported positive experiences. The immersive emotional and social dimensions of aesthetic experiences with music, however, were only rarely activated, showing the disadvantage of recorded as compared to live performances. Several experience dimensions were influenced by streaming format: a stream that allowed audience members to interact on a chat platform afforded a stronger social experience, but less concentration; while a stream that included an introductory talk led to a better understanding of the programming and increased feelings of melancholy. Effects of the preference for certain stream types were only found in the stream that most resembled a standard audiovisual concert broadcast but were leveled out in other stream formats explicitly designed to counterbalance known disadvantages of nonlive performances. From our study, we draw conclusions regarding the importance of an experimental approach to frame effects not only on the aesthetic experience of music but also on the future of concert streams as a new musical medium in its own (aesthetic) right

High-resolution large-scale onshore wind energy assessments : A review of potential definitions, methodologies and future research needs

Funding Information: KG, MK, JS, OT and SW gratefully acknowledge support from the European Research Council (’‘reFUEL’’ ERC-2017-STG 758149). JL has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 715132). MJ and IS were funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [ EP/R045518/1 ] through the IDLES programme. JW is funded through an ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship and acknowledges support from the ETH foundation and the Uniscientia foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of three anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Critical Casimir forces and adsorption profiles in the presence of a chemically structured substrate

Motivated by recent experiments with confined binary liquid mixtures near demixing, we study the universal critical properties of a system, which belongs to the Ising universality class, in the film geometry. We employ periodic boundary conditions in the two lateral directions and fixed boundary conditions on the two confining surfaces, such that one of them has a spatially homogeneous adsorption preference while the other one exhibits a laterally alternating adsorption preference, resembling locally a single chemical step. By means of Monte Carlo simulations of an improved Hamiltonian, so that the leading scaling corrections are suppressed, numerical integration, and finite-size scaling analysis we determine the critical Casimir force and its universal scaling function for various values of the aspect ratio of the film. In the limit of a vanishing aspect ratio the critical Casimir force of this system reduces to the mean value of the critical Casimir force for laterally homogeneous ++ and +- boundary conditions, corresponding to the surface spins on the two surfaces being fixed to equal and opposite values, respectively. We show that the universal scaling function of the critical Casimir force for small but finite aspect ratios displays a linear dependence on the aspect ratio which is solely due to the presence of the lateral inhomogeneity. We also analyze the order-parameter profiles at criticality and their universal scaling function which allows us to probe theoretical predictions and to compare with experimental data.Comment: revised version, section 5.2 expanded; 53 pages, 12 figures, iopart clas