{"pk":27395,"title":"What can Hand Movements Tell us about Audience Engagement?","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Conventional seated audiences have relatively restricted op-portunities for response. Perhaps the most salient is applausebut they use their hands to make other visible movements: tofix hair, adjust glasses, scratch ears. The question we addresshere is whether these apparently incidental movements mayprovide systematic clues about an audience’s level of engage-ment with a performance. We investigate this in the contextof contemporary dance performances by analysing audiencehand movements in four performances at the London Contem-porary Dance School. Hand movements were tracked using areflective wristband worn by each audience member. A blobdetection algorithm applied to the video recording examinedwhether changes in hand movement are associated with audi-ence arousal levels to the performance. The results show thathands move least during the most preferred and most duringthe least preferred dance pieces. We conclude that still handsare a signal of higher levels of engagement.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Audience; Engagement; Blob Detection; Handmovement; Handedness; Contemporary Dance."}],"section":"Posters: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/17d3b010","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Lida","middle_name":"","last_name":"Theodorou","name_suffix":"","institution":"Queen Mary University of London","department":""},{"first_name":"Patrick","middle_name":"","last_name":"Healey","name_suffix":"","institution":"Queen Mary University of London","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27395/galley/17031/download/"}]}