The neuroaesthetics of liveness

Live theatre, dance and music pervade to human culture. Building on a rich theoretical debate within theatre, performance and media studies, this review sketches out a psychological approach to understanding live experiences. It distinguishes physical liveness (presence in a here and now) from social liveness (sharing experiences with others). Recent mobile EEG studies on live dance performances and music concerts demonstrate that audience engagement during live performances is measurable as dynamic brain synchrony between co-present audience members or between audience members, music and movement. Differences in audience engagement between live and recorded performances (physical liveness) are measurable as looser or tighter slow wave neural synchrony. Conversely, social liveness can increase audience arousal, indexed by reduced power in the EEG alpha band during collective viewing of both live and recorded dance. These findings suggest that variable performance content and stable performance context engage dissociable neural mechanisms, attention and arousal respectively. Research on liveness originates in the performing arts but can be extended to the visual arts and to sport events. Physical and social liveness may facilitate those rare, memorable and transformative aesthetic experiences that are difficult to produce in lab-based environments.