Have a SEAT on Stage : Restoring Trust with Spectator Experience Augmentation Techniques

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DOI

When the collaboration between humans and machines happens in public, the audience can face difficulties in distinguishing the actual human contribution from the contribution of autonomous processes. In music concerts involving digital interfaces doubts about the performer's contribution can drastically hinder the audience interest. The disappearing of the direct physical link between actions and effects is one of the reasons of this confusion. Consequently both artists and researchers have explored techniques to augment the experience of spectators. However their respective impact on the multiple aspects of audience experience has not yet been formally compared. In this controlled study, we compare two techniques : pre-performance explanations and visual augmentations. Despite contradictory results on comprehension tasks, we show that contrary to pre-performance explanations, visual augmentations improve the audience experience, increase their subjective comprehension and restore the trust in performers by reversing the doubt in their favour.