McMaster University has opened a lab that studies cognitive interactions between musicians and their audiences.
The Large Interactive Virtual Environment Lab (LIVELab) held its grand opening on Sept. 24, attended by more than 600 people.
The LIVELab is part of McMaster’s Institute for Music and The Mind (MIMM), a research-based theatre and testing centre.
“There are 28 core researchers who represent a number of different faculties on campus involved—from math to music to kinesiology,” said Janice Shearer, communications associate for the LIVELab.
As for what the lab will be studying, Shearer said, “music and movement is very much a part of everyday life and has been for centuries. This lab offers the opportunity to consider audience and performer engagement with the audience in numbers of up to 100.”
Shearer said the project was funded by the Centre for Inquiry of Canada, the Ontario Ministry for Research, and the university itself.
“The lab is first and foremost a research facility and research studies are being booked,” Shearer said, “It will also be used as a venue for many forms of art—poetry, music, dance, [and] visual art.”
Musical group Ensemble Vivant was invited by Dr. Laurel Trainor, founding director of the LIVELab, to perform at the grand opening.
Catherine Wilson, the Ensemble Vivant’s pianist and artistic director, said Trainor wanted a “high-calibre piano chamber group of international renown who has been together for a long time, and who has a genre-diversity.”
“The LIVELab concert hall is an intimate space,” Wilson said.
“It was a fascinating experience to perform in that hall and to be part of the scientific experiments being conducted while in performance. For example, my cellist and I were rigged up with motion capture models and the audience was able to see our movements on a large screen mounted on the wall at the back of the stage while we performed.”
The response has been overwhelming, according to Shearer.
“As the president said at the opening, it is yet another example of the dedication of McMaster to world-class research,” she said.
