UCL Music Futures Project Explores Audience-Performer Interactions
2 May 2025
UCL PEARL (Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory) and the Royal College of Music's Performance Laboratory are collaborating on a UCL Music Futures funded project "Rethinking Audience-Performer Interactions with Active Reverberation Technologies".

This project aims to respond to the recent advancement of active reverberation technologies which is liberating musical performances from their traditional spatial constraints.
To explore the new performance opportunities active reverberation might enable, PEARL and RCM will be running an experimental R&D workshop on the 18 June concerning the impact of reverberation on audience-performer interactions. This will involve the simulation of different acoustic reverberations during a live musical performance by RCM musicians and observing how the changes in acoustics might impact on the performance and on the interaction between the audience and the performers.
The musicians and one volunteer audience member will be fitted with EEG and Fitbits to understand changes in their neurological and physiological responses. Following each performance, all audience members will have the opportunity to share insights of their experience through group discussion. The overall objective is to explore together how active reverberation technologies might inform the future design of performance spaces.
Workshop details:
- Date: Wednesday 18 June, 2pm-5pm
- Place: UCL PEARL, Yew Tree Avenue, Dagenham, RM10 7FN
- Contact: Dr Sara Adhitya, s.adhitya@ucl.ac.uk
UCL Music Futures
This project is supported by UCL Music Futures, the initiative dedicated to thinking, writing and performing music, jointly hosted by the UCL European Institute and the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with support from UCL Grand Challenges. Find out more about the initiative on this link.