Mood Conductor: Emotion-Driven Interactive Music Performance

Mood Conductor is a system that allows the audience to interact with stage performers to create directed improvisations. The term "conductor" is used metaphorically. Rather than directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures, spectators act as conductors by communicating emotional intentions to the performers through our web-based smartphone-friendly Mood Conductor app. Performers receive the audience\´s directions via a visual feedback system operating in real-time. Emotions are represented by coloured blobs in a two-dimensional space (vertical dimension: arousal or excitation; horizontal dimension: valence or pleasantness). The size of the "emotion blobs" indicates the number of spectators that have selected the corresponding emotions at a given time.