Designing collaborative musical experiences for broad audiences

This paper reports on the design and audience evaluation of a collaborative interactive music system titled Polymetros. Designed for broad audiences, Polymetros aims to enable users without musical skills to experience collaborative music-making. First, we describe our design approach with reference to related research. A particular interest was to investigate how to provide novices with individual musical control within a collaborative context. We then present an audience evaluation that was conducted during an exhibition at a major art museum in the UK attended by large numbers of the general public across the age range. The results lead us to evaluate our design approach and reflect on implications for facilitating collaborative music-making for broad audiences. Furthermore, the findings provide interesting indications how the context of a public exhibition setting affects the audience interaction with such an interactive multi-player experience.