Abstraction Beats Realism: Physiological Visualizations Enhance Arousal Synchrony in VR Concert Recreations

Abstract

Live cultural experiences like concerts generate shared physiological arousal among audience members, a collective resonance that contributes to their emotional power. Recreating such experiences in virtual reality therefore requires not just audiovisual fidelity, but reproduction of this physiological dimension. Yet current VR evaluation methods rely on post-hoc self-reports that interrupt immersion and cannot capture moment-to-moment arousal dynamics. We propose cross-temporal physiological synchrony as an unobtrusive methodology for evaluating VR cultural recreations: measuring how closely a VR participant's arousal patterns align with those of the original live audience. In a two-phase study, we recorded electrodermal activity from 40 live concert attendees, then created three VR recreations with varying abstraction levels (realistic 360-degree video, mixed video-plus-visualization, and fully abstract physiological representations) and measured synchrony with 22 laboratory participants using Dynamic Time Warping. Contrary to assumptions favoring realism, abstract visualizations achieved the strongest synchrony with live audiences. During musical climaxes, the abstract condition maintained correlation while realistic video showed none. These findings suggest that abstract physiological representations may be more effective than realistic footage for evoking authentic collective engagement in VR cultural recreations.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: The pipeline processes data collected during both a live concert and a VR experiment. During the live concert we recorded a 360° video and physiological data of the audience. In the user study the participant is presented with three types of visualizations, the Video recording, Symbolic condition visualizing physiological data of the concert audience and Mixed, a combination of these two. The physiological data of the VR participant is recorded, analyzed and compared.
• Figure 2: The visualization pipeline processes recorded physiological data of audience members into visualizations displayed in multiple scenes for the VR user.
• Figure 3: Each spherical model in the sky (flower) and batch of lines on the ground (grass) is a representation of a single audience member's response. The flower represents an audience member's heartbeat and changes in size accordingly (BVP). The vertical position of the flower and height of the grass changes with the level of arousal (EDA). The example visualizations show: (a) orange highlighted flower and grass visualize the BVP and EDA for one audience member; (b) for low EDA values; (c) for medium EDA values; (d) for high EDA values
• Figure 4: Three virtual environments were used during the VR experiment: a) Video -- the original 360-degree recording of the live performance; b) Mixed -- the condition combining data visualization and original performance; c) Symbolic -- the visualization based on the audience data.
• Figure 5: Comparison of average tonic EDA values over time for live concert and the three VR conditions: Video, Mixed, and Symbolic. The x-axis denotes time in seconds, segmented by time marks at 100 seconds and 160 seconds, dividing the experience into three phases. The time series shows an initial high response across all conditions, followed by a general decline and varied fluctuations between the 100- and 160-second marks. Significant Pearson's correlations were observed between the live concert and each VR condition: Video, $r(258) = .91$, $p < .001$; Mixed, $r(258) = .92$, $p < .001$; and Symbolic, $r(258) = .96$, $p < .001$, with further details shown in Table \ref{['tab:tonic']}.