Liveness in Interactive Systems

Abstract: Creating an artifact in front of public offers an opportunity to involve spectators in the creation process. For example, in a live music concert, audience members can clap, stomp and sing with the musicians to be part of the music piece. Live creation can facilitate collaboration with the spectators. The questions I set out to answer are what does it mean to have liveness in interactive systems to support large-scale hybrid events that involve audience participation. The notion of liveness is subtle in human-computer interaction. In this paper, I revisit the notion of liveness and provide definitions of both live and liveness from the perspective of designing interactive systems. In addition, I discuss why liveness matters in facilitating hybrid events and suggest future research works