Would you rather come to a tango concert in theater or in VR? Aesthetic emotions & social presence in musical experiences, either live, 2D or 3D

This work shows the preliminary results of a pioneering project aimed at comparing the aesthetic experience of a musical concert experienced in different contexts for which the audience’s perceived presence is modulated in a continuum ranging from a live concert to a music video, passing through immersive artificial environments. In contrast to previous qualitative investigations of various immersive contexts, our study is unique in both the use of validated scales and the structured comparison of four experimental conditions: 1.live concert (LC), 2.the same concert through a traditional non-immersive music video (MV, analogous to fruition on YouTube), and finally in a virtual reality environment (VR), provided by two different devices, 3. a google cardboard (CVR) and 4. an HTC vive (HVR), allowing respectively for a basic and easily accessible experience, or for a less affordable but more immersive one. Through these manipulations we presumably affected not just the subjective aesthetic experience, but also the perceived presence of the Other/s. Consistently we measured both through the administration of the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (Aesthemos) and the Networked Minds Measure of Social Presence (NMMSP). The NMMSP showed no notable differences between conditions, which instead emerged from the analyses on the Aesthemos. The most liked experience was the Live one. Results also showed that LC experience had a stronger emotional impact only when compared to MV and CVR, but not to HTC since this last manipulation was the one eliciting the greatest interest. Theoretical implications are critically discussed, suggesting novel applications of the proposed approach.