Playing with Audience Data: The Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra’s Embodied Scores

Stories | June 3, 2026

by Ana-Maria Carabelea, Programme Curator, Ars Electronica

Theater Dortmund is internationally renowned for its guest performances, its outstanding artistic quality, its commitment to supporting emerging talent, and its focus on digital innovation.

Now, two of its departments—the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Academy for Theatre and Digitality—have joined forces to develop an innovative toolbox that will enable the orchestra to play using data that its audience generates in real time. The pilot project is being developed in the framework of EXCENTRIC, a three-year project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme.

Its goal is to explore co-creative performance formats in which real-time audience input shapes live musical and theatrical performances. Data becomes artistic material rather than an analytical resource, as audience data–such as biofeedback, or facial recognition–is integrated into the performance witnessed on stage. To make this possible, a wide variety of audience data is collected and algorithmically clustered. Its subsequent integration into the performance can take different forms, be it a live remix of the original composition or a real-time visualisation of the data.

The use of audience data in live performance pushes boundaries both in terms of audience engagement and co-creation, and in terms of making each live performance unique.  Combining the possibilities opened by the latest advancements in data collection and processing methods with conceptual and compositional techniques from theatre and music is a good example of a meaningful, thought-through integration of technology into the performing arts.

To create a legacy for the pilot project and contribute to this type of experimentation in the sector at large, the toolbox will also include a training data module for wider use by other orchestras.

After a first sprint in February 2026, Theater Dortmund is preparing to dive into the research and prototyping phase that will culminate in a first test concert on November 19th, 2026. In summer 2027, the toolbox will be used in the framework of the Dortmund Philharmonic Late Night Session Concert at Kokerei Hansa in the framework of IGA 2027.

If you want to keep up to date with the project, follow EXCENTRIC on LinkedIn and Zenodo, or listen to the Excentric Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

EXCENTRIC has received funding from the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme under grant agreement 101178180.