Measurement of Latency in Interactive Multimedia Art

In this paper, I would like to introduce my experimental study of multimedia psychology. My initial focus of investigation is the interaction between perceptions of auditory and visual beats. When the musical and graphical beats are completely synchronized with each other, as in a music video for promotional purposes, the audience feels that they are natural and comforting. My initial experiment has proved that the actual tempos of music and images are a little different. If a slight time lag exists between the musical and pictorial beats, the audience tries to keep them in synchronization by unconsciously changing the interpretation of the timebased beat points. As the lag increases over time, the audience seems to perceive that the beat synchronization has changed from being more downbeat to more upbeat, and continues enjoying it. I have developed an experiment system that can generate and control out-of-phase visual and auditory beats in real time, and have tested many subjects with it. This paper describes the measurement of time lags generated in the experiment system, as part of my psychological experiment.