The Interactive Dance Club: Avoiding Chaos In A Multi Participant Environment

In 1998 we designed enabling technology and a venue concept that allowed several participants to influence a shared musical and visual experience. Our primary goal was to deliver musically coherent and visually satisfying results from several participants' input. The result, the Interactive Dance Club, ran for four nights at the ACM SIGGRPAH 98 convention in Orlando, Florida. In this paper we will briefly describe the Interactive Dance Club, our "10 Commandments of Interactivity", and what we learned from it's premiere at SIGGRAPH 98. THE INTERACTIVE DANCE CLUB The Interactive Dance Club is a multi-participant interactive venue with real-time computer graphics lighting and video, synchronized to dance music (such as acid jazz, trance, ambient, drum & bass). Instead of dancing to prerecorded music and images, members of the audience become participants. Within interactive zones located throughout the club, participants influence music, lighting, and projected imagery. There are zones for single participants, dual participants and groups. Moving from zone to zone, participants experience different blends of musical and visual elements. Like sections in an orchestra, output from the interactive zones contribute to the formation of an overall performance. Our software analyzes and filters participant's input, in order to deliver a musically coherent and visually satisfying experience.