An Interactive Music Environment for Large Groups with Giveaway Wireless Motion Sensors

Abstract

interfaces (e.g., Siegel and Jacobsen 1998; Paradiso et al. 2000; Aylward and Paradiso 2006) allow a single dancer or small group of dancers to control music with their actions, but these do not scale to allow for hundreds of participants to interact concurrently. Various vision-based tracking systems are able to extract considerable nuance from dance ensembles (e.g., Wechsler, Weiss, and Dowling 2004; Obermaier 2004; Camurri et al. 1999), but they generally exploit a highly structured and stable stage environment with tight lighting constraints. The problems of cost, data-communication bandwidth, and system responsiveness become increasingly difficult as the number of participants increases. A system that could effectively give control to a large number of dancers offers the possibility of environments with extremely responsive music and lighting, engaging users with a heightened sense of expressiveness. To address these issues of large-group musical mapping, we have developed a scalable system first introduced in Feldmeier (2002); Feldmeier, Malinowski, and Paradiso (2002); and Feldmeier and Paradiso (2004) that can effectively gather data over an essentially unlimited audience size. The system consists of wireless sensors that are given to audience members to collect rhythm and activity information from the crowd that can be used to dynamically determine musical structure, sonic events, and/or lighting control. (A block diagram of the system is shown in Figure 1.) The sensors are small and lightweight, and they can therefore be either worn or held by a participant. To detect the participant's motion, they have radio-frequency (RF) transmitters that send a short pulse of RF energy whenever they encounter a dynamic acceleration greater than a predetermined level. Finally, they are inexpensive enough to be viable as disposable, giveaway items for large crowds. The sensors' RF pulses are collected by receiver base stations that have limited sensitivity, enabling the development of zones of interaction around each one. In this manner, multiple base stations can be used in a venue to create distinct areas where the controller takes on new functions. This zoning information can also be used to direct the music and