Crowd DJ
"Crowd DJ" (2010/11) by Tom Laan is an interactive sound mixer.
Crowd DJ logo
Crowd DJ is a dance controlled interactive sound mixer that gives the crowd control over the musical output. Each area of the dance floor activates a sound channel. When the dancing stops, the music will immediately shut down - demanding that the crowd is constantly active and keep the energy going. The crowd is in control, so by working together the composition can be altered or complete silence created.
The way DJs perform nowadays is constantly changing. This sometimes leads to (somewhat) boring performances - why not challenge the audience a bit and give them a bigger responsibility?
All you need to do is dance.
How it works:
A camera above the dancefloor is connected to a Max/MSP patch. The patch splits the stream into nine different smaller areas, in each area an average of the amount pixels that change per second is calculated in order to see if there is any motion. All this information is send to Ableton using Max4Life.
The nine different camera cuts are connected to 9 audio channels within Ableton. If the camera detects a dancing person in one of the areas the corresponding music channel switches on. If there is not enough motion, it switches of.
http://tomlaan.nl/2011/crowd-dj/
