Dance to the music

I accidently stumbled onto this bit of bizarreness: smart theramins? While the idea of creating music through body movement isn't new at all, the idea of shaping music based on a social mass of body movements is. Nice article by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

One goal of many researchers is moving music-making into new settings. Researchers from the Responsive Environments Group, led by Dr. Joe Paradiso at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are designing a small sensor for interactive dances that they say could be made cheaply enough to be given away with tickets and invitation cards. The sensor has a piezoelectric film, a material that produces a small electric current when it is deformed. Dancers can tie the sensor around their arms or ankles. As they move, responding to whatever music is being played, tiny signals from the piezo foil are sent to a computer.

The computer searches this cacophony of signals for recognizable patterns, which could indicate, for instance, that a sizable number of dancers are swaying with a particular rhythm. Based on the pattern, the music is digitally modified by accentuating a beat or a note to encourage a certain dance step. Over time, a motion started by a few dancers can be made to spread across the floor like a wave. The piezo sensors have been tried out at dance raves in and around the M.I.T. campus.

Using music to create conformity? I'm not sure I really like the implications of this.