Arabesque
Summary
Dance floors are always stress busters and mean of celebrations and happiness. This project aimed at enhancing the experience of users on dance floors by making them more interactive and playful. The project was done as part of a physical computing module that focused on executing interaction design in physical world.
Duration
2 Week
My role
Aditi Sisodiya
Jithin Manoharan
Shivani Prakash Gupta
Swathi S
Interaction Design
Physical computing
Experience Design
Scope
Interaction designer
Circuit designer
Animations & video
Prototyping
Team
Context
Dance, as it is perceived by most people around the world is, ostensibly a Theatrical or Performative gesture. But, that's just one side of a coin! So what's on the other side? We believe, dance is not just an art, it's a way to experience pleasure, a reason to instill more fun element in our lives. It's an escape from our busy schedules to detox oneself from the stress! We are all embodied beings and it's another form of fun to experience and explore our own body parts by shaking or moving it in rhythm to the music or beats. That's one of the reasons why everyone unites on a dance floor! Because it has no boundaries or a criteria for distinguishing a dancer or a non-dancer.
However, in order to add on to this amusement, how about adding some form of interactivity to the entire experience? Something, that could help leverage a human mind to not just detox from stress but also for increasing their concentration or maybe to bring that curve of smile on their face? These things hints us at things like- it's okay to not be a professional in achieving things, it's not mandatory to have proper training to get something meaningful. But, it's okay to be just our version of us!
Description
The Interactive Dance floor engages the user by translating motion and sound into a visual experience. The objective is to track the presence of the user on the dance floor and create patterns in the corresponding area. Thus the patterns move with the user creating a fun experience. As the user dances to music, the patterns also change as per the music. This is to create an experience of the patterns dancing along with the user. For further customization when used by a single user, the system used face recognition to recognize the user and played his/ her favorite music.
Recognizes the face and plays favorite music
Generates pattern at feet on the floor
Size of pattern changes with music
Working
We created the Dance floor by making a series of switches that become active when a person stands on that particular switch. The floor was divided into 3 x 3 grids wherein each grid was connected to the Arduino board. The output of the individual grid was processed as input through an individual pin on the Arduino board. When a user steps on a particular grid on the dance floor, the grid is active. The status of the grids is continuously read by the Arduino. The status of the grids read by the Arduino is further processed to project map patterns on that particular grid.
The grid status output of the Arduino is processed using p5.js to create dynamic patterns. The Arduino input was processed in p5.js using the p5.serialcontrol library. We used the frequency of the sound to manipulate the size of the patterns being created using the p5.sound.min.js library. The pattern was then projected on the dance floor using a projector.
