Using Technology to Incite Social Interaction and Affect Mood

Through our technical exploration and interest in public collaboration via music and visuals, we have become more interested in the social aspect of our project;  using technology to instigate social interaction, influence mood, and allow us to study the effects under the conditions of different social spaces.

Full Body Gestures

The basic concept for this would be to place an interface in public spaces, such as pedestrian streets, bus stops, even bathrooms; and use techonology which recognises gestures to create music and visuals based on these gestures.

Hand Gesture Examples

Various gestures would launch different audio samples, such as a drum beat, or bass line, along with visuals which  would play as long as a gesture is held.  The more participants involved, the more music would play, and more visuals created.  For example, one participant may launch drum samples with blue visuals; while the other launches bass samples with yellow visuals.

Through participation, social interaction is instigated, with more participants adding to the whole piece.

To solidify this social interaction, the piece would aim to affect the participants' mood , using specific colours,in a positive manner, and create an association of positive mood, with interaction in public space.  Colour and its affectation of human mood, productivity and social interactivity have been studied in depth, and has been proven to have a large effect on us, with colours such as red making us more likely to be more aggressive, or certain shades of green increasing productivity.

Colour chart and emotions associated with them.

The actual installation itself would use motion tracking technology via the use of readily available hardware such as a standard webcam, (or microsoft kinect, which would allow for a wider variety of gesture tracking). Motion tracking software such as Motion Studio, and Max for Ableton which would allow us to convert gestures into MIDI controls which would in turn launch visuals and audio based on these gestures.

 Visuals displayed via screens or projections, with most of the 'work' being done by the software.  This means that the installation would not require large amount of space and could be placed in a multitude of locations.