A social crowd-controlled orchestra
Saiph Savage, Norma Elva Chávez, Carlos Toxtli, Salvador Medina, David Álvarez-López, Tobias Höllerer · 2013
We present a novel social interactive system that brings music creation to the crowds. It allows anyone with a personal electronic device and regardless of their musical expertise to participate in the music an orchestra generates, while also encouraging social interactions among participants. Users can be either musicians or conductors. The latter drive the group's music production, while the others follow simple game-like instructions on their device for playing the conductor's selected songs. The primary mode of interaction for playing songs, consists of rotating one's electronic device in different ways. Our system also provides different social interaction cues that aim for novice and expert users to start conversations with each other and improve the group's performance as well as construct a community among participants. We report on a qualitative analysis, which suggests that users appreciate the system's versatility in providing service to a variety of devices and enjoy participating in the orchestra with their own personal device. Users judged the social interaction cues the system provided to be effective. We believe our findings aid the design of future social intelligent environments that seek to build communities with participants through music.