The Interactive Dance Club: Avoiding Chaos In A Multi Participant Environment

Abstract: In 1998 we designed enabling technology and a venue concept that allowed several participants to influence a shared musical and visual experience. Our primary goal was to deliver musically coherent and visually satisfying results from several participants' input. The result, the Interactive Dance Club, ran for four nights at the ACM SIGGRAPH 98 convention in Orlando, Florida. In this paper we will briefly describe the Interactive Dance Club, our "10 Commandments of Interactivity," and what we learned from its premiere at SIGGRAPH 98.