I started writing about a shared project Art/Dance - Robotics/HCI Project on the blog but the project is taking more and more shape and is slowly maturing from a fun short project into a more serious project.

The idea for an investigation into a non-tech-centric approach to connect people using sound was born at an event by the the SWCTN where I met Movement Artist Silvia Carderelli-Gronau. The key motivation was that most current approaches focus too much on technology rather than on the people using them (see image above).

After a two day brainstorming session we came up with the idea of using a sound base approach and through a small funding from Kaleider, we were able to build and test 2 devices in their first version.

The Sonic Dancer is a raspberry-pi powered network of devices that use a 6 microphone array from Respeaker to locate mutiple moving sound sources and visualise the source on a paired device through a radial display similar to a compas or through an onboard webserver. By using the sonic dancer, a network of devices once fully developed will allow users to grasp where somebody else is situation in relation to the device, thus offering a virtual anchor to "feel" the presence of somebody else. Currently the network consists of two devices talking to one another.