This project entitled ‘Interactive Music Through Dance’ is an exploration of the relationship between movement and audio and investigates the process of designing an interactive system. It relies on skeletal tracking via an Xbox Kinect to capture body movement which triggers and effects sound through the visual programming language Pure Data. While not entirely a new concept from existing research, it is being implemented in a creative way, specifically through dance. Previous research has explored various sensors for interaction with audio but this project focuses on the artistic implementation of music being affected by dance as a performance. Practical uses could eventually see this as a new way for dancers to choreograph where it is no longer dependent on an existing piece of music, but rather on music that follows the dancer instead. Applications may also extend beyond music to movement affecting lights or visuals and more. The completion of the project has seen a prototype system that shows that it can indeed enhance and transform a traditional dance performance into something more interactive and engaging.
