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Mossalibra
Gesture Based Interactive Dancing
Idea:
MOSSALIBRA is an interactive game installation, operated solely by intuitive human gestures. While dancing to surrounding music, the user (represented in pixelated form as a pure gesture) can mimic a given set of gestures in order to gain points. These gestures are actually pixelated snapshots of previous players. The game is therefore constantly generated by the players and constantly represents the current musical vibe.
Concept:
MOSSALIBRA is to be developed as a game for clubs. Its boundaries are fuzzy and blend with the club’s social space to become an integral part of the club’s active environment. Since MOSSALIBRA is composed mostly from its previous players’ gestures, it keeps changing over time, always attentive to the changing mood in the club. MOSSALIBRA promotes a care-free experience and thrives on its users’ short attention span – The game experience is very short and one can enjoy the game with or without gaining points or breaking the high score.
Technology:
MOSSALIBRA can be developed utilizing image processing to display, memorize, and recognize different dance moves, as performed by the user. MOSSALIBRA displays the user and the stored dance moves only as graphic pixelated forms, so the player is not confronted with his self-image allowing her to dance freely and care-free, while also acting as a temporary VJ.
MOSSALIBRA is designed to accompany any given surrounding music, by being aware only to players’ gestures and not to an audio feed and by default does not generate any sound output. Assuming no surrounding music is present, the installation comes with its own sound effects and background music.
How to play:
While no game session is in progress, MOSSALIBRA is dormant and acts as a generated design piece on a wall, only showing the short history of dance moves, briefly immortalizing in pixels the game’s previous players on the wall of the club.
As a player enters the game space, MOSSALIBRA turns on, showing the live movements of the player as pure gestures in pixelated form. The player can dance freely or try to mimic the currently stored gestures. Upon succeeding in reproducing a gesture, points are given. The player can now try to reproduce the same gesture or another and gain more points. As said, the player can ignore scoring (points) altogether and dance freely while accidentally reproducing a gesture and gaining accidental points. The final score is affected by the level of variety and by the number of gestures reproduced during the game. After an elapsed time, the game ends by taking a pixelated snapshot of the player and adding it to the set of stored dance moves, dropping the earliest one recorded. Upon breaking the high-score, the current snapshot becomes the current high-score. The game bids the player farewell and becomes dormant again, waiting for this player to leave and for the next one to enter its space.