LCD Soundsystem has collaborated with Google’s Data Arts Team on a new project aiming to deliver an entirely new VR experience to go along with its latest single, Tonite. What makes the project most interesting is that it is both constantly changing and is interactive far beyond the usual look-and-click of more traditional VR experiences. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the group’s experimental nature but this is one project that definitely requires the attached video to gain a full understanding of what it’s all about. The shortest explanation is that the project – which has been dubbed “Dance Tonite” – is effectively a fully interactive music video featuring minimalistic shapes, which dance and move to the music across various minimal room structures.
Interactivity is achieved by allowing users who happen to own high-end VR systems to play an active role in creating the dancing shapes themselves. That’s accomplished by using real time movement tracking associated with room-tracking VR systems, in conjunction with Google’s own WebVR platform. What that means is that the video itself will be altered and added to each time a user with one of those systems interacts with Dance Tonite. Unfortunately, users who have don’t have access to VR with those abilities, such as Google’s Daydream View, won’t be able to contribute. However, they will still be able to move from room to room and watch the video in VR. Those who don’t happen to own VR systems at all won’t be left out either, and will be able to watch the action from a “birds-eye view.” At each level of participation, users will also be able to swap to a “first-person view” of any individual dancing figure within the media.
Because this is a relatively new use of the technologies involved, the team behind the project have also made the open-source code and processes used available to the public. That means anybody with the inclination to see how it was made can view the code and maybe even create something of their own. Better still, since Dance Tonite is built using Google’s own WebVR platform, all anybody needs to access it is a browser and the URL address. All of that can be found through the source link below.
