Interactive Dance with Visual Background Recomposition using BLE Beacons

This paper introduces an interactive dance enabled through the innovative concept of a body area network. By strategically attaching Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to various parts of the dancer’s body, this novel study firstly leverages signal strength measurements from lightweight, small-scale, and cost-effective beacon nodes for proximity monitoring between the dancer’s body parts and the identification of choreographic units. Secondly, his enables a holistic dancer-centric interactive dance system to empower performers to actively participate in designing visual effects, cultivating a more profound artistic engagement. Lastly, the practicality and viability of the proposed system are demonstrated through a live performance, offering invaluable insights from both the dancers’ and the audience’s perspectives. This methodology employs a mobile device as a gateway, capturing signal strength from beacon nodes and analysing dynamic received signal strength values. Algorithms are designed to use these values to monitor the proximity between body parts, and subsequently, identify a curated collection of choreographic units. The processing outcomes contribute to the adaptive recomposition of visual backgrounds that dynamically respond to the dancers’ movements.

I. Introduction

Over the past two decades, interactive dance has captivated artists and scientists, reshaping dance creation, training, and presentation. The differences between interactive and traditional dance lies in the communication dynamics between dancers and the performance space. In traditional dance, communication is unidirectional: dancers synchronize with fixed background music and pre-rendered visuals. By contrast, interactive dance uses bidirectional communication to not only influence virtual effects through their stage performance, but also adapt their gestures in response to the generated virtual effects.