Project B Proposal

Working title

Dance Responding the Song

Elevator pitch

This is sort of an interactive music game that showing a traditional Chinese dance form called “相和歌” to the audience or players. The video of the dance can help users to understand the feeling of the song. Users need to click on the button to play the different beats of the drum, they can take part in creating the music by adding their favorite beats to the original music according to their understanding of the song.

Concept

The topic of this project will be the relationship between dancer and music. I want to explore this topic because I watched the video of the dance “相和歌” which is a popular dance in ancient Chinese times, especially Han dynasty. This particular form of dance is special because the dancer has a drum to step on or kick at with their special shoes that have small drumsticks on. The word “相和” refers to the responding of the dancers to the music. I found it really interesting and attractive since dancers can respond to the music not only by their movement, but also by creating new beats to the song, which makes the performance lively and energetic.

I also gained inspiration from the dancing machine, but in a opposite way. The dancing machine let people dance under the guide of arrows appearing rhythmically, it let the music lead dancers. However, I would like to let users – the musician – led by the dancers in the video. Users should decide when to drum by observing the movement of the dancer in the video.

Sources / Related Art & Practice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXDR-e0TF6c

Production / Methodology

    I will upload a video that has a dancer dancing on a drum. What’s more, I will create some “div”s to be buttons which connected with beat sounds, so that the beat will play every time the button is clicked (or maybe the users can interact with the beat sounds by press keys). I will also upload some pictures to show how the sound is made, in order to help users to understand what to do without reading an introduction.

    I am also considering to add some generative objects by p5.js, so that when completing the music by adding drum beats, the users can also activate some new elements to make the whole picture more vivid and beautiful. This can be done by arrays and class in p5.js.