{"id":18955,"date":"2014-07-25T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-07-25T09:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=18955"},"modified":"2014-07-23T17:22:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T21:22:38","slug":"the-quantified-dj-set-work-hard-play-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2014\/07\/25\/the-quantified-dj-set-work-hard-play-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quantified DJ Set: Work Hard, Play Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"\"YouTube<\/a><\/span><\/span>\n

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DJs need to know how to mix records, sure, but even the best mixer will tank if they don\u2019t know how to read a crowd. You have to know what kinds of songs keep your crowd dancing, and what kinds of songs send them to the bar or the bathroom. Usually this involves a combination of prior knowledge (of the venue, of who you\u2019re opening for, the night\u2019s theme, etc.) and actual observation of the crowd–do they look and sound like they\u2019re into it?<\/p>\n

Lightwave<\/a> is a platform that uses WiFi enabled wristbands to track and transmit biometric data–their temperature, heartrate, and the volume of sound they hear–from individual crowdmembers to a program that analyzes and visualizes that data. Lightwave visualizes audience responses to…well, that\u2019s one of the questions I have here: what experience is it visualizing? Is it the DJ performance? The clubbing itself? Both? It seems absolutely incorrect to say that Lightwave visualizes audience responses to music<\/i>. Clubbling is a social and interactive experience, and music is just one factor in the mix, so to speak. When you\u2019re dancing, you\u2019re responding to other people around you, to the overall \u2018vibe\u2019 of the crowd–this is what makes it more fun than dancing to the same records alone at your house.<\/p>\n

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And the Lightwave crew seems to recognize the fundamental sociality or interactivity of clubbing. At their SXSW party this year, Lightwave used the devices to gamify the DJ set. As the video in this <\/a>Fast Company<\/i> article shows, the crowd was instructed that \u201cyour actions will unlock the show.\u201d The crowd had to work to \u201cunlock\u201d achievements like drinks or moments of musical pleasure (i.e., drops). So, though Lightwave could theoretically be used by DJs help them do their job of reading a crowd, this sounds a lot like I, the clubgoer, now have to work for my own leisure, leisure that I\u2019ve already paid for (in terms of cover, clothes, drinks and\/or drugs). That is, Lightwave outsources the work of the DJ to the dancers.<\/p>\n

The visualization of the data Lightwave collected at the A-Trak set is really interesting.\u00a0It\u2019s broken down by gender (pink and blue)–men and women seem to respond differently to the music–women reacted more intensely to to Tommy Trash\u2019s Fuckwind, and men to A-trak\u2019s remix of \u201cHeads Will Roll.\u201d But the crowd as a whole–represented on the grayscale bar–responded most intensely to moments of interaction, either with other clubbers or with the DJ. This begs the question: does Lightwave use biometric data to monetize interactivity in a way that parallels the way social media monetizes interaction? Does Lightwave transform the medium of music into a \u201csocial\u201d medium (at least insofar as it brings music in line with the political economy of social media)?<\/p>\n

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Robin is on twitter as @doctaj.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    DJs need to know how to mix records, sure, but even the best mixer will tank if they don\u2019t know how to read a crowd. You have to know what kinds of songs keep your crowd dancing, and what kinds of songs send them to the bar or the bathroom. Usually this involves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18955"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18957,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18955\/revisions\/18957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}