To study the rhythmical and social synchronization, also known as entrainment, that occurs when people move to music in a social context, novel applications that motivate and measure this behaviour are needed. In this project, we developed such an application, BeatLED, a social game that uses music, movement and luminescent textile. We analyse the requirements of such a musical social game, as well as the possible application fields, such as musicology research, team-building and health care. We developed novel game dynamics and integrated them into a proof-of-concept implementation, which was evaluated positively by 84% of the test users.
This project was the subject of my master thesis at Ghent University, and was developed in collaboration with IPEM and CMST. The thesis was also funded and awarded by the Belgian Industrial Research and Development (BiR&D) MSc thesis programme.
For more information, we refer to the latest publication about this project:
Synchronizing Music and Movement with BeatLED: an Interactive Musical Social Game
available at Taylor & Francis