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DJs' perspectives on interaction and awareness in nightclubs

Published: 26 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Several researchers have recently proposed technology for crowd-and-DJ interactions in nightclub environments. However, these attempts have not always met with success. In order to design better technologies and systems in this area, it is important to start with an understanding of how nightclub interaction currently happens. To build this understanding, we carried out an interview study focusing on DJ-audience interactions. We interviewed eleven DJs from several different cities, and asked them to discuss the ways that they interact with the audience, and the ways that they maintain and use awareness of the audience. We found that DJs gather a wide variety of information about their audiences, and that this information is important to them as they plan and shape the evening's musical experience. DJs are adept at gathering visual information about the audience, despite poor lighting conditions and a heavy workload of selecting and mixing music. Despite the difficulties, DJs took a dim view of technology designed to let crowds exert more control over the music. This study is one of the first to look closely at the interactive relationship between the DJ and the nightclub audience through the lens of HCI, and our findings provide a number of guidelines for the design of new DJ-focused nightclub technologies.

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cover image ACM Conferences
DIS '06: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems
June 2006
384 pages
ISBN:1595933670
DOI:10.1145/1142405
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 26 June 2006

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Author Tags

  1. DJ awareness
  2. crowd-based interaction
  3. nightclubs

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DIS06
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DIS06: Designing Interactive Systems 2006
June 26 - 28, 2006
PA, University Park, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%

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  • (2024)Brain Body Jockey project: Transcending Bodily Limitations in Live Performance via Human AugmentationProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675621(1-14)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
  • (2022)Design Radicalized as Experience: Disentangling and Reassembling the Dance Floor Experience to Understand the Relationship Between Design and ClubbingPerspectives on Design and Digital Communication III10.1007/978-3-031-06809-6_6(91-103)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Exploring Relationships Between Electronic Dance Music Event Participation and Well-beingMusic & Science10.1177/20592043219971024Online publication date: 11-Mar-2021
  • (2020)Cognitive and affective probing: a tutorial and review of active learning for neuroadaptive technologyJournal of Neural Engineering10.1088/1741-2552/ab5bb517:1(012001)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2020
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  • (2014)A Multi-Touch DJ Interface with Remote Audience FeedbackProceedings of the 22nd ACM international conference on Multimedia10.1145/2647868.2655065(1225-1228)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2014
  • (2014)Competing and Collaborating Brains: Multi-brain Computer InterfacingBrain-Computer Interfaces10.1007/978-3-319-10978-7_12(313-335)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2014
  • (2013)Spinning dataCHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2468356.2479611(3063-3066)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2013
  • (2013)Performing Online and Offline: How DJs Use Social NetworksHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 201310.1007/978-3-642-40480-1_5(63-80)Online publication date: 2013
  • (2013)Computer Musicking: HCI, CSCW and Collaborative Digital Musical InteractionMusic and Human-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-1-4471-2990-5_11(189-205)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2013
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