Hip-hop dance battles are events where dancers improvise to an unfamiliar DJ’s mix. The dancers’ technicality in responding to the music, along with the collective dimensions of these encounters, represents a largely unexplored area of investigation in HCI. Using an autobiographical design approach grounded in the hip-hop practice of the first author, we developed five interaction scenarios on a hip-hop–specific movement vocabulary. Our interactive sonification enables both individual and collective improvisation through synchronized motion sensing and interactive sound loops. This approach allowed us to design three interconnected workshops to investigate how dancers use sonification in improvisation. Our findings show that sonification was perceived either as a validation of movement or as a medium for open-ended exploration. We contribute with: (1) the formalization of a movement vocabulary and the design of interactive scenarios for hip-hop movement sonification, (2) insights into how dancers experience sonification through exploration and improvisation, and (3) guidelines for the design of movement sonification in hip-hop contexts.

In this paper, we present a complete framework, both technical and conceptual, aimed at developing and analysing Networked Music Systems. After a short description of our technical framework called soundworks, a JavaScript library especially designed for collective music interaction using web browser of mobile phones, we introduce a new conceptual framework, we named interaction topologies, that aims at providing a generic tool for the description of interaction in such systems. Our proposition differs from the theoretical approaches generally proposed in the literature by decoupling the description of interaction topologies from the low level technical implementation of the network. We then report on a set of scenarios and prototypes, illustrating and assessing our framework, which were successfully deployed in several public installations and performances. We particularly show that our concept of interaction topologies succeeds at describing and analysing global aspects of interaction from multiple point of views (e.g., social, human-computer) by allowing for composing simple abstract figures. We finally introduce a discussion on agencies and perception of users engaged in such systems that could later complete our framework to conceive and analyse Networked Music Systems.

As an interdisciplinary group of developers, researchers, and designers, we are currently exploring collaborative co-located applications that invite users to engage with interactive audiovisual media using the mobile devices they carry with them. This work simultaneously investigates basic concepts of collaborative interactions and user experience, together with technical concepts and features. Allowing for rapid prototyping, easy deployment, and spontaneous participation, these explorations are entirely based on established and upcoming web standards such as WebSockets, WebGL, and Web Audio API. After an overview of basic concepts common to these applications, this paper describes Collective Loops, a prototypical interactive audiovisual installation that instantiates these concepts and allows for discussing important details in the design and implementation of applications of its kind. The final part of the article summarizes the incremental design and validation of two versions of the Collective Loops installation presented at public events.