For the Urban Explorers festival I used Roomware to make a new installation. My friend Ronnie made the animations and I connected the animations to Roomware.

Bluetooth animated pixel dancers installation from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

The Roomware server scans the venue for bluetooth devices. Each new device detected showed a new animation on the screen. When someone left the room (for example to go the bathroom) the character on the screen left the stage.

Eclectro installatie in Bibelot op Urban Explorers 2009 from Renier Eclectro on Vimeo.

Eclectro Last.fm Lovewall (interactive bluetooth installation) from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

Yesterday we had the first Eclectro party. As written in the last post I was working on a bluetooth/last.fm application. And it worked :)

The Eclectro Last.fm lovewall is an interactive installation that uses bluetooth to scan for mobile phones. Visitors are asked to change the bluetooth name of their phone into their Last.fm username.

A laptop scans the room using the open source Roomware software. It connects to random visitors and searches the Last.fm database for similarity. It then shows the similarity on a big screen by showing the profiles. A percentage and five artists both have in common.

Review
The installation worked well and I got a lot of very positive feedback by enthusiastic visitors. A few things I learned.

• It is possible to have a zero percent match but still have artists in common.
• Similar artists are often Gorillaz, U2, Muse, Air.
• It is very easy to join, people see something happen and they think it’s too difficult to join. If you tell them that all it takes is changing the bluetooth name of their mobile phone they are really surprised.
• Explain, explain, explain.
• People like seeing their avatars on a screen. Only showing avatars would probably make a successful application by itself.
• Make the screen dark. I used grey photographs and still the brightness of the beamer lightened up the entire place.
• The internet connection at public places is almost always difficult (unstable/low signal).

The interface with testdata (working demo)

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And the photographs

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr