Experio: a Design for Novel Audience Participation in Club Settings

When looking at modern music club settings, especially in the area of electronic music, music is consumed in a unidirectional way -from DJ or producer to the audience -with little direct means to influence and participate. In this paper we challenge this phenomenon and aim for a new bond between the audience and the DJ through the creation of an interactive dance concept: Experio. Experio allows for multiple audience participants influencing the musical performance through dance, facilitated by a musical moderator using a tailored interface. This co-creation of electronic music on both novice and expert levels is a new participatory live performance approach, which is evaluated on the basis of thousands of visitors who interacted with Experio during several international exhibitions.