A pre-recorded audience listens AND responds to your performance
The Virtual Audience allows the user to practice performing in front of a living, breathing audience, virtually.
After installing the free Adobe AIR runtime environment, you can install and use the Virtual Audience for free.
The initial faculty request was to create a DVD with loopable video that would allow a music student to practice in front of an audience that did the distracting things that audiences do, cough, sneeze, whisper, etc. In theory this would allow the student to be desensitized to audience distractions. We satisfied the faculty’s initial request by making a DVD. But, I asked to go a step further, and make a more interactive version by using Flash’s ability to sense user’s movement and sound using a web cameras lens (as the audience’s eyes) and mic (as their ears).
HOW IT WORKS:
When Flash senses movement from the camera, it tells the audience when the student has “taken the stage” and Flash prompts the audience to act accordingly: welcome clap. We shot fourteen segments of distractions. Audience members coughing, sleeping, answering cell calls, etc. During the performance, random clips of video load that represent audience behavior. Or, distractions. When Flash hears that the music has stopped for a few seconds, it tells the audience to clap in response to a performance ending. And, like a real audience, you don’t know how they will react. Sometimes the performer receives a polite clap, sometimes a more enthusiastic applause, sometimes a full standing ovation.
We are using Adobe AIR as the deployment method for a few of reasons:
- Though streaming the video from Flash Media Server is an option, for quality and processing consistency, this needs to be a desktop application
- we wanted to avoid creating two different versions
- Air has a seamless update framework. This allows us to easily push updates to the user without them have to do much more than allow the update to occur
We actually tested the VA in various settings (from HUGE screens, to life size projectors to video goggles). It had a chilling (but good) effect when I “took the stage”.
During the development, we realized that the VA could be used by other areas of the university that “perform” in front of an audience. Namely speech communication and theater. Both programs require students to think on their toes and concentrate on performing a piece that they may be very familiar with performing in a quiet setting, with no distractions.
Future versions will be available using Flash Media Server and will feature video shot in HD format. The HD format will provide finer quality video when the audiences is projected on to large format screens or viewed on larger monitors.
After installing the free Adobe runtime environment, you can install and use the Virtual Audience for free.
