Idea: Utilizing Sense/Stage to Control Crowds
Utilizing it on an individual results in really tightly controlled activity (like the example below, where the music adapts to the dancer rather than the other way around). I’ve been thinking about utilizing the system with crowds.
Why? You can achieve that same kind of tightly controlled activity by aligning the various decision loops of a crowd of individual actors. This can get extremely complex, the Sense/Stage system has been tested with 40 nodes simultaneously running 150 channels of distributed, real time sensor data. Here’s some broad strokes:
- Amusement. Think of a ride where the ride adapts to what the crowd is doing. Multiple possible vectors (say you’re just walking around). Crowd members experience different thrills based on which path they took (a haunted house this way could be a LOT of fun). Would encourage them to come back and do the same ride again… but experience it differently each time! You wouldn’t have to invent Disney Land. You’d just have to work with one warehouse. Huge opportunity.
- Controlling Fear Vectors for Good. Think of an evacuation system that tracks crowd members and adapts itself to the conditions at hand. In the case of a fire, it senses a heat surge, and lights go extremely red and alarm gets VERY loud as you approach it, and only in that area. As you move in the right direction, lights get brighter, alarm fades slowly. Could get more complex: as the crowd runs more (risking trampling) more calming sounds/sounds/lights are cued. If its moving too slowly, a sense of urgency is instilled. In short, a security system that isn’t a mousetrap. Doesn’t provide flat, dead instructions. Instead, the environment is alive and reacting to the situation.
- Controlling Fear Vectors for Bad. An ad-hoc system, deployed just (minutes) prior to an attack. Directs fear vectors by blinking out lights to the evacuation routes that work, emitting negative sounds (screams of pain, gunfire, + just creepy stuff – Joker-esque laughing) that add to chaos. Transforms an environment into a stage that reinforces terror.
-Shlok
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