Booka Shade concert uses audience’s phones to coordinate light show

Back in the day when there was no such thing as a smartphone, let alone a mobile phone, concerts do, from time to time, see the audience use lit candles and wave them from side to side in an emotionally charged moment. Well, Booka Shade has recently performed a concert but decided to ditch candles for something more current and high tech – which would be smartphones in the midst of the audience. In fact, the smartphones went along in a coordinated sound and lights show thanks to a custom app that ran during songs, helping the audience feel as though they ‘complete’ the performance.

Forget Prince’s “Purple Rules” demanding smartphone-free concerts, one group is actually encouraging fans to wave their handset in the air because it’s part of the show. Electronic group Booka Shade recently performed a concert where the audience’s phones played coordinated sound and lights via a custom app during songs, making them less of an annoyance and more an integral part of the performance. “With so much opposition to using smartphones at gigs because of image and video rights infringement, we wanted to show how mobile technology can actually be used to make a performance even better,” says band member Walter Merziger. The band collaborated on the project with Vodafone and an organization called Makelight Interactive. To take part phones need to have Makelight’s app installed. They’re then synced up at the show using a tone that also pinpoints where each handset is in the room based on how it hears the sound. The creative agency has made several light shows using phones for bands in the past (as have others), but this is the first time they’ve incorporated music into the mix.