One of the members of my swing website Yehoodi, ShortYgeorge sent me a story that perfectly combines lindy hop and geekiness. Apparently today is the one year anniversary of a dance in Amsterdam that ShortYgeorge started called "Swing Out of Pocket." Sadly, George was not able to be there, since he currently resides in New York.
Instead of just sending his regrets, he and the other Dutch organizers came up with a way to have George DJ the event from his home computer in New York using Skype and other software. The picture you see above is George's webcam capturing people dancing both in Amsterdam and in George's apartment in NYC to music being live DJed from his desktop computer over the internet to Amsterdam (as well as by other DJs in Amsterdam.)
Sounds a bit confusing, but probably a lot of fun.
As technology likes this gets cheaper and more accessible, and internet speeds get faster, we might not need to bring in out-of-town DJs. Just Skype them in (and pay them of Paypal) from wherever they are.
It was so much fun! The connection was so good that the dancers in New York could actually dance real-time to the music that was playing in Amsterdam and which they heard via the video/audio linkup (Skype).
Awsome!
Glad to hear it. If there is anything specific about your setup or suggestions you’d have for others who want to do a similar thing, we’d love to hear it!
Might be fun to try and Fram sometime?
Well, we had two laptops setup in Amsterdam, one for the Skype video connection to NY, the other running iTunes and Logmein (www.logemin.com) for remote control by the DJ in New York. The comms laptop was connected to a webcam and a beamer, so all the dancers could see what was going on. The webcam was aimed at the dance floor in Amsterdam.
The NY DJ had sent me his music play list in advance and it was all setup and ready to play.
We did try everything out in advance.
Don’t expect great video quality. Especially with lots of movement (as in many people dancing), the video gets very pixellated and grainy. But you still get a very good idea of what’s going on.