LCD Soundsystem, Moniker and Google Data Arts release interactive VR experience, Dance Tonite

LCD Soundsystem has collaborated with Google to create Dance Tonite, a VR experience soundtracked by the track tonite. Dance Tonite is a virtual party that moves through a sequence of rooms each populated with a number “dancers”, made up of cylinders and cones, that move in time to the music. The experience works across a number of platforms from a desktop version, VR headsets and more elaborate technologies such as Oculus Rift and HT Vive that allow users to add their own choreography to proceedings.

Dance Tonite was directed by artists Jonathan Puckey and Moniker in collaboration with Google’s Data Arts Team. The team has released the code open source and provided an in-depth blog about the process of developing the project in WebVR.

“Dance Tonite takes an exuberant, unexpected approach to virtual reality. It’s a dance party. And it’s also a dance viewing party. In it, you go from room to room experiencing a series of dance performances created entirely by fans,” says Jeff Nusz from the Data Arts team. “All choreography was recorded using room-scale VR setups, which use headset and controller tracking to reflect your physical movements in your virtual environment. Instead of just mirroring your movements, we turn your room-scale VR kit into a DIY motion capture tool; if you have one, you can add your own moves to the party.”