Boston Silent Dance Experiment
Comments: 0 - Date: February 25th, 2008 - Categories: Innovation
A thoroughly modern event took place at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall this Saturday. Braving the snow and the cold, about 400 people turned up for Boston’s First Silent Dance Experiment!
Silent dances, also called flash mobbing or mobile clubbing, have been organized in cities all over the world to great success. They are a particular consequence of digital technology. Organized and publicized entirely through the Internet, carried out with mp3 players, silent dances are only possible because of our technology.
Unlike most other silent dances though, the participants here in Boston weren’t dancing each to their own music. Bandito, Misteriosos, the group organizing the event, put out an mp3 that gave out directions to all the dancers — pose like The Thinker, swim, swing dance, march….. Amazingly, everyone was in sync. iPods are usually thought of as isolating — we plug in our earbuds and tune out the rest of the world — but here they went into creating a sense of community.
If you’re in the Boston area and interested in such future experiments, look at the Banditos Misteriosos‘ homepage. (A past pillow fight was a great success too.) Also up is the original mp3 for those curious as well as photos and videos from the Silent Dance. Our own Digital Natives video to come soon!
