Dancing hackers create iLuminate system for performance art | Hacker News Reader

Dancing hackers create iLuminate system for performance art

iluminate.com

26 pointsanigbrowl11 comments

Hello there, iLuminate hacker here! My partner Miral and I founded iLuminate 2 years ago. It's been extremely fun, both on the technical side (we built wearable embedded hardware from scratch for wirelessly controlling lights) and on the performance side. Miral does both. If you saw America's Got Talent [1] tonight, you may have seen her hacking away on her Mac. She was disappointed they didn't show an over-the-shoulder shot of her typing stuff into netcat. :)

[1] http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent/video/ep-601-team-ilu...

Just curious - what aspects of the performance was she controlling live? I'm surprised she was hacking away in netcat during the performance. I would think the entire thing would have been completely designed beforehand, and at most during the performance she'd be pressing a button at various pre-selected points during the song to keep everything synched (or something like that ... obviously I don't know anything about this).

Awesome stuff by the way. I happened to be watching America's Got Talent tonight and it was by far my favorite.

> Just curious - what aspects of the performance was she controlling live? ... I would think the entire thing would have been completely designed beforehand ...

You're right. It's mostly pre-choreographed, with manual cue points for performances involving live music or variable length pauses. But, we do use netcat for manual overrides, for monitoring even pre-choreographed pieces, and for testing the devices and lights. It's pretty damn handy. ;)

> Awesome stuff by the way.

Thanks! Watch for us in the next round!

Yeah, Mrs. Browl happened to be watching and said 'come look at this, it's cool,' and (as usual) she was right. Not where I expected to see a software engineer on stage either, so that was nice. Well done, you've got a really solid product there.

Thanks for submitting this -- "Dancing Hackers" is apt. :)

Saw your performance on the show tonight as well. Great stuff, easily best of the night. Can't wait to see what you have in store for the next round!

Typing stuff into netcat always looks very 1337! http://xkcd.com/341/

> Introducing iLuminate™, the first patent-pending wearable, wireless lighting system.

Serious question for the founding team: Why do you think what you do is patentable? It's kinda a hot topic today.

They're patenting a specific control system, possibly including protocols, circuits, and/or specialized hardware. It's not like they're patenting EL wire or something :)

This is correct, the invention is in the control system / hardware. We are not a fan of software patents.

Good stuff.

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