Find The Beat

Inspiration

There was a time in my life that I spent playing, composing, and producing music every waking moment. I believed that someday some of this sonic brilliance would reach someone’s ears and It would have a profound impact. Everyone wants to be heard; this is one thing we all have in common. But when do we listen? We listen when we want to connect with others. When we are curious and seeking to connect with the world that we are all a part of. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if artists were able to virtually connect with audiences all over the world in meaningful interactive ways and reach beyond the screen to dance into the real world?

What it does

This juxtaposition and synchronization of the real and virtual world creates strings that interweave one another, surpassing geographical obstacles. With the help of Niantic Lightship Visual Positioning System(VPS), we are building the foundations of a digital music wonderland; our first contribution to the real world meta-verse. The platform we will have started to build together, here at CruzHacks 2023, will allow users to step “through the looking glass” and experience a world of wonder together.

By tossing a virtual rose, a user can show their support triggering an audio visual augmented reality(AR) performance of Renee Harmoni, a rising star and artist on the label of my close friend and business partner, Donyea Gooding(Starchild Yeezo). We are grateful to have been given permission to use her unreleased song for our hack. Though she is in Los Angeles, she is here today virtually on the Stevenson Stage alongside the beautiful grand piano. https://www.tiktok.com/@officialreneeharmoni?_t=8YXL2GB3jeo&_r=1

How we built it

We came together as a team, a joint effort of 2 CS students at USF and 2 students at UC Santa Cruz. We fleshed out the details and troubleshooted together, which resulted in a product much greater than which any of us had pictured. Teamwork makes the dreamwork. We started by attending the Niantic Lightship workshops to get a better understanding of what and who we would have the pleasure of working with.

Challenges we ran into

Though it was difficult, the challenge was a well welcome pleasure to all of us. Though we encountered hindrances we were lucky and grateful to have the assistance of Niantic representatives to help us cross the finish line.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our team member Renier’s work on implementing the physics of the throwing of roses to make the toss more natural and varied. It was a much more rigorous task than anticipated.

What we learned

It was challenging to learn new tools and languages that we all were not familiar with such as Niantic Lightship VPS, C#, Unity. We also learned the importance of both strong leadership and the power of teamwork.

What's next for Find The Beat

We are focused on the needs of creators and their audiences. If we build something that can support multiple live AR performances in multiple locations, while supporting the exchange of NFT’s, and enabling artists to engage with fans in meaningful individualized, memorable ways unique to the AR/VR live performance experience; that would be something truly special. We are currently developing AI tools to enable any electronic musician to live stream a performance and instantly transform streaming live audio into a multi media interactive immersive live performance. What if these AI driven AR performances were linked to virtual performance locations in order to also support a VR audience? We aim to serve creators by giving them a safe place to perform and share there ideas and experiences with an audience of infinite size and scale in real and virtual places, limited only by the creators imagination and enhanced by the capability, opportunity and access of Web 3.0 technologies: An end to end Web 3 virtual performance solution built for everyone. We seek to foster meaningful connections with Niantic and continue to contribute to the real-world meta-verse.