This box rocks

>>The International Dance Party
flips its lid at Elektra

TRUNK FULL OF FUNK: Hannah and Roy with the IDP

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

There’s no shortage of neat installations at the ninth edition of Montreal’s Elektra Digital Arts Festival. There’s Maurizio Martinucci’s Optofonica Capsule, a single-occupant, sci-fi techno-pod with video and something called Tactile Sound in a 5.1 surround system for a freaky, full-immersion experience. Toronto’s Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea and Matt Donovan have concocted a Robotic Chair that falls apart and rebuilds itself. And the Simpel group’s Paper Cup Telephone Network combines the crudest of kiddie telecom tricks with the vast possibilities of the Internet.

The funnest by far, though, is undoubtedly the International Dance Party created by Montreal’s Adad Hannah and Berlin’s Niklas Roy. It’s not an actual event, a club night, a CD series or even a DJ team. In fact, at first glance, it’s nothing more than an unassuming shipping container. Tap your toes nearby, however, and the party pops out.

Hannah explains the IDP as “a portable dance party contained in a self-transforming flight case. It has one plug, a powerful amplifier, sweet Aiwa speakers, an LED sign giving directions in over 20 languages, hydraulics, lasers, strobes, ground effects, a police beacon and of course a smoke machine.

“It uses radar to sense dance activity—the more people dance, the more the International Dance Party will reward them with smoke, light effects and an organic soundtrack which adjusts itself according to the amount of activity it senses.”

The tunes this box of boom busts out, composed and produced by Vancouver’s Baddd Spellah, classify as what Hannah calls “Euro-trash-booty-shaking-dance-beats, designed to encourage the audience to keep dancing. The music is the reward, the lasers and smoke are just gravy.”

Hannah was already thinking inside the box in 2003, he recalls. “But it was not until I met Niklas Roy at a media-art biennial in Poland that I really believed it could be done. Looking at some of Niklas’s other projects, like the Pong Mechanik, got me excited, and over drinks in a loud and crappy bar, I told him my idea and we hatched the plans that five years later have given birth to the IDP.

“We kept having $10,000 ideas, but we had to build it quickly and relatively cheap. Niklas had prebuilt some components in his Berlin studio before he came here late last year, but we really had to build the whole thing in a month, something that could have been tinkered on in the studio for three years. Perhaps the biggest challenge was packing so many different lights, such a large amplifier, a computer, smoke machine, and radar sensor into a not-so-big flight case and have the whole thing function smoothly without blowing a fuse.”

The IDP makes its public debut at Elektra, and the pair is pondering possible expos, events and festivals for follow-up appearances. Pressed about possible apps and add-ons (like, oh, a karaoke kit), Hannah pleads for patience. “It would be fun to make variations, but for the moment we want to tour this one around and see how it interacts with audiences. I don’t know if a karaoke function would work as it is important that the music changes according to the dance activity, but maybe a country version that spins a lasso above itself and shoots straw out the side instead of smoke would help us tap into a new demographic.”

At Café de l’Usine C (1345 Lalonde)
nightly from 5 p.m., May 8–11.
www.elektramontreal.ca