Link: the mob of chiming rabbits on video, well worth a look and listen:
http://nabazmob.free.fr/nabazfilm.html
http://nabazmob.free.fr/nabazconcept.html
"Technical information
"The Nabaz'mob opera uses 100 standard commercial Nabaztag robotic wi-fi rabbits made by the violet company (www.nabaztag.com). In the control room, there is a PC server which acts as the conductor and 3 wi-fi routers to communicate with the rabbits.
"The opera score, which defines, in digital format, the audio, visual and ear movements of the opera over time, is uploaded to the rabbits before the show, using wi-fi. At the beginning of the show, the computer sends the start command through wi-fi to the rabbits, which then perform the opera by themselves. All the music is played by the rabbits themselves, using their internal synthesizer and speaker.
"For the creation, the rabbits were brought by their owner for the show and reconfigured to follow the local PC instead of the standard central server.
"As we did not have 100 rabbits during the composition process, the opera was composed using specific composition software programmed for the occasion and simulating a crowd of 100 rabbits-performers (visual and audio) on a single computer, enabling us to feel what a single score played semi-randomly on 100 performers would look and sound like.
"For the show, the 100 rabbits are arranged on stage like a choir, with lighting and microphones. We human are in the control room, and only hit the start button and tune the audio levels on the console during the show. It is the rabbits who are the stars."
http://www.flickr.com/photos/silvertje/1673537668/in/photostream/
