FanRows is an independent project founded and developed by Jürgen Berentz, a system designer and independent researcher in embodied interaction and interactive sound.
What began as an experiment with body tracking and browser-based sound has gradually developed into a broader investigation of how people can experience sound through movement, and how interactive systems can create conditions for exploration rather than simply execute commands.
FanRows is built independently, outside a university laboratory or commercial product organization. This allows the project to move between technical development, artistic experimentation, and research questions without forcing those perspectives into separate projects.
The first FanRows prototypes were technical experiments with webcam-based body tracking and browser audio. Movement signals were derived from the body and mapped to sound, but it soon became clear that technical correctness alone did not make an interaction interesting. Some mappings worked exactly as intended and still felt mechanical, while others produced unexpected relationships that encouraged repetition, slower movement, or longer periods of exploration. In some cases, a sound that seemed almost insignificant at first became compelling only after several minutes of interaction.
These experiences gradually shifted the focus of the project. The central question became less about whether movement could control sound and more about what kind of environment might emerge when a person spends time inside a continuously responsive system. FanRows has developed from that question ever since.
FanRows has developed through an ongoing exchange between technical work and direct experience. New ideas are implemented, played, observed, changed, and sometimes discarded when they do not feel convincing in practice.
Development therefore does not happen only in code. Longer sessions, repeated movements, unexpected sound relationships, moments of stillness, and transitions between deliberate control and more intuitive exploration all influence how the system evolves.
This also changes the way problems are evaluated. A technically correct mapping is not necessarily a good interaction. A simple sound may become more interesting than a highly produced one when it leaves space for movement. A transition that looks insignificant in a configuration file can completely change the continuity of an experience.
Some questions can be answered through software tests. Others only become visible when someone actually spends time inside a sound space.
The research direction of FanRows grows directly from these experiences.
Rather than beginning with a theory that the system is supposed to prove, observations made during interaction become questions for further investigation. Repetition, adaptation, stillness, changing degrees of control, movement–sound relationships, and the transition from deliberate interaction toward more intuitive exploration are all areas of interest.
FanRows does not attempt to infer hidden psychological states from body movement, nor does it treat subjective experiences as scientific conclusions. The system provides a concrete environment in which observable interaction patterns and first-person experience can be examined alongside one another.
This makes FanRows both a creative project and an evolving independent research practice.
The current work concentrates on making individual sound spaces more coherent, stable, and convincing over longer periods of interaction.
Rather than expanding FanRows through large numbers of features, the emphasis is on understanding what makes a sound environment worth exploring: the choice of sound material, the relationships between movement and sound, the balance between influence and openness, and the transitions that allow an experience to continue without interruption.
At the same time, FanRows is developing toward tools that allow creators to construct their own responsive sound spaces and, later, toward environments that can be experienced by several people together.
The project remains deliberately exploratory. Its direction is shaped not only by what can technically be built, but by what proves meaningful when it is actually experienced.
Further documentation of the FanRows architecture, interaction model, configuration structure, and implementation logic is available here:
Research & Technical Documentation
For artistic collaboration, research exchange, or conversations about FanRows:
FanRows — Continuous Embodied Audio Interaction
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