A silent disco or silent rave is an event where people dance to music listened to on wireless headphones. Those without the headphones hear no music, giving the effect of a room full of people dancing to nothing. In the earliest days of silent discos, beforethere would be only one channel available to listen to music through.
Over time, the technology moved along to where there were two, and later technology allowed for a third channel that three separate DJs could broadcast over at the same time. Silent discos are popular at music festivals as they allow dancing to continue past noise curfews.
Similar events are "mobile clubbing" gatherings, where a group of people dance to the music on their personal music players. An early reference in fiction is Astroboy 's Japanese science fiction story The Summer ofwhere the titular character attends a party where everyone wears headphones.
The concept was used by eco-activists in the early s, utilizing headphones at outdoor parties to minimize noise pollution and disturbance to the local wildlife. Inthe Glastonbury Festival linked its on-site radio station to the video screen sited next to the Main Stage, allowing festival goers to watch late night World Cup football and music videos on the giant screen after the sound curfew by using their own portable radios.
The idea was the brainchild of the project manager from Proquip, who supplied the giant screen, and engineers from Moles Recording Studio in Bath, Somerset Söktermer, who were working with Radio Avalon. In May artist Meg Duguid hosted Dance with me This performance was repeated the following year at the Chicago Cultural Center.
During this tour, the company became the first to produce American silent discos on a beach Miami Beach and a boat the Rocksoff Cruise in New York Harbor. The Oxford Dictionary Online added the term "silent disco" to their website in February Some companies have offered home kits.
A silent concert or headphones concert is a live music performance where the audience, in the same venue as the performing artist, listens to the music through headphones. The first headphone concert taking place in front of a live audience took place March 17,at Trees in Dallas, Texas.
The American psychedelic band The Flaming Lips used an FM signal generator at the Söktermer and handed out mini FM radio receivers and headphones to each member of the audience. A normal speaker system was also used so the sound could also be felt.
This continued on their "International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue" tour with mixed results, with technical problems including dead batteries and intoxicated audience members having trouble tuning to the correct frequency. Later headphone concerts used specially designed wireless 3-channel headphones, better in-house custom made transmitters and no speakers or any live PA in the venue.
A variant of the headphone concert involves live bands competing for the audience, who are able to choose which band's frequency to receive. In Metallica performed live in Antarctica utilizing headphones instead of traditional concert amplification, due to concerns about harming the environment.
Theatre and performance companies are using silent disco technology as well. Inwith the help of SilentArena Ltd, Feral Productions began using an experimental approach — a mixture of narrative-led performance, sound art and guided exhibit.
Their first performance, The Gingerbread Housetook the audience from The Courtyard, Hereford on a journey through a multi-storey car park in the centre of Hereford.