Greg Elliott - Interdisciplinary Technology

SynchStep is a free application that plays songs from your music library that match your pace. Every step you take lands in-time with a drum hit, a bass pluck, a piano chord.

Unlike other music players, synchstep connects the music in your head to the music in your body. You don't have a lot of control over what comes on; it's liberating. Use SynchStep when you don't know what to listen to or when you want to feel like John Travolta. Let go of some control. Let your feet pick the beat.

SynchStep was downloaded over 300,000 times in the first few months it debuted, and is now in private beta testing of version 3 that synchronizes automagically with a centralized tempo database.

Platform	iPhone + iPod Touch
Company	Greg Elliott, LLC.
Role	Everything
Website	Visit site

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If SynchStep had been designed as most computational systems are, it would require its user to walk a certain way in order to function; this, of course, sounds as ridiculous as it should. We must continually wrap ourselves and our way of working and playing around machines, bending and contorting in an effort to use them. SynchStep celebrates the differences in our walking styles, adapting to all and requiring very little in return. It turns the tables, so that the person simply does what he/she wants to do, and the machine bends and contorts itself around the user.

Since the late 1950's, when the SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) system's designers used people as band-aids for an imperfect computational system, our interaction with machines has been primarily focused on reinforcing the SAGE-style environment. We are forced to compensate and learn how to convince dumb machines to do what we want them to do. Only recently has the burden of interaction design been placed as much on the designers, programmers and engineers as on a system's participants. SynchStep is an exercise in drastically altering these roles, allowing people to enter into a symbiotic relationship with a machine. The person influences the system dynamics as much as the machine does, and in this way each plays off the other continuously and simultaneously. The device's intelligence has not changed; it is an unintelligent object, much like a hammer or a pen. All three are simply tools that do what they are told to do, whether the author be a blacksmith or a programmer. Instead, the relationship between the human and the machine is different, and the system that unfolds is unique. This device adapts to its user, performing a task based upon embodied, natural, and situated movement. The person walks as they normally do, and SynchStep adapts to their movement.

This device is not concerned with an optimal workout or improving the health of america. It is intended to de-optimize us, and do away with the notion of an "optimal" walk or run. There is no program to follow, or pre-determined track; you begin walking and the computer follows you, adapting to you and your walking style without protest. It supports meandering, wasting time, and loitering.