RjDj (Reality Jockey Ltd.) was a startup founded in late 2008 by
last.fm co-founder
Michael Breidenbruecker. The company was based in
London and was run by a small team of four employees. Its mission was to create sonic experiences specifically designed for the latest generation of personal music players. RjDj produced and distributed a network of mobile applications and sold additional musical content within this network.[1]
RjDj developed a new genre of music that it called reactive music, a non-linear form of music that was able to react to the listener and their environment in real-time.[2] Reactive music is closely connected to
generative music,
interactive music, and
augmented reality. Similar to music in
video games, that is changed by specific events happening in the game, reactive music is affected by events occurring in the real life of the listener. Reactive music adapts to a listener and their environment by using built-in sensors (e.g.
camera,
microphone,
accelerometer,
touch-screen and
GPS) in mobile media players. The main difference to
generative music is that listeners are part of the creative process, co-creating the music with the composer. Reactive music is also able to augment and manipulate the listeners real-world auditory environment.[3]
What is distributed in reactive music is not the music itself, but software that generates the music.[4] Applications made by RjDj were available on Apple’s
iOS platform. The technology behind it was based on the
Pure Data (or Pd) digital signal processing framework. Reactive music pieces, so called Scenes, could be made using rjlib,[5] which is an open source library of useful software building blocks to construct reactive music.
RjDj closed its website and removed its apps from circulation in 2013.
[5] – Little Boots Reactive Remixer iPhone app tutorial
References
^
Waldner, F.; Zisfkovits, M.; Lauren, L.; Heidenberger, K. (7 September 2011), "Cross-Industry Innovation: The Transfer of a Service-Based Business Model from the Video Game Industry to the Music Industry", 2011 International Conference on Emerging Intelligent Data and Web Technologies, Emerging Intelligent Data and Web Technologies (EIDWT), 2011 International Conference on, IEEE, pp. 143–147,
doi:
10.1109/EIDWT.2011.30,
ISBN978-1-4577-0840-4,
S2CID15948523
^Barnard; et al. (2009). iPhone User Interface Design Projects. New York: Apress. pp. 235–238.
ISBN978-1430223597.
^(n.a.).
"Inception The App". Remote Control Productions, Warner Bros. & Reality Jockey Ltd. Archived from
the original on 3 November 2012. Retrieved 31 October 2012.