Booka Shade play first ever gig controlled by audience's phones

In what marks a new development in the interaction between musicians and their audience, 9 May 2014 saw German house duo Booka Shade controlling their audience's smartphones to project sound and colours during a gig.

Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier were able to take over each audience member's smartphone via an app, which projected different sounds and colours to introduce a whole new dimension to the average gig-going experience.

The interactive gig, which took place in Berlin, saw 600 audience members able to "collaborate" with Booka Shade by synchronising their phones to the different sounds and lighting of the event. Speaking before the gig, Merziger and Kammermeier admitted it'd be interesting to embrace, rather than discourage, the presence of phones at a show.

"The last couple of years, there was an explosion really," Merziger said of the invasion of smartphones at gigs - a trend which has irritated many artists, and led the likes of Savages and Yeah Yeah Yeahs to ban them from live shows. "In the best moments of a show, you'd have all the mobiles out instead of people cherishing or experiencing the moment."