Music Hack Day at MIT is an international 24-hour event where musical nerds of all kinds collaborate to change the music world through technology innovation.
For Ryan Challinor‘s project, he connected a simple wireless heart rate monitor to his computer, and by using special software, is able to manipulate the tempo of a song.
His program took his heart rate, divided it by the original tempo of the song, and used that number to control the rate of song speed.
To demonstrate his invention, he performed jumping jacks while Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe was playing. As his heart beat increased, so did the speed of the song. It’s quite an experience.
Over the weekend, the video went viral, garnering over 150,000 views. It has also been featured on Geek, NowMSN, and TheDailyWhat.