Today, while visiting the museum of science and industry here in hyde park i discovered a little jewel of musical interface. The Reactable, developed by Sergi Jorda' and cohorts, allows users to physically manipulate samples and filters via a table top and little plastic blocks. This thing blew my mind.
here's a link to the Reactable
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
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Looks like a pretty amazing interface, pretty impressive how many variables it allows for just based on differences of shape and positioning. The little surface control elements that appear for the control shapes are rad.
ReplyDeletei totally want one of these. bjork had one of these on her tour a few years back.
ReplyDeleteit's funny you posted this - i just came accross this today. it's a virtual reactable, which sort of defeats the purpose of the tactile interface, but it looks cool anyway. i think it's linux-only, but could probably be compiled on os x if anyone's feeling fancy.
Psycosynth
If I had one of those, I would probably just get drunk and break it, it looks fragile. Or I would just stare and stare at it and be lost in a trance of black light wonder. Did not Autechre say that we would have MIDI controllers by the time that we die that could just read out minds and make music based upon our brain waves? Scary
ReplyDeletethe awesome part about the one at the museum of science and industry is that it's a sorta' disconnected from the "didactic material" that accompanies it, so people just walk up and start messing with it. usually it takes a second for people to realize what's going on. sometimes longer. all these dudes in suits were mesmerized by it. of course, all the little kids who played wih it picked up on what to do immediately.
ReplyDeleteOn the complete opposite end, I have mildly enthralled by this lately:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.intua.net/products.html
(Beatmaker)
because all you get are 16 samples and a step sequencer. You can pitch the samples but the shifting sounds really terrible. Like Acid 2 terrible. But you can fuck with it anywhere.
I also tried the Eno thing:
http://gizmodo.com/5061004/brian-enos-bloom-raises-the-bar-for-musical-iphone-apps
which is a good idea but is not really good for much other than vegetating your brain and ears simultaneously, like you would do if you were having a panic attack and desperately needed something to fixate on to prevent the feeling that your heart might explode in your chest without you realizing it.