Reactable

Sunday Synth Jam: This video features a Reactable jam by Carles López at El Grial in Ibiza, as part of the Ibiza International Music Summit.

More Reactable jamming below! Read more…

Image: fr1zz

One of a very nice collection of Musikmesse 09 photos by frizz.

The Reactable is a rather sextacular collaborative electronic music instrument that features a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface.

via the Synthtopia Flickr Pool

Musikmesse 2009: Some more German coverage, this time of the Reactable Systems Reactable. Audio demo section kicks in about halfway.

via musotalk

Frankfurt Musikmesse 2009. Newly-formed company Reactable Systems has announced plans to put the Reactivision-based Reactable into production.

The Reactable is a new electronic musical instrument that combines state of the art technologies with a simple and intuitive design, which enables musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a very direct way.

The kind of interface that the Reactable uses is called tangible, because the musicians use different shaped tangible pucks in order to control the system. The Reactable is based on a translucent and luminous round table, and by putting these pucks on the Reactable surface, by turning them and interacting them with each other, performers can combine different elements like synthesizers, effects, sample loops or control elements in order to create a unique and flexible composition.

via musicradartv

Martin Kaltenbrunner has published a very nice overview of tangible musical interfaces, focusing on table-top controllers, such as music tables and audio building blocks.

Projects featured include:

• Audiopad – a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music.
• Audio d-touch – a set of 3 applications for music composition and performance: the Augmented Stave, the Tangible Drum Machine and the Physical Sequencer.
• The Music Table – an experimental composing system that provides a tactile and visual representation of music that can be easily manipulated to make new musical patterns.
• The Circular Optical Object Locator is a collaborative and cooperative music-making device.
• The ISS cube – a surround sound mixer that tracks the position of several physical objects on a tabletop surface to provide the user with an intuitive way of creating a non-linear soundscape.
• AudioCube – an installation that allows a group of users to create their own three-dimensional soundscape.
• Bach Blocks – a game that encourages children to create totally original music. The blocks are physical analogs to musical notes with color associated to pitch and block size to beat length.
• Chessynthesis is a performance project. It consists in a classical chess game, with a chessboard and 32 pieces, but a captation system analyzes the position and the evolution of the gameplay, and transcode it to sound.

Many more are featured at the site.

via USO on Twitter