The Reactable was conceived and developed since 2003 by a research team at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger and Marcos Alonso presented their creation for the first time in a public concert at the International Computer Music Conference 2005 in Barcelona.
The Reactable is a revolutionary new electronic musical instrument that uses a so called tangible interface, where the musician controls the system by manipulating tangible objects. The table itself is the display. As a tangible is placed on the table, various animated symbols appear, such as waveforms, circles, circular grids, or sweeping lines. There are various types of tangibles representing different modules of an analog synthesizer. There are more than 40 different objects: sound generators, samplers and loops, filters and effects, low frequency oscillators or step-pulses… All the objects have different functions and behaviors and they can all be combined with each other, endlessly. Additionally, the resulting sonic flows are represented graphically on the table surface always showing the real waveforms that travel from one object to the other.
The Reactable’s four main groups of modules include sound generators, sound filters or effects, controllers and global objects. The sound generators generate sound that can be changed by the filters. Controllers, which include modules such as low frequency oscillators (LFO) or step-sequencers, can dynamically modify the behavior of the objects they get connected to, while global objects affect global parameters of the table, such as the beats per minute (BPM), the volume or even the harmonic structure. All of the parameters involved in these processes can be controlled by turning the objects like knobs, as well as by attaching controllers to them.
Underneath the table is a video camera, aimed at the underside of the table and inputting video to a personal computer. There is also a video projector under the table, also connected to the computer, projecting video onto the underside of the table top that can be seen from the upper side as well.
Placed onto the table are the tangibles that have fiducials attached to their underside which are seen through the table by the camera. The fiducials are printed black and white images, consisting of circles and dots in varying patterns, optimized for use by reacTIVision. ReacTIVision then uses the fiducials to understand the function of a particular tangible. Most of the tangibles are flat, with one fiducial on the underside. Some other tangibles are cubes, with fiducials attached to several sides, allowing those tangibles to serve multiple functions.
The live video stream received from a digital video camera is processed by the open-source computer vision software called reacTIVision, originally developed by Martin Kaltenbrunner and Ross Bencina for the Reactable project. ReacTIVision detects cartesian and rotational placement of fiducials on the table surface, then emits the specially designed Open Sound Control based network protocol called TUIO, which communicates to the actual synthesizer and visualization software that outputs to the video projector. ReacTIVision is also capable of multi-touch fingertip tracking.
http://www.reactable.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactable
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yeah, wicked thing! would love to play with it sometimes.