You like visually stunning intuitive touch systems? Boy, is it your lucky day. The reacTable allows multiple artists to manipulate sounds simultaneously by moving unique blocks over a glowing surface. This beautiful instrument is geared towards a musician as well as an audience.

The synthesizer visually responds when the blocks flip, move, and turn on the surface. Proximity of each block changes variables such as pitch and pulsing visuals underneath the blocks visually show the artist and audience what the music is doing.

Developers of the reacTable had a vision of many artists manipulating pieces at concerts to create a mix of music and performance art. Musician Björk embraced that vision in her last tour, where you may already have seen the instrument in action.

Although reacTable may be the best looking, it isn’t the first in the line of “tangible music interfaces.” Audiopad is a project by MIT students stemming back to 2002. Their goals were similar, “Audiopad not only allows for spontaneous reinterpretation of musical compositions, but also creates a visual and tactile dialogue between itself, the performer, and the audience.”

The trend for systems such as these stems from a desire to bring a human experience to computing. Zero manual, zero instructions yet challenging, interesting and collaborative. This may not be the new face of a musical instrument we are seeing but rather a more natural from of computing.

[Wired]

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