If you’re interested in getting involved in our tangible interface hackday but had trouble filling out the form, here are the corrected links. Somehow I copied the wrong form keys yesterday.
International update: So far, Berlin, Canberra, Vienna, and India are interested in participating – and that was with the forms pointed in the wrong place! I think we can expect more. I’ll get in touch with you soon.
The folks reading this site comprise an incredible worldwide community of creative musicians and technologists. So it’s always fantastic when we get to connect. Here’s our first experiment in doing just that with a one-day project starter to share. The theme: tangible interfaces.
The knob/potentiometer – when you get enough of them, plugged into the right things, in the hands of the right people – has given us some wonderful music. (Heck, see also the string.) Simple inventions + lots of people + creativity + experimentation = brilliant output.
Computer interfaces that make use of physical objects for input are nothing new. But what is new is easier tools for making use of them, plus emerging communities of people who are new to the idea bringing fresh ideas. So, as opposed to our usual behind-the-computer isolation, we’re going to get folks together for the first in a series of experiments in virtual, shared hacking.
June 6 (and in the days around it), we’ll have a shared online event, plus an in-person event in NYC at the wonderful New Work City, working with projects based on the simple-and-cheap, open-source Trackmate hardware+software, a tangible interface you can build for as little as US$50 in parts, including the essential webcam.
What you need: some cheap parts, a webcam, a computer, some objects to track, and some inclination – the tracking software is even already built for you.
What you can do: Apply stickers to track the physical objects, and turn any tangible real-world stuff into a musical interface. (Some coding or patching experience is recommended for connecting your interface to tools like Max or Pd or SuperCollider to make sounds, or for translating to MIDI for other tools.)
For musicians, I could imagine some really interesting possibilities. You can compose a wide variety of music and synthesized sound using nothing but a mouse as input; add a physical input with multiple points, and you lierally open more dimensions.
NYC: Some space left at the in-person event in NYC – RSVP required – plus a party in the evening. Other in-person events may get organized in other cities; stay tuned.
On Create Digital Motion I’ve written a more detailed explanation of the event, why we’re doing it, and how to get involved:
…and I’ve been adding to a blog on this project and future hackdays, which will be updated with more resources, ideas, tests, and tutorials leading up to, during, and after our first-ever global hackday:
By the way, apologies for completely botching our livestream of Handmade Music this week. Lesson learned: you need a reliably fast network to avoid total failure. New Work City is set up as an online-connected office, and they have a plenty-fast network, and if you follow me on Twitter I’ll be testing it the week of June 1. Readers have watched CDM experiment and learn by trial-and-error, though, and I always appreciate your support.
Also, this is not to be confused with Hack-A-Day, one of my all-time favorite places on the Internet. But let’s make every day a hackday.
Novation’s Automap is coming to the iPhone – meaning a handheld device can provide interactive visual and textual feedback about what you’re manipulating in, say, an Ableton Live set.
Our friends at Hispasonic (Spanish-language) bring us the news. (Thanks, Xavier!) Photo credit: the new blog SaM’s burrow:
That gives you a closer look. I’m not even going to try to wonder what happened to Novation’s NDA. (We seem to be getting mostly “D.”) But, Novation, if you’re out there, trust me – buzz already suggests this is a good leak for you.
On the Ableton forums, some naysayers wonder why you’d want to run a Live set from an iPhone. The answer is, naturally, you wouldn’t – I think they’re missing the point. There are two larger issues here. One is, having a handheld device means there’s just another intelligent way to control your music set. It might be something you prop atop your keyboard or drum pad controller as a small dashboard, or that you carry with you so you can hear the sound in a venue during sound check. The other message is, interactive control with actual labels on parameters is the future for a lot of devices, not just the iPhone. That’s in stark contrast to the primitive way in which MIDI refers to everything in terms of (typically) meaningless numbers.
In fact, there are some promising other attempts to more easily see and manipulate clips away from your laptop screen, on devices like the Lemur. Thanks to the Live API (on which Max for Live’s control of Live is also based), it’s possible to finally get a full, controllable view of your clips. My only criticism would be that we still lack a single, open standard for this stuff. If Ableton Live supported OpenSoundControl (OSC) natively, it’d open all sorts of applications – without the hacking currently required. But that’s a topic for another day, and not just directed at Ableton.
Here’s the full text of this announcement from the Ableton forums. Stay tuned; hopefully we’ll hear official news soon.
No doubt about it: touch is coming to more screens near you. But there’s no need to disappoint your current beloved laptop. $200 kits can turn your laptop into a functioning touchscreen.
Now, as I’m working with JazzMutant’s Lemur this week, before you get excited, this is no Lemur – or even anything like your iPhone or iPod touch. Sensitivity and accuracy are workable, but not exceptional, the overlay is pretty simple (as you can see in the video) rather than integrated with the display, and this is single-touch only — not multi-touch. Lastly, on a conventional laptop that isn’t convertible, you may miss the ability to fully extend your laptop perpindicular to your body. (Having the screen be parallel can put your arms in a fatiguing position.)
But that said, there’s a lot of potential once you have the ability to reach over and make quick gestures on a laptop screen that control a set. You might make your own instruments and effects or controller dashboards in a tool like Processing or Reaktor. And at $200, this could be a brilliant way to retrofit a machine and breathe new life into it. There’s support for Mac, Windows, and Linux; you just plug in via USB.
Nathanaël Lécaudé sends along a lovely video that reveals some of the brilliant hacking scene in Montreal, centering on the Foulab collective and hackspace. The mini-documentary doesn’t assume you’ve heard of things like oscilloscopes and circuit bending, so it could be a good one to pass along to friends and family who haven’t seen this stuff before. This is just one slice of what I know is a fantastically creative scene in Montreal and Québec. Featured:
A custom oscilloscope made from a repurposed CRT, by Andrew MacGillivray
A 1938 teletype machine, rescued by Redbeard
An original boom box made from recycled parts by Maxster
XC3N working with modified 8-bit game systems
The creator asks in the YouTube description:
A look into the hardware hacking community in Montreal, including the Foulab collective. Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?
My answers: the Internet; getting your hands dirty rocks; yes. (Feel free to add your own.)
By the way, I’m trying to figure out just what quote is getting quoted at the end. I believe it may actually be a direct quote of someone slightly changing this Marshall McLuhan quote:
“You shape your tools and they shape you. It’s a loop. You start out a consumer and you wind up consumed.”
Actually, I can tell I’m an electronic musician at heart, because that sounds pretty good to me – and suggests the ways in which the consumer tools and DIY tools are both entangled in our creative process, perhaps in interesting ways. But perhaps someone can untangle the provenance of these words – please feel free; I find the readers of this site often know more than I do.
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