Music is deeply tied up with motion; seeing that in a machine is somehow satisfying. Soundmachines, from the enigmatically-titled Berlin studio TheProduct*, is an interactive physical installation made from optical turntables. By moving the “tone arm” – really in this case an optical sensor attached to an extended mount – you can change rhythms and sound sweeps.

We’ve naturally seen many visualizations, tangible and digital, that make loops into wheels. But it’s worth noting the particular connection to a kinetic experiment by The Books’ Nick Zammuto from the film earlier this week. In fact, my one criticism of this piece is that the rhythms are so regular. Some syncopation in a machine like this would be not only pleasing, but immediately visible to the eye and therefore understandable. Perhaps even decoupling the wheels from the motor could allow a user to experiment with sound. That doesn’t mean you have to go from minimal techno to irregular chaos, but there’s quite a lot in between.

That’s not to take away from the impact of this piece, and in particular, the beauty of its installation. The presentation in an iconic object is a message in itself. And the circle remains the ideal design for a looped rhythm, embedded as it is in the repetition we perceive in our world.

http://www.the-product.org/soundmachines

More details:

Three units, which are resembling standard record players, translate concentric visual patterns into control signals for further processing in any music software. The rotation of the discs, each holding three tracks, can be synced to a sequencer.
The Soundmachines premiered on the Volkswagen New Beetle stand at the IAA motor show in late Summer 2011. In cooperation with the sounddesigner/producer Yannick Labbé of TRICKSKI fame, we developed three unique discs, each controlling one track of an Ableton Live Set exclusively made for the Event. The show was supported by a set of realtime generated visuals, running on a 25m wide LED wall.


One/One oneone-studio.com
TheProduct* the-product.org

Client

Volkswagen

Agency

Vok Dams, Hamburg

Sounddesign/Producer IAA
Yannick Labbé yannicklabbe.com

Special Thanks

Matt Karau
 matt.karau.com
Andreas Schmelas invertednothing.com

(See also a compelling-looking visual collage. It’s supposed to be set to John Cage’s “First Interlude,” but because of copyright concerns, is instead (arguably) set to Cage’s 4’33″. Let’s hope they don’t get sued for that.

Alex Nowitz for BodyControlled #2 from CDM on Vimeo.

Electronic media artist Mario de Vega (Mexico City/Berlin) says his work plays with the creation of “unstable systems.” As part of the official Vorspiel, or lead-up, to Berlin’s massive Transmediale festival, here we get to visit two artists working with the materiality of live performance, drawing from the festival theme of “in/compatible.” The sonic environments they create seem poised on the brink of sonic chaos, a dance at the edge of entropy.

CDM will again be editorial co-presenter of BodyControlled; you can see the show for free (donation suggested) in Berlin at LEAP, or tune into the live video stream from anywhere in the world, and we’ll be bringing you details of the artwork. We’re a ticket to Alexanderplatz that’s even cheaper than easyJet, in other words. The performances start at 20h CET Thursday, 26 January. (That’s 2p East Coast time / 11a Pacific, so scare your office mates and turn it up loud.) Full details below.

At top, composer/singer Alex Nowitz demonstrates his gestural performance techniques. I got to see his work for the first time at the Patterns + Pleasure Festival in the fall at Amsterdam’s STEIM research center. While at STEIM, Nowitz built on previous work with the Wii remote, and augmented his gestures with a new instrument, entitled the “Strophonion.” You can see that creation in the video above.

With each contortion of his body, Nowitz rips apart sounds, all while sputtering non-lingual utterances with his gymnastic voice. In the Amsterdam performance, one had the sense of following him into the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), an operatic odyssey echoing with forboding birdsong. But the system can also be dynamic and even, at moments, whimsical.

steim.org/projectblog/?p=3715
nowitz.de/

For his part, Mario de Vega’s “unstable systems” flirt even more with this notion of engineered incompatibility, with sounds that seem like they will explode in an earthquake-like tremor.

Mario de Vega for BodyControlled #2 from CDM on Vimeo.

mariodevega.info/

Films by João Pais, co-curator of the series; edited by CDM.

Also on this program, more works engage the idea of what the curatorial statement terms “hidden acoustics”:

Echo Ho (Canada/Cologne, DE)

Tuned to Site #26012012
This title is from a series of concerts, called “Tuned to Site #…”. As a whole, the series formulates the idea of “musification of urban landscapes”.
In the first performance of this series in 2012 Echo Ho will play a set of instruments: a self-fabricated hybrid semblance of the ancient Qin from China, which combines traditional acoustic and digital interfaces in one unique transparent plexiglas body. Like a sensor box, it will enable Echo Ho to make field recordings of inaudible hidden sounds within
the city environment, such as electro-magnetic fields, variation and wind movements. The performance thus marks the process of generating action by outlining situations in which sounds may occur.

http://www.echoho.net/

Ignaz Schick (DE)
Turntablist, sound artist, performer & composer Schick promises, through motors and objects, genuine accidents:

Site-specific performance with transducers, wireless controllers, feedback systems and back tape
Through accidents and their outcomes, actions, processes and objects that conceptually connect with acoustic information, the work of Mario de Vega researches the value of vulnerability, exploring the causes and effects that determine the construction of realities. In this site-specific performance with transducers, wireless controllers, feedback systems and back tape, de Vega is investigating aesthetic and social realms through a multiplicity of mediums.

http://www.zangimusic.de

Co-curator João Pais tells CDM that this installment, in keeping with Transmediale’s theme, will “give the performers a room where they can show their ways of working with the dissociation of matter (through sound, in this case) and expression.” Pais co-curates the event with Daniel Franke of LEAP.

This episode includes two self-made instruments that expand on existing practice, he says, in the case of Nowitz and Ho, and the hacked and modulated machines of Schick and Vega.

More information; where to see the show

26 January 2012, 20h (free/donation)

Show details

Anywhere in the world – all performances will be available from 20.00 CET via live stream:
http://bit.ly/uXRgyq

Facebook: on.fb.me/AmEtO9

LEAP
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
(Berlin Carré, 1. Stock)
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13
10178 Berlin

How to find LEAP

Stockholm-based design technistas and boutique synth shop Teenage Engineering have evidently worked out how to keep busy and brighten those dark Swedish winters. They showed up in Southern California this week with a slew of new stuff to show off. And while mention of their OP-1 synth may elicit controversy in comment threads online, their booths are crowd pleasers. In contrast to the buttoned-up, business-like atmosphere of a lot of tech vendors at NAMM, TE’s whimsical science lab seems to spill out onto the show floor, and – along with more analog-tilted booths Big City and Analog Haven – attracted crowds like no other tech.

What was actually going on? There’s a new OS update and a new product. The OS update delivers new drum and sequencer modes and badly-needed MIDI sync, plus cool MIDI modulation. Combined, it seems the OP-1 has really matured – sync alone removes a major obstacle for some adopters.

The new hardware is Opbox, a combination USB host / MIDI / CV box with analog sensors – and it has pretty plug-in modules and even custom-made shoes to match. The shoes may not be terribly practical, but the Oplab fits a unique niche in hardware I/O and DIY projects – provided it’s a niche that people actually want. We’ve got some details plus some exclusive images.

OP-1 Update

New in the OS:

• Finger step-sequencer, with 32 step patterns per key and 14 polyphonic patterns. (It’s an unfortunate name, given that’s also Tim Exile’s excellent Reaktor creation. Toe? But it looks cool.
• DrumBox, a drum synth. More on that in a second.
• MIDI LFOs for modulating four parameters at once – very cool.
• MIDI sync – at last, you can sync to clock messages.

Bonus: you get Reason integration (if you enjoy superior Swedish engineering), and, oddly, a game.

http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1/os-update

I ran into CDM reader Neil Bufkin on the show floor, and he’s back with a new video of the OP-1 update and other goodies. Watch:

Teenage Engineer David Ericksson also shares some thoughts with CDM on DrumBox:

The idea behind DrumBox is to provide a spiced up version of classic beat box designs with everything from digital wave-shaping to FM and more. You get 24 keys each with a custom 2 oscillator setup where you can morph between different modes. The same knob also includes a volume envelope to balance the drum sounds. It’s been very tricky to build this up using only 8 parameters and still get a versatile drum machine. The payoff is that it’s pretty hands on and when you start using the LFO’s to control these params you can really do crazy stuff.

TE also shares with CDM the rough sketch from which this feature originated, plus a look at how it looks in the final product:

Oplab

Oplab is an all-new product. It’s marketed as complementing the OP-1, but it’s really a general-purpose board. Imagine an Arduino-like prototyping platform on steroids, with stuff you’d want to use for music applications. And then imagine that, much to the surprise of me and a number of other people with whom I spoke, that they made a bare circuit board look strangely beautiful and finished. This board looks better than a lot of housings. In one box, you combine lots of I/O connections and inputs for sensors.

• Three USB connections. One turns the Oplab itself into a USB device, so you can connect to a computer. But the other two are USB hosts. That means you can use the Oplab with USB devices and no computer in sight.
• Three MIDI connections. MIDI IN, MIDI OUT, and then a third MIDI port that can be either THRU or SYNC24.
• 2 CV in, 2 CV out for analog connections – using any analog connection you like.
• Program select switches. Easy access to settings.
• Ins and outs for anything else. 2 12-bit connections can be switched to input or output, so you can do everything from add sensors to use as music controllers or drive lights or motors. Now, that’s not many connections – but notice also the headers and coming development kit.
• Plug-and-play sensors. For those who want something that lets them hack around without having wires pop up or worrying about delicate, exposed boards, TE is making ready-to-use sensors. Flip is an accelerometer, Poke a pressure sensor, and Tap a piezo. You could also make your own and save some scratch.

http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/oplab/

All of this goodness costs you – US$299 is the price for the board, sensors costs $49 each, and the pretty red tray with the sensors and board all put together top US$425. But you do get some fairly sophisticated functionality in the form of adding MIDI and CV and USB hosting. Hosting isn’t easy. This also opens up some new interconnections with devices like iOS and Android and the OP-1, since the USB hosts can negate the need for a dedicated computer for USB MIDI gadgetry.

In fact, it’s nice to see a polished, designed product that does this kind of DIY stuff; that’s something we had seen in past entries from vendors like Eowave but had largely fallen away in recent years. There’s just no question that if you’re on a budget you should look to other ways of doing this. And I think the bigger question is whether people will like this I/O setup. It won’t suit people with lots of CV, and it’ll be overkill for people with simpler setups. My guess is it’ll make a lot of people happy in between, but I honestly don’t know. Let us know if you’re intrigued.

All of this is capped off by more Teenage oddities. The latest addition: they’ve designed their own custom shoe, complete with a pouch to hold their accelerometer.

More information – and lots of ideas for how you might use the Oplab, put quite articulately if a bit scant on technical details – at:

http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/oplab/
http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1/os-update

Updated: Making Over Your Lifestyle with Design

Comments are getting a bit … heated … below. So, I simply wish to take this opportunity to say, if you don’t like the chic design of Teenage Engineering’s products, you can be easily replaced.

(PS – IKEA is now based in the Netherlands, so it’s fitting this is a Dutch, not a Swedish, film. But watch and learn. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pop open a can of Budweiser and use a real synth – one with wooden endcaps – in the back of my truck, before catching the NFC championship football game. None of this Swedish nonsense. And remember, all national stereotypes in your head are completely true! America!)

It bears saying: a lot of the taste for Scandinavian design was cultivated in the US. Along with other European modernists, key designers settled places like Los Angeles, and their style mingled with American style. If you don’t like the looks (or, crucially, function) of this, tell us what you do like: more variety is better.

Look around the room you’re in. Drum your fingers against some of the objects around you. Now imagine that you could turn those touches into any imaginable sound – and all you’d need to play them is a single contact mic. And we’re not talking just simplistic sounds – think expressive, responsive transformation of the world around you, all with just that one mic, thanks to clever gestural recognition.

Bruno Zamborlin has made that idea a reality, with hold-onto-your-chair results. It’s not available yet for public consumption, but it’s coming.

Bruno explains to CDM:

Mogees is a novel way for transforming any surface into a musical instrument.

By putting a (very cheap) contact microphone over a surface, the software can recognise different types of touch and associate them with different synthesisers.

Users can train the software with their own ‘gestures’, using both bare hands and objects. In the video demo we put the microphone over different surfaces such as kitchen tables and balloons.

The sound synthesis is based on two different techniques:

1 – physical modeling, which consists in generating the sound by simulating physical laws. Different materials can be simulated, such as membranes, strings, tubes and plates

2 – mosaicing, that works as follow: first, users load a sound folder; then, the noise coming from the microphone is analysed and the software continuously finds and plays its closest segment within the sound folder.

Mogees has not been realised yet. It could be published as Max4Live patch in some month.

Yes, we’ll be watching for future versions and publication, with bated breath and eager hands.

http://www.brunozamborlin.com/mogees

Update: Readers point to similar earlier work; obviously, contact mics have long been readily available. I’m not always concerned with whether something is new or not – old and cool can be cool. But what does appear to be new here is the additional gestural analysis to work more accurately with location. That takes an existing technique and refines its musicality. -PK

Come on – you know that occasionally you want technology to respond when you slap it.

As my sister watched an episode of the television show Quantum Leap, I thoroughly enjoyed watch Dean Stockwell’s character Al give his pocket computer, looking for all the world like a 7″ tablet, little helpful smacks.

SmackTop does that for music. Yes, we hear, ad infinitum, the complaint that laptop musicians simply stare inertly at blue glowing laptops as if checking their email. Now they get to put a little skin in the game, literally. And a version 0.3 update makes this humorous novelty genuinely useful:

Imagine your laptop as a MIDI drum kit. SmackTop is an open-source application for Mac laptops which translates physical motion into MIDI messages. Through real-time analysis of the built-in accelerometer’s output, SmackTop is able to classify four different ‘smacks’. Now you can control your favorite DAW by simply tapping your computer. Slap samples, ping notes and hit record – SmackTop is the MIDI controller you already own.

Try it yourself, free:

http://code.google.com/p/smacktop/ (they miss the obvious name, “SlapTop,” but…)

Got another motion-sensing laptop that’s not a Mac and feel jealous? Maybe someone can port this.

In January, we also expect to catch up in person with developer Raymond Weitekamp and Interface LA, the awesome live performance collective in southern California. Stay tuned.

Slap that laptop, make it free!

Now, a tribute to slaps we love…

LA-based bang Fol Chen (Asthmatic Kitty records) wanted to go beyond the computer as the playback and manipulation device for their music. So they worked with collaborators to invent a solution. In a new video, sounds, and an interview, we can share some of how this came into being.

Built with the monome creators (Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain) and LA research and experimentation center Machine Project, the Tetrafol is a custom, pyramidal sound device. The object warps Fol Chen’s music using gestural manipulation of playback, but can also use your own samples. And with open-source circuit and firmware, the project could be an opportunity to learn or to build your own creation.

Description:

The Tetrafol is a hand-held tangible electronic sound toy. Circuits enclosed by a wooden tetrahedron detect orientation and motion-gestures to modify the playback of a collection of Fol Chen’s micro-compositions, allowing the user to explore sound through physical manipulation.

The battery-powered device has its own internal speaker but can additionally be hooked up to a headphone or amplifier.

The circuit and firmware are based on open-source hardware and is itself published as open-source, allowing anyone interested to learn about its deepest inner-workings.

Here’s a sample of the project, via the Tetrafol-created Fol Chen track “So Good”:
Fol Chen – So Good by WeGetPress

Built by hand in a limited run of 100, the device sells for US$110 direct from Machine Project. We spoke to monome’s Brian Crabtree about the project – and a new, comically-inclined video shows off the project.

Stems from the track “Back on Kent” come preloaded:
Fol Chen, “Back on Kent” by asthmatickitty

CDM: How did this collaboration come about? How did you work together?

brian: kelli and i have a loving and working relationship with machineproject, a phenomenal organization founded by our good friend mark allen. we’re always amazed at the fantastical variety of projects that are born there. a few inspiring works of recent include a cash machine designed for a children’s museum and a workshop on lockpicking. so when mark approached us on behalf of his good friend adam goldman and adam’s band fol chen regarding a possible collaboration we were all ears. the goal was to design and produce some sort of synthesizer-sampler-effect-instrument-toy-object to accompany the release of their new album. that was about a year ago and we’re happy to see it finalized and soon in playful hands.

in the early stages there was much whittling of ideas (too expensive, too complicated, etc). we arrived at some sort of gestural sample player and a demo video was ready to show the proof of concept (we live on opposite coasts so there was much back and forth through internets and mails) the basic build used a waveshield (by adafruit) and an arduino and some very hacky code i modified.

fol chen provided the sound set. kelli and i proposed a series of enclosures– diamonds, stars, ice cream cones, d20. the tetrahedron ended up being the most beautifully minimal, and incidentally the most cost effective. our friend jason voytilla laser cut a prototype from thin birch ply and we sent the “finished” sample to california where it underwent a series of intense focus groups – thanks to the rigorous machineproject laboratories. after more back and forth, and basic design changes here and there we were in agreement. we used our very reliable production chain that we depend on for monome releases… it was nice really helpful to have that all in place and sped up the process considerably.

the tetrafol accompanies the release of some exciting new fol chen tracks, and there will be a release party of sorts in early december at machineproject. should be very interesting, as the current installation is a 30 foot deep window sill of sorts.

What went into the design? The construction of the thing?

the final circuit board is an arduino, [Lady Ada - Limor Fried] waveshield, and accelerometer smashed together and made very small. i really just put existing technologies together– i can’t take a lot of credit here.

the industrial design was more fun. we didn’t want to use plastic so we experimented with felt and wood. coming up with a size, shape, and feel were the main goals- to create something that was pleasant to hold and sturdy enough to be tossed in the air.

What’s the basic notion of the instrument?

it plays sound loops, or “micro-compositions” written by fol chen. when you pick up and tilt the device it modifies playback: in one axis it changes the playback speed, in the other it triggers a variable-speed stutter (playback position jump). sounds are changed by a shaking motion. given the response is immediate, it comes alive very quickly.

i’d also hesitate to endorse it as an Instrument, though it’s very playable. it’s a bit like a responsive buddha box.

Any other documentation?

i posted the firmware/hardware source on github. there is a no “build your own” guide as you’d be much better off just looking at the waveshield documentation (which is very good.)

this was a fun collaborative side project– and it makes me even more curious to see how musicians continue to create tangible objects to accompany their releases.

More information:
folchen.com

Tetrafol @ GitHub (firmware + hardware, under a GPL v3 license)

What do you do if you can’t find an instrument that you can play the way you want? In the digital domain, you can just invent one.

So, when Brooklyn-based artist Nick Demopoulos wanted a controller that’d allow him to articulate digital instruments more like a guitar and less like a keyboard, he built his own expressive touch controller. It uses arrays of touch-sensing strips on a guitar body. A future version, he says, will incorporate 6 “strings” (touch strips).

New York-based literary/culture quarterly BOMB Magazine shot a video in which Nick walks through his creation.

Nick has also played our Handmade Music series in New York, at Culturefix. (See documentation of that event, from 2010.)

Videos of Nick playing:
http://www.youtube.com/user/nicnut210?feature=mhee

Lots of stuff on SoundCloud, too; I enjoy the rhythms in this one:

Whispers in the Water by Nick Demopoulos

http://soundcloud.com/nickdemopoulos

It occurs to me looking at this, too, that if you could improve the sensing accuracy and physical feedback from the touch strip, you could radically improve the instrument. It’s really the quality of these kinds of sensors that will have the biggest impact on future instruments – that is, the fundamental ideas about these controllers are out there, and now implementation means everything.

Thanks for sharing your work, Nick!

When we last saw Onyx Ashanti, he was speaking of a grand vision to remake himself into a music-performing Tron. Now, the elements of that vision are coming together, with a crowd-sourced funding campaign that ends today, Friday. Update: Apparently after seeing this story, IndieGogo extended the funding deadline for five days, with the new deadline Thursday, December 1.

I knew Onyx back when he was playing more conventional wind controllers. Now, that fingering arrangement is freed from the virtual wind instrument, handheld and movable through space. Because of the plans to open source everything he’s making, you might yourself pick up that hand controller – or, if you’re like Onyx, go full-tilt with physical training to make your body do new things and a carbon fire, full-body prosthetic transformation.

Onyx has been at auditions for the main TED (the big one, not TEDx), experimenting with a beatbox configuration, and honing alien-like futuristic human reinvention with the help of artist Christopher Logan, aka Loganic. Loganic makes the art, then prosthetic engineer Uli Maier – with doses of carbon fiber – translates those notions into physical form. And the whole thing is mobile; Onyx draws on his busking background to take this thing wherever he goes.

Initially built as an open/proprietary hybrid, the new system is increasingly open source from the ground up, from customized Linux-based software to Pure Data (Pd) patches to open source designs for the molds. The wearable system can be 3D printed. Plans for the system also were featured in Make Magazine.

It’s actually quite a lot to digest, but Onyx has been posting videos, the most recent and illustrative of which I’ve included here. And because there’s a lot to do physically, from personal training to buying clay to engineering the prosthetics, Onyx is relying on crowd-sourced funding. In place of Kickstarter, which has specific requirements for minimum funding and other restrictions and requires US-based banking, he’s opted for IndieGogo.

If you invest just a few dollars, you at least get music; with successively larger donations, Onyx throws in his software, custom artwork and posters, t-shirts, or starting at US$500, the custom hardware itself for your use.

The IndieGogo campaign ends Thursday, December 1:
IndieGogo: Beatjazz System

– but we’ll be in touch with Onyx on an ongoing basis, so let me know if you have questions for him or want to watch this continue to evolve.

Videos showing the making of the elements of the system:

Above: New visualizations in 3D have vastly expanded the now-Pure-Data-based audio system with heads-up displays worthy of the spacesuit. Below: Some of the beautiful concept artwork produced for the project.

IndieGogo Campaign

Previously: Onyx Wants to Make Himself Into Helmeted, Wearable-Music-Tech Tron, With Your Help

As an addendum to yesterday’s teaser of the Evolution multi-touch keyboard, readers send along a couple of other examples. Andrew McPherson has a terrific example of an add-on, multi-touch, capacitive surface that can go on any keyboard (so, basically the same idea).

Description:

This video demonstrates a set of capacitive touch sensing piano key tops which mount on top of any existing piano or MIDI keyboard. The key tops sense up to three touches each by position and contact area, letting the performer continuously and polyphonically shape every note in multiple dimensions. The system connects to a computer by USB and uses OSC for flexible communication with a wide variety of synthesis software.

See also the paper published on the design, and of course, the video. (Thanks, Andrew! Nice work – will we see more?)

From Vol 14, No. 2 Summer 1990 issue of Computer Music Journal, none other than Bob Moog joins Berklee’s Thomas L. Rhea to evaluate keyboard instrument design, and specifically refers to touch overlays on the keys (via resistive, not capacitive sensing).
“Evolution of the Keyboard lnterface: The Bøsendorfer 290 SE Recording Piano and The Moog Multiply-Touch-Sensitive Keyboards.” (A PDF is available, albeit not a … legal one. Thanks for the tip, Dan!)

And as for the Evolution, the release date will be Wednesday, November 23. Simon Kemper explains, “In just 2 days we will answer all your questions. Also there will be some more videos and tutorials. We also offer a software to control and individualize the evo. It is called “COMM” and makes everything between MIDI and OSC possible. So mapping the evos touch sensors to poly-AT, and so on, is also no problem.”

There are definitely some skills to pick up here, but that’s true with any alternative instrument. I’m eager to try one of these out.

Between conventional knobs and hardware controls and “magical” tablets, might we yet see real action in a third category of controller? Keith McMillen Instruments, makers of the SoftStep foot controller and K-Bow controller, are now venturing into fingertip territory. The QuNeo is a “crowd-sourced” project with apparently some open components, available now in preorder form on Kickstarter.

We’ve seen touch controllers that, in terms of basic form factor, followed similar design directions as the QuNeo but that didn’t take off. M-Audio (then Midiman) got only as far as the prototype phase with the Surface One; Stanton’s SCS series went into production but apparently didn’t take to the market.

The KMI design promises more, with velocity response, continuous pressure, and color LED feedback on each sensor. The addition of actual pressure/velocity sensing, and a design that gives you some tactile feedback on where the controls are, would set it apart from a device like the iPad, which has no such usable pressure response and an undifferentiated surface.

The controls themselves:

• 251 multi-color LEDs
• 16 square pads each with X/Y, velocity, and continuous pressure (that should map nicely to rolls, etc., or using them as melodic pads)
• 2 rotary surfaces with position and pressure
• 9 touch sliders, with two-finger touch
• Switches
• iPad-sized form factor
• Class-compliant USB, MIDI, OSC connection

The project is labeled “open hardware” and “open source,” but as near as I can tell, that applies to the development kit for the software to connect with the hardware, not the rest of the hardware itself.

Check out the hardware sensors below.

Kickstarter here serves as a way of “crowd-sourcing” production – just the kind of preorder model for which the service was built. What I find surprising is the promised price: $200 (not including international shipping) includes the controller and some goodies, which seems astounding given the number of parts here. If they really are pulling that off, I’m very impressed.

Right now, we see only the sensor and a mock-up, but certainly the described design shows some significant promise. We’re in touch with KMI, so if you’ve got questions, fire away.

QuNeo, Multi-touch Open Source MIDI & USB Pad Controller [Kickstarter]
http://www.keithmcmillen.com/