Rarely have men been seen playing with blocks with such devout intensity. Four stand around a circular table, placing colorful disks and cubes onto the surface, occasionally moving, rotating or plucking them off again.
Each of these seemingly minor changes produces an effect – noise ranging from gurgles, taps or booming to a loud drumbeat. When the objects on the table are moved a new and unexpected sound results. Suddenly there##s a buzzing, followed by a heavy stomping bass. The sky-blue glow of the tabletop reflects in the faces of these peculiar musicians.
The audience might be witnessing an advanced form of witchcraft. But they##re hearing a musical instrument unlike anything they have ever heard or seen.
The disks on the table produce the sound. Each has its own magic. Some disks emit sounds of various timbres when they make contact with the table; others reshape these sounds when moved close to the first disks. There are “scrambler” disks, and flicker cubes, and rhythm dice. Some pieces produce a rougher or choppier sound. The possibilities for music are endless.
The magic table was created at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where a group of young music musicologists have spent years searching for a completely different type of instrument. “It was supposed to be capable of doing anything we wanted it to,” says Martin Kaltenbrunner, one of the designers, “and yet be extremely easy to play.”
Their efforts have produced a powerful synthesizer that emits any conceivable sound, but doesn##t look like a synthesizer at all. There are no knobs or cables, no keyboard and no intimidating technological interface. In fact it seems to consist of nothing more than a blue, luminous table and a pile of translucent pieces, called tangibles.
The table is called a “Reactable.” It##s been displayed at exhibits and conferences throughout Europe. It was recently awarded the Golden Nica prize at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria.
Malleable Sound: Anyone can play a Reactable. Using the tangibles, even the tone-deaf and the unmusical and the hard of hearing can be sorcerers. Producing an impressive wobbling, clattering and hissing is like working with an acoustic lump of clay.
The table is both simple and profound. There now are about 90 different tangibles, which can be altered in different ways and linked at random. By rotating the disks like knobs on a radio, a player can change the volume, pitch and behavior of the sounds. Some tangibles introduce ready-made recordings, like a driving drum beat or a rhythm guitar.
The musicians generally begin with an empty table. They put together an instrument one building block at a time. This can quickly produce structures of dizzying complexity. An instrument using one or two dozen tangibles is so complex that it becomes almost impossible to keep track of the interactions. A player presides over the process, but he must also let the sound modules take on a life of their own.
How the graphic synthesizer works: For those who prefer to create conventional melodies, a simple keyboard is more suitable – creating melodies with notes is not the Reactable##s strength. The table is for people who like to make new discoveries.
The tabletop consists of a pane of ordinary frosted glass, which conceals a video camera. Computer-readable symbols are printed on the bottoms of the tangibles for the camera to recognize. The symbols command the sound. The musicians can always see how their tangibles interact, because animated luminous trails reveal the connections. A pulse generator that adds a beat to the sound produced by another tangible, for example, also displays visible light impulses to the tangible on the tabletop. This is achieved by a projector, which is installed under the glass.
Software, Not Hardware: The machine##s creators see the software as their real achievement. The table is just an early sample of use. The underlying purpose is not to create music; the Reactable is really a new way of operating computers. A person listening to the radio could place two circular disks on a table, one to control the volume and the other to choose stations. The conventional route – a mouse and keyboard – is often not very intuitive. Kaltenbrunner believes many things are easier to learn if they involve picking up objects.
Microsoft sells a computer table that reacts to objects and finger movements like the Reactable. The user can move digital photos around on the table, and all it takes to zoom in on the images is to pull them apart with two fingers, as on the Apple iPhone. When the user places a specially encoded wine glass on the table, information about the wine appears. So far these computer tables are used almost exclusively by hotels and electronics stores. Whether the technology will advance toward ordinary home use is still uncertain, and some experts have their doubts.
In music, though, the advantages of tactile data manipulation are clear. A digital synthesizer – if nothing else – is finally ready for concert use.
But the Reactable is different. In concert the colorful surface of the table can be projected onto a screen, so the audience can watch hands dance across the luminous surface.
Nothing is too small for the scientists in Barcelona. The goal of their entrepreneurial Music Technology Group is to create a pocket-sized instrument. Apple##s iPhone, for example, could easily be converted to a rattle. “The necessary movement sensors are already built in,” says Kaltenbrunner. All that##s needed is a program to let the user repurpose the iPhone into a percussion instrument. He could then select from a range of virtual instruments made of metal or wood.
Which means the music of the future could turn even a walk to the local bakery into a psychedelic trip.
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Der Spiegel (abridged)