Sergi Jordà

The reacTable: exploring the synergy between live music performance and tabletop tangible interfaces

In recent years we have seen a proliferation of musical tables. Believing that this is not just the result of a tabletop trend, in this paper we first discuss several of the reasons for which live music performance and HCI in general, and musical instruments and tabletop interfaces in particular, can lead to a fertile two-way cross-pollination that can equally benefit both fields. After that, we present the reac Table, a musical instrument based on a tabletop interface that exemplifies several of these potential achievements.

Improved Topological Fiducial Tracking in the reacTIVision System

This paper describes reacTIVision: a camera based two dimensional fiducial (marker) tracking system developed for the reacTable*, a table based tangible musical instrument. Key features of reacTIVision include: (1) the ability to track a large number of fiducials with faster than real-time performance and (2) fiducial size may be varied depending on the number of distinct fiducial identities required. We describe recent advances in our implementation of topologybased fiducial recognition, including a generalised method for accurately computing fiducial location and orientation. A method of graph naming known as left heavy depth sequences is applied to the identification of topologically distinct fiducials. Also discussed is our approach to generating fiducial images for the system, in which we employ evolutionary computation to produce compact fiducials with specific geometric properties.

The reacTable*: A Collaborative Musical Instrument

The reacTable* is a novel multi-user electro-acoustic musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. In this paper we focus on the various collaborative aspects of this new instrument as well as on some of the related technical details such as the networking infrastructure. The instrument can be played both in local and remote collaborative scenarios and was designed from the very beginning to serve as a musical instrument for several simultaneous players

Sonigraphical instruments: from FMOL to the reacTable

This paper first introduces two previous software-based music instruments designed by the author, and analyses the crucial importance of the visual feedback introduced by their interfaces. A quick taxonomy and analysis of the visual components in current trends of interactive music software is then proposed, before introducing the reacTable, a new project that is currently under development. The reacTable is a collaborative music instrument, aimed both at novices and advanced musicians, which employs computer vision and tangible interfaces technologies, and pushes further the visual feedback interface ideas and techniques aforementioned.

The reactable: tangible and tabletop music performance

In this paper we present the Reactable, a new electronic musical instrument with a simple and intuitive tabletop interface that turns music into a tangible and visual experience, enabling musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a direct, refreshing and unseen way.

On Stage: the Reactable and other Musical Tangibles go Real

This paper explores one of the application domains in which tangible and tabletop interfaces have currently shown more positive results, studying and unveiling the essential reasons that turn live music performance and tabletop interaction into promising and exiting fields of multi-disciplinary research and experimentation. The paper is structured in three parts. The first one exposes the main reasons that turn live music performance into an ideal test-bed for tangible interaction and advanced human-computer interaction. Reciprocally, the second part studies why tabletop interfaces promise remarkable new musical instruments. The third part describes the main design issues that lead to the development of the reactable, a tabletop musical instrument that has been conceived based on many of the criteria exposed on the previous two parts.

TurTan: A tangible programming language for creative exploration

This paper introduces TurTan, a tangible programming language for creative exploration inspired by Logo, which uses a tabletop interface with tangible objects. The aim of this project is to design a toy language for programming entertainment and creative purposes. Along this paper we also discuss some interesting technical issues we have found during its implementation such as tangible linking and angle mapping.

Instruments and Players: Some Thoughts on Digital Lutherie

Musical instruments are used to play and to produce music, transforming the actions of one or more performers into sound. This article explores some instrument design issues, structured into three distinct parts. The first section attempts to define what musical instruments are, how traditional instruments function and what they can do, and what future instruments could be, trying to figure out how we could better exploit their unlimited potential. The second section gives a quick review of the current know-how and the technical and conceptual frameworks in which new instrument designers and researchers are currently working. It is not an actual survey of new instruments and controllers, but more a survey of thoughts and knowledge about them. The third and last section studies the dynamic relationship that builds between the player and the instrument, introducing such concepts as efficiency, apprenticeship, and the learning curve. It explores generic properties of some musical instruments such as the diversity, variability or reproducibility of their musical output, the linearity or non-linearity of their behaviour, and tries to figure out how these aspects can bias the relationship between the instrument and the player, and how they may relate to more commonly studied concepts such as expressivity or virtuosity. The aim of this paper is the foundation of a theoretical framework in which the possibilities and the diversity of musical instruments, as well as the possibilities and expressive freedom of human performers, could all be evaluated.

FMOL: Toward User-Friendly, Sophisticated New Musical Instruments

The design of new instruments and controllers for performing live computer music is an exciting field of research that can lead to truly new musicmaking paradigms. The ever-increasing availability of sensing technologies that enable virtually any kind of physical gesture to be detected and tracked has indeed sprouted a wealth of experimental instruments and controllers with which to explore new creative possibilities. However, the design of these new controllers is often approached from an essentially technical point of view in which the novelty of the sensing technologies deployed overshadows the attainable musical results. Although new instruments are not constrained to the physical restrictions of traditional ones, an integrated approach in which the instrument is designed as a whole and not as a combination of arbitrary input and output devices can lead to the creation of more rewarding and more musical instruments. This article describes an attempt at an integrated conception, called F@ust Music On-Line (FMOL), which is a simple mouse-controlled instrument that has been used on the Internet by hundreds of musicians during the past four years. FMOL has been created with the complementary goals of introducing the practice of experimental electronic music to newcomers while trying to remain attractive to more advanced electronic musicians. It has been used by musicians of diverse skills for the collective composition of the music of two important shows, including one opera of the Catalan theatre group La Fura dels Baus. It is also being played in live concerts. New Musical Instruments and New Music-Making Paradigms

The reacTable: a tangible tabletop musical instrument and collaborative workbench

The reacTable* is an electronic multi-user musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface developed by a team of digital luthiers at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona. The instrument is designed both for novices (in installations) as well as for advanced electronic musicians (in concerts). It allows several simultaneous performers to share control by moving physical artefacts on a table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.