The reactable, is a multi-user electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical objects on a luminous table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.
oh my god, that’s amazing! Very innovative…whether it opens up new sound possibilities or not, it’s still a very creative way of making music.
They’re sort of taking what Buchla had in mind when he first made his synthesizer, which was that, since it was a new instrument, it would also have a new interface to be played through, instead the trend that is now the norm, which is having a piano-like keyboard as a controller.
There’s a link on the youtube video that takes you to the manufacturer’s site (http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable). They have a video of Bob Moog fooling around with a prototype and making suggestions! Anything besides an organ keyboard controller interests me (currently I’m using theremin controllers and a Buchla Marimba Lumina).
Do you have any recordings made with the Buchla? I was looking at one recently (not the ML, though), but couldn’t really ask to try it as the guy knew I didn’t have the money for it. I’ve heard one demo MP3 and that’s all.
The Marimba Lumina is just a controller: you can configure it to send out any CC, note value, etc., depending on which bar the mallet hits, up or down stroke, even where on each bar the mallet is. There’s an onboard Rompler, but nothing fancy. It’s really meant to control MIDI gear (although I do use it with a MIDI/CV converter to control my analog gear). So… I couldn’t really show it off with a recording: it’ll just sound like a Rompler… If you go to Buchla’s site, there’s a nice diagram that sort of explains it better than I can…
I’d like the challenge of actually making music with it.