Description
Sergi Jordà, Günter Geiger, Marcos Alonso, Martin Kaltenbrunner · Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona · TEI 2007
A luminous round table that several people stand around at once. Each tangible block on the surface is one component of a modular synthesiser — an oscillator, a filter, a sequencer, a sampler — and putting two blocks near each other patches them together. Lines of light draw the signal flow between them, so the whole instrument’s architecture is visible on the tabletop at all times. Rotating a block changes its parameter; moving it re-routes the sound.
Two things make it a landmark for shared play rather than just a nice interface. It was designed for multiple simultaneous users from the outset — there is no player one, no turn order, and the table is round so nobody is at the head of it. And because every object’s function is visible and every change is audible, what one person does is legible to everyone else: you can see someone reach for the filter and hear the result, which is what makes coordinating possible without talking.
source · paper · at LABoral
image: Thomas Bonte, Music Hack Day Barcelona 2012, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)