Low Brow Eye Ltd - Music Technology Consultancy

Waves by Daniel Palacios:

A long piece of rope represents three dimensionally a series of waves floating in space, as well as producing sounds from the physical action of their movement: the rope which creates the volume also simultaneously creates the sound by cutting through the air, making up a single element.

Depending on how we may act in front of it, according to the number of observers and their movements, it will pass from a steady line without sound to chaotic shapes of irregular sounds (the more movement there is around the installation) through the different phases of sinusoidal waves and harmonic sounds.

These kinds of action-reaction influences applied to sound and space are the basis of this installation. Due to its particular features, a space has a way of relating with sound, understanding sound as a series of compressions and decompressions which move through the air, so that the geometry of the space itself and the elements in it will influence the movements of the sound and finally our perception of the sound; adding to this entire stationary system a chaos of infinite variables from the most minimal movement on our part.

But even though this could seem like a mere representation of what we can’t see for ourselves, beyond the persistence of vision, it connects with our most visceral side, combining the intangible beauty of the represented graphic with the brutality of the sound it produces, creating a hypnotic environment of audible results and unique visual stimulations.

Tangibly, the installation is made up of two turbines, supported by a tuning fork structure between which the waves are created.

Nonetheless, it is the intangible, the process created there, which provides sense to the space it occupies and establishes a relationship with the public, who begin to discover that their movements have an influence on the space, sound, and alternate states of great agitation with others when they stop to see how the wave disappears in space like a whistle in the wind.

(via Sonic Terrain)

metaconscious:

MIT’s Recompose is a Touch Screen, Keyboard and 3-D Display

The experimental interface from MIT’s Media Lab combines gestures, tactile feedback, and 3-D visuals into an intriguing tile-like display.

 In touch-based computer interfaces, the touching only goes one-way: you can tap and swipe and pinch the objects onscreen, but since they aren’t physical, you get no tactile feedback. A team of designers at MIT Media Lab’s “Tangible Media group” are trying to rectify this with their Recompose concept, an experimental computer input device that’s part keyboard, part gestural interface, and part 3D display surface. Trust us, it’ll all make sense after you watch the video.

Formally, the team describes Recompose as “direct and gestural interaction with an actuated surface.” Basically, it’s a touch-based interface that touches back, using physical tiles (like the keys on a keyboard) mounted on little pedestals that can rise or sink based on direct input (ie, pushing them like buttons) or gestural input (waving your hands over them like a Jedi master).

But the extra bit of genius in Recompose is its third purpose as a display device. Actuators in the tiles can provide force-feedback to your fingers to “display” tactile information about your data (this could be useful for CAD designs or sophisticated maps or scientific visualizations). Plus, since it’s literally a grid of physical objects, it can display information visually by morphing its own topography in 3D. Bar charts just got way more awesome.

In true MIT-hacker manner, Recompose is built on the back of another Media Lab innovation, the Relief table — an “actuated tabletop display” which provides the 120 motorized tiles. Maybe next they’ll combine Recompose with the video capabilities of Microsoft Surface, and really blow our minds…

[Read more at MIT Media Lab]

via Co.Design

This caught my attention right way with some choice sampling from Pantha du Prince’s “Asha.” Interested to see where they take the technology!

Recompose is almost a perfect anagram of “composer” (okay, more of a shuffle than an anagram) so no prizes for guessing where my thoughts are heading as this type of technology evolves!