With all this talk of experimental touchscreens for controlling music, don’t overlook a much cheaper and more mature technology: the graphics tablet. One of the gems that has appeared on the recently-overhauled Cycling ’74 site is a vide o interview with Matt Wright of the CNMAT research center at University of California Berkeley. Wright is one of a number of people who have applied this graphics interface, the ubiquitous Wacom tablet, to controlling sound. They’re extremely precise and readily available (US$100 could buy you a decent model).
I’ve decided to break down and buy one myself; my inclination would be to use it in very different ways than Wright does in the video. It interfaces easily with Max/MSP and (I think) Pd, as well — more on that soon. Stay tuned, CDMskateers. And since some of you are graphic designers, feel free to give me a holler if you’re interested in working on this, too.