Anyone for a game of Harmonix Mime Hero, with the Marcel Marceau expansion pack? We’ve seen simple computer vision applications, “augmented reality” systems and object tracking schemes that use specially-printed tags, 3D tracking using IR emitters, and specialized motion detection sensors (most notably Nintendo’s Wii). But the holy grail, of course, is getting tracking without […]

Free software, a webcam, and some stickers printed on an inkjet can turn any object into a real-world controller. That’s what Paul Rose of Institut Fatima and his team did with a soccer ball (translation for the civilized world: football). The software is powered by the same framework used for the reacTable, but in this […]

reacTIVision is able to work thanks to these alien-looking markers called “fluidicials.” Karsten Schmidt aka toxi has developed software for creating more of these markers, and it generates characters like this “teddy bear” seen here. Computer vision for tracking movement is cool. But add the ability to track actual objects, and you can extend the […]

MSAFluid for processing (Controlled by iPhone) from Memo Akten on Vimeo. TUIO is a simple but powerful emerging protocol for multitouch control for live music and visuals, as used on the powerful live tangible synth reacTable. Apparently no one told Apple, however. While the App Store rubber-stamps useless toys like fake cigarette lighter flames, they […]

Jasuto envelope example from Jasuto on Vimeo. Imagine friendly creation of custom synths and sounds by dragging visual nodes. Now imagine you can do that on a mobile device and your computer – and eventually combine the two. That’s the vision of Jasuto, and while it’s not quite there yet, it’s incredibly promising. The laws […]

c Ever feel like you’ve found the seam dividing past and future? The past: restrictive UI frameworks requiring pages and pages of code to produce dated-look 2D displays. Proprietary software with rigid interfaces. Input bottlenecked through the x and y coordinates of a single mouse pointer. The future: UIs whipped together graphically or with a […]

MSA Remote for iPhone from Memo Akten on Vimeo. Since the dawn of computing, developers have been free to create whatever software they can imagine for computers. Windows, Mac, UNIX, Linux, Atari, Amiga, Apple II, Commodore 64 – it doesn’t matter. Come up with an idea, and short of doing something destructive on the system, […]

MSA Remote for iPhone from Memo Akten on Vimeo. Apple, apparently unclear on what multitouch clients actually are, have chosen to reject Memo Akten’s brilliant-looking MSA Remote client for the iPhone/iPod touch. The free(!) app could empower installations and performances with the standard multi-touch protocol TUIO, as used on the Reactable (and, thus, by Bjork, […]

Trackmate LusidOSC Sequencer Application from Adam Kumpf on Vimeo. Want to interact with your computer musically using physical objects and other fancy-schmancy, science-fiction-y interfaces? Don’t want to rely on Microsoft or wait until 2019? You’re in luck. It’s like Christmas for DIYers and interactive futurists. Enter LusidOSC, a set of protocols, libraries, and useful code, […]

Musical Applications for Multi-Touch Interfaces from BricK Table on Vimeo. Across series of colored bars, sounds warp and mutate. Vines entangle as organic threads of music. Fingers and objects traverse sonic landscapes in surprising, mysterious ways. Welcome to the worlds of BricK, the musical table interface by Jordan Hochenbaum and Owen Vallis, which, charged with […]