Eric Singer is back. The interactive artist and inventor helped the idea of robotics and alternative interfaces break out to wider audiences over the past decades – and now he’s gearing up to put LIDAR in your modular rig or other devices with analog CV inputs.
Eric was an early face on this site, and an inspiration to a lot of folks in creating novel, intentionally weird and wacky inventions for music and interactive sound. That included collaborations with Max Mathews’ Radio Baton and Joshua Fried’s MIDI Steering Wheel, but also instruments like the bend-sensor Sonic Banana and the SlimeOTron, which was… made out of Slime. He also founded a musical robotics group (LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots) and built MIDI implementations for the Power Glove. Eric was part of why I got interested in interactive interfaces, and it inspired both our Musicmakers / Handmade Music series in NYC and the MusicMakers Hacklab here in Berlin at CTM Festival (and spreading that idea elsewhere).
Eric’s work is all about punk technology – the very opposite of the cold, capital-driven, uncritical techno-optimism from tech bros. It’s expression instead of surveillance; open technology instead of automated, sealed boxes.
And now it’s all about putting bleeding-edge LIDAR into your modular rig. See, the problem with other sensing methods is that they don’t work properly under a lot of different conditions. Photocells and IR get screwed up by ambient lighting (especially sunlight) and other reflections. Show up at a gig with the lighting board op going nuts with the lasers and moving heads, or play that outdoor stage at Superbooth, and suddenly your whole rig breaks. Ultrasonics – same problem, or even worse, with sound and other vibrations.
And apart from being reliable, these technologies just aren’t very sensitive. (There’s a reason Roland largely abandoned D-BEAM, its own hand-waving tech.) Now we do regularly see new hand-sensing, hand-waving tech. ROLI added their Airwave, but that device is bulky, pricy, and locked to ROLI keyboards.
Enter Ther’minator, now in development with Kickstarter backing. This device is compact, inexpensive, simple, and you can plug it into anything you want. You can even buy a bundle and combine different sensors. Specs:
- LIDAR sensing
- USB-C bus powered (with in and out ports for easy chaining from a single supply) – plus it into a phone charger, for instance
- 1/8″ (6,35mm) minijack for compatibility with existing gear, 0-5v CV
- High-resolution voltage, promising 4+ octave range with smooth control, Eric says
- No configuration required
- Configuration options for different ranges, operation modes, and LED effects
This will not be the story where I break into a rant about tariffs, but I will say that in the midst of this global trade s*** show triggered by the USA, now is a good time to spotlight independent makers, talk transparently about cost (not just of parts, but the much greater cost of research and labor), and talk about working together to support real humans making stuff around the world.
And it’s exciting to see Eric back in business, promising still more in a “planned line of easy-to-use sensor-based controllers.” Eric says he’s looking for a US manufacturing partner here. Diversifying production is a good idea, whether in North America, here in Europe, across our friends outside the EU and fortress Europe, and on other continents.