The Incredible; The Amazing - reacTable
Amongst the explosive cavalcade of colour, carnivale-esque atmosphere and general weirdness that infested Bjork’s show at this year’s Big Day Out, was the exhibition of electronic music’s hottest new toy: the reacTable.
What at first glance might have seemed like some quasi-intergalactic Fisher Price play set for ages 2 and up, turned out to be one of the most fascinating and perplexing musical gadgets I, and many others, have ever seen.
ReacTable is the brainchild of a four-member team at Popmeu Fabra University’s Music Technology Group in Barcelona, Spain. The reacTable is audio-visual in nature and thus affords the viewer and player the chance to share the same view of what’s happening. Instead of being stuck behind hardware, laptops and turntables, the reacTable is an unabashedly open and collective experience that allows producers and DJ’s to perform together whilst the crowd is moved through sound and image.
The focus of developers: Sergi Jorda, Gunter Geiger, Marcos Alonso and Martin Kaltenbrunner was to use existing and evolving technology in tabletop interfaces, such as Microsoft’s recently unveiled tabletop computer, and integrate it with soft and hardware used for the production and performance of electronic music. The result is an unorthodox and alien musical instrument. Without a PhD in computer science it is difficult to comprehend and thus explain the intricacies that comprise the reacTable’s inner-workings.
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“A tangible tabletop interface”, the reacTable is a dynamic instrument whose sound responds to the physical positioning of little blocks, called tangibles, on the illuminated “tabletop.” The tangibles are placed on the surface and their movements are constantly analysed by a camera beneath. The camera relays this information to a computer, which processes then produces and projects the sounds and images. The tangibles come in different shapes and sizes and each separate tangible represents, but is not limited to, an effect or function from a modular synthesizer. Like a Fisher Price play set, the blocks are moved around with each other – turned, twisted and pulled – thereby constructing, what its creators term, “different audio topologies” – a.k.a – music.
How and why does the reacTable allow musicians more freedom of expression? The developers argue that, since the reacTable is considered a digital musical instrument, it has certain advantages over traditional instruments in the sense that “the performer no longer needs to control the [physical] aspects of the production of sound, being able instead to direct and supervise the computer processes that control these details.” From this, it is asserted that “performing music with computers often tends towards an interactive dialogue between instrument and instrumentalist” that will eventually allow “musicians to work at different musical levels and forc[e] them to take higher level and more compositional decisions on-the-fly.” Combine this with crowd interaction during an improvised live performance and exceedingly delicious musical experiences may result in pushing music to an unprecedented level.
Perhaps an overlooked aspect of the table is that its neon-looking visuals might make glow sticks redundant. This observer prays for the day when the dance music community cast off the hideous glowing shackles and become more engaged in the music than with their erratically waving, fluorescent limbs. We can only hope amongst all the hype and enthusiasm for the reacTable that it at least delivers us from that scourge of the dance floor.
Check out more reacTable.
