So you’ve been reading ths site long enough to see lots of interactive tables — alternative musical interfaces that involve moving blocks around a surface. But what practical use would this ever have, you say?

Clearly, outfitting the workplace of the future — or at least so says Lexus to its designers, which is equipping them with interactive desks. The Ecco Design Personal Pond desk (Trendir story) creates soothing music and lighting effects while you move around your hands or two stones on the table. And this helps us be more productive — how, exactly? Nonetheless, it’s nice to see the mainstream taking note of interactive musical table tech — keep your resumes handy, interactive designers.

(See CDM’s musical table roundup, or check out the pixelsumo blog for more tables.)

Here’s a twist on interactive aquatic music: how about letting the fish be the music-makers? BBC News reports that digital artist Julie Freeman has created an installation out of a fish tank, installed in a silo at the Tingrith Fishery in Bedfordshire, southern England. Surgically-implanted radio tags track the movement of the fish, which generates music and animation. (via Gino Robair at Electronic Musician)

I think this is even better than the MIDI hamsters.

Hard-core VJs have long known about Motion Dive. This VJ app is so rock-solid, intuitive, and flexible that people were willing to import it from Japan and use it with all-Japanese menus. Weirdly, it was easier to use that product in Japanese than many others in English. Now, Roland division Edirol is handling US distribution, and good things are happening. The menus are in English, for starters, and this week Edirol announces the motion dive .tokyo Performance Package, complete with a very practical-looking custom hardware controller. (What I’d like to know is whether it sends MIDI; the absence of simple crossfader hardware has meant almost everyone relies on the X-Session; it’d be nice to have another choice. I’ll let you know if I find anything out.)

But what if you want to run visuals while you play? Here’s another Edirol/Roland extra: the software now supports V.Link, the company’s initiative to make it easy to trigger visuals from music hardware. You can use your existing Roland/Edirol hardware (like the Fantom-X series keyboards, MC-909 sampling groovebox, SP-606 sampling workstation, and Edirol PCR series (PCR-30/50/80/M1/M30/M50/M80/A30), and run visuals, without manually mapping controllers. Very cool.

I expect to take a closer look at this soon, so stay tuned. CDM 5 words: VJing for musicians gets easier.

What if Lite Brite and a tablet PC had a crazy love child? It might look something like the Yamaha Tenori-On. The basic idea is, you press buttons on a 16×16 LED grid and trigger sounds and visuals; there are collaborative features for playing with your friends Tenori-Ons, and the back of the screen functions as an LED, so instead of a private trippy experience, everyone can see the fun. Tim writes us:

On the strength of the demo videos I want one of these! I first read of its existence [at We Make Money Not Art].
Most of the official info seems to be in Japanese, but there’s a 16MB movie of someone playing with one here:
http://envol.info/iwai.mov, and info on the OS.
I have a lot of respect for designers who can create musical instruments and interfaces which even small children can play with!

I agree — fun stuff! But can we please stop repeating the cliché about new musical instruments, clearly levied at the computer? Designed Toshio Iwai is quoted on WWMNA as saying: “A violin doesn’t work if any of its beautiful shape, sound quality, and usability is missing. However, electronic musical instruments often fail to create this inevitable relation of shape, sound, and usability. My goal with TENORI-ON is to make it the right instrument for the real digital age by rethinking what musical instruments should be.”

I almost agree. But a violin’s usability? You crane it uncomfortably between your chin and your shoulder, bruising your neck, it takes months to make a sound that won’t clear the room and make people beg for mercy, and years to make music. If you never got to see a violin, it would sound just as beautiful. Instrument design is important, but let’s separate the toys from the great instruments: even if violins looked ugly, we’d still fall in love with them for their sound and expressive range. So maybe designers need to reconsider what the criteria are. I think it has a lot less to do with shape, looks, and “usability,” and a lot more to do with sound and music. (Of course, in the meantime, I do still want to play with a Tenori-On.) See also: Music Thing

When I perform with visuals, it usually involves a dinky projector and a basement club. Not at Optronica, a show running through the weekend in London. Think IMAX:

Optronica is a hybrid of film festival and music festival featuring live audiovisual performances, cinema screenings, installations and talks.

Headlining at the bfi London IMAX Cinema we have ex-Kraftwerk star Karl Bartos with his stunning live AV show, the world premiere of surround-sound audiovisual project ‘Greedy Baby’ from Warp Records’ Plaid & Bob Jaroc, and the UK premiere of DJ Spooky’s solo film remix ‘Rebirth of a Nation’, in which the noted New York turntablist adds new music and meaning to DW Griffith’s controversial masterpiece The Birth of a Nation.

(read more)

Before VJing, before even TV, turn-of-the-century painters were exploring the connection between music and visuals. The Smithsonian Institute’s Hirsshorn Museum constructs an “alternative” look at the history of modern abstract art through its connections to music in a new show, Visual Music. Sure, some of the work is a little, how shall we say, under the influence, but the show offers some compelling ideas about both art and music. And you can bet these artists would have loved today’s technologies that blend visuals and music in live performance. (Picasso would probably have more luck with Quartz Composer than I am.)

See Gridskipper’s nice write-up, and go try a “trip” yourself! The show runs through September 11, 2005.

My adventures with Quartz Composer, the free development tool that ships with Mac OS X Tiger, continue.

What it does: QC is another visual development tool with a patching interface so you can create without coding. It’s a perfect visualization/VJ tool for musicians, thanks to handy audio and MIDI inputs: it’s easy to link the eye candy to your music. And eye candy aplenty you’ll have, thanks to QC’s rich, friendly support for OS X Core Image trickery. You can play your compositions from QC, save them as QuickTime files (perfect for use with Max/MSP Jitter and the like), or even turn them into full-fledged Mac applications via Xcode (even without writing a line of code). (See our previous report.

What it can’t do: With no MIDI or audio output, this is not a replacement for tools like Pure Data and Max/MSP. But if you’ve got two machines, you can run visuals with the QC Mac and audio on the other computer. (Read more for a long list of resources)

Tangles of cords piling up in your studio? Grab a canvas and a paintbrush: you’ve got a still life in the making. Or so thinks Eric LoPresti, whose work you can see at a show in DUMBO (NYC), in collaboration with a composer and other electronic musicians. Eric’s cord paintings will provide the backdrop to three-dimensional electronic geekery at a week-long event. Now, if we could only see some audio cables in the paintings. Or maybe, in the tradition of the Dutch Masters, a MIDI cable, some rotted fruit, and a skull. (Eric’s got some paintings of eels — the kind that swim, not some exotic cable — so there’s definitely a chance to mix organic and synthetic.)

While we’re on the subject of visualizers, Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox 360 console will be preloaded with a trippy music visualizer game. Unlike the iTunes visualizer, it’ll be completely interactive, too. Inspired by the 1984 game Psychedelia, Neon is a visualizer for the year 2005. Check out the interview with creator Jeff Minter of UK developer LlamaSoft. (Betcha they’re Python fans.) Via Joystiq. This fits with Microsoft’s strategy of making the Xbox 360 a music hub, as reported here previously (see that link for what composers think of the new console).

New visualizers won’t just be trippier: they’ll be able to take advantage of new physics models. Joystiq also has the scoop on a new SDK for developing real-world physics, and Chris points out some slick PlayStation 3 demos involving water. 3D music creation interfaces? Wild new music games and visualizers? You bet.

Okay, aspiring VJs: not happy with the pre-coded solutions out there? Wish you could code your own stuff via a free tool? Check out Processing, a free cross-platform tool. The pay-off: how about 1680×1050 imagery, running at 20-40fps on a lowly PowerBook G4?

Robert Hodgin is featured doing just that, armed with four silver USB knobs (Griffin PowerMates) mounted, glowing blue, on a custom Plexiglass surface. Watch his hypnotic visualizations for GameBoy musician BitShifter, then download the source. More links:

Processing as a VJ tool (project videos, documentation, source, and other info)

Flight404 featuring an insane number of PowerMate tricks

And yes, the master of all things Processing, Chris aka Pixelsumo got to this before I did. Watch his site for regular references to Processing.