MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Imagine what’s now possible with a mobile phone: anyone with a supported device can jam with other artists, walk up to an installation, connect to other creators and other software, all using supported protocols. Leaving behind the days of painstaking manual adjustment of MIDI commands and obscure drivers, and even the act of having to physically connect gear, software - and with it, digital art - can simply talk to each other in standard ways.

That’s why we’re excited about software like Memo Atken’s MSA Remote. It uses the standardization provided by the network-savvy, open protocol OSC, with additional plug-and-play (or, erm, don’t plug, do play) functionality from the TUIO protocol. OSC provides the communication; TUIO makes the messages standardized.

To avoid confusion: You do NOT need a Mac to use OSC. OSCulator is a cool app - and makes bridging to MIDI easier - but it’s just one tool among many. You can use this app with Windows and Linux, too, and visual apps like VDMX, Resolume Avenue, Pd/GEM, Processing… the list goes on. In fact, almost every visual app today worth using uses OSC, even as the music world is painfully slow to catch on.

Memo’s ongoing quest to get his application MSARemote on the iTunes App Store has hit what is hopefully its last rejection today, this time because one of the screens “infringes an Apple trademark image.”

This is a reasonably well documented failure mode, so hopefully this is the final invisible, electrified hurdle they expect Memo to sense and clear before MSA Remote is made available.

In the meantime, Memo has published a new video displaying the app controlling VDMX [on CDMo] and Ableton Live [on CDMo, on CDMu], and showcasing its velocity sensitive keyboard.

MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Via: Twitter @memotv. The CDM account is @cdmblogs. I’m @jaymis, and Peter is @peterkirn.

The need for spatial, 3D interfaces is prompting students and inventors to try some creative and economical solutions. Earlier this week, we saw a touch-free, gestural interface built entirely on the principles of electrostatic – yes, as in static electricity. (See the original story, with video.)

Justin Schunick of the team at Northeastern University wrote CDM with more details on the project.

I am the guy who is talking in the video.  We filmed this in our lab today.  We are all seniors in Electrical/Computer Engineering at Northeastern University and this was created for a senior design
competition called "Capstone".  What you see here is a culmination of ~8 months work.

The interface uses an array of copper electrodes to sense a certain change in the electric field created by the device.  The black material covering the electrodes shows how the interface can be hidden beneath surfaces to create a completely invisible interface. It is simple black felt you can buy at any fabric store.  The total cost of this prototype was around $60.00 USD.  [Ed.: Justin notes that that was just an estimate of the parts themselves - let's just say it wasn't pricey. -PK] We created custom software to communicate with our microcontroller with C++ and it enables us to use our device as a new type of XYZ computer mouse.  Think nintendo wii controller without the controller — or minority report without the gloves.  This is a perfect interface for a holographic display.  There are millions of applications and we are just scratching the surface - I am sure you are already thinking of all the possibilities enabled by this device.

And yes, I was right that the whole thing is built around a big felt blanket.

I’m thinking of one possibility – something useful to do with your Snuggie (half sweater, half blanket) after the bar crawl. As seen in the WTF Blanket (NSFW, at least with the sound on, depending on where you work).

In all seriousness, while you probably can’t say this of the Snuggie with a straight face, this 3D interface is truly an awesome use of mundane, everyday technology you take for granted.

More photos:

3D Computer Interface from Free Flow on Vimeo.

During long winters with indoor heat running overtime, I imagine you’ve built up your fair amount of static electricity, and as the sparks fly, wondered why you couldn’t put that power to some good use.

Working with electrostatics, a team of students at Northeastern University in Boston have done just that. For their senior design capstone project, they assembled a gestural interface which allows 3D control just by waving a hand in front of a computer. That sort of idea is all the rage these days. The difference here: there’s no camera, no IR emitters, no markers or physical controllers.

You just move your hand in three-dimensional space, and the control data is transmitted to the computer. In fact, it’s one of the more touchless interfaces I’ve seen since the father of them all, the Theremin.

That does appear to be a blanket underneath their hand. Now, being the glutton for punishment I am, I want to figure out a way to do this in which there are sparks.

More on this project as I learn about it, but it looks like it’s got some great potential. The bottom line to me is that there’s every reason to begin interacting with three-dimensional onscreen interfaces using spatial physical interfaces. Joysticks and mice actually do a reasonably good job, but they don’t cover the entire gamut of what’s possible. Now it’s up to the software to start using that control data.

MSAFluid for processing (Controlled by iPhone) from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

We can continue to ponder how to convince Apple to let Memo’s simple but powerful-looking MSA Remote multitouch app on the App Store. But in the meantime, a resourceful developer has tried simply writing a quick app for the Safari browser. This is doubly promising to me. I love full-blown apps, and they typically allow access to some of the powerful sensor and location features of mobile devices. But that’s not to say browser apps won’t also have a place for quick prototyping, live performance, and installation. WebKit browsers are now not only on iPhone and iPod touch, but Palm Pre and Android – and, I suspect, more places soon. This could be a great outlet even for extending functionality of apps.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a quick way of using the TUIO protocol – as Memo is doing with his (App Store-rejected) app + Processing above – Andrew Turley’s app is a quick fix. I’ll be looking at mobile browser development alongside app development, I know, and I imagine all of us will keep praying for the MSA app.

TUIO Multitouch for iPhone: Browser App Hack Replaces Rejected App [Create Digital Music]

touchy feely [Pillowsopher Blog]

And yes, as this is a browser app, it should work on other platforms, too. The disadvantage of Android G1 is you’ll get only one-touch … while we wait for generally-available multitouch capabilities on Android, I imagine more specialized apps with specific platform tie-ins will be more useful.