BricK+MahaDeviBot+ESitar = New Video!

We just got back from Stanford and man was it a great time! Everyone was extremely nice and intelligent and very inspiring. It was also great because we had a lot of time to demonstrate how we are interfacing BricKTable with the MahaDeviBot– Dr. Ajay Kapur’s Indian folk drum and percussion playing robot.

Check out the video above to get a glimpse of how we are merging the two technologies as well as see some other clips of table from other events. There is also great footage of the ESitar mixed in, Dr. Kapur’s own interface design for the MahaDeviBot in which he uses a custom made sitar with all the sensors you could ever dream of to simultaneously play the sitar (melody) and the accompaniment (the robot/drums).

First Kids To Make Music With Brick…

While browsing through flickr photos of Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008, I came upon a few photos of some of the cutest kids in the world playing with Brick. Not only could I not stop smiling, but I started thinking about what I saw when kids played with the table and made music. While with adults there are often plenty of questions into the technology behind the table, what it is doing, how it works…etc, what I noticed with younger kids is that none of that matters all that much. They just pick up the fiducials, or press their fingers on the screen, and listen to what it does. The pure wonderment in having something so physical be represented both visually on the screen and audibly through headphones or speakers is just a very amazing and rewarding thing, and a huge part of what this whole thing is about. It’s something kids (not surprisingly) seem to realize pretty quickly.

(photo to the left courtesy of Jen Sorenson, photo above courtesy of Arlen)

Yuri’s Night, Videos, Photos, and the Tenori-On!

So we just got back from Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008 late last night (or should I say this morning) and the whole thing feels sort of surreal.  Owen and I are extremely lucky to have had Brick table as an installation for people to come and play with, and we were also part of a new performance interface competition sponsored by Create Digital Music.

AND WE WON!  The video you see in this post is from the final lightning round, where we had 60 seconds to out-interface the Choromatron– another very cool performance tool.  Amazingly, both the audience and judges decided that the Brick Table won their hearts as the best new music performance interface in the competition.  So Owen and I found ourselves in the van driving home, with this strange and uber-everything button controller with our hands, amazed with just how simple, cool, and elegant the tenori-on is.  We are working on getting better at it (come on people we’ve only had it for 24 hours! haha) but watch out for videos of us playing with the little beast on youtube soon.

Yuri’s night was just plain amazing.  Owen and I had the opportunity to demonstrate and talk with literally thousands of people about Brick table.  The competition is one of Owen and my proudest moments and we feel so honored and special that you all seem to like and enjoy Brick table, as we have been putting so much time and work into it.  But from all of this, probably one of the most exciting and insightful parts of the weekend was just coming to and from the table, and seeing the faces of thousands of people lit up from Brick tables’ screen…smiling…using your hands and ears to make music.

We know a lot more about our instrument than we could have ever known before Yuri’s night, from talking and seeing how people interact with it.   For those of you who were there, thank you so much!  We hope you had a great time and got a chance to play with Brick.  If you didn’t, or you couldn’t make it out to Yuri’s this year, don’t worry!  This won’t be the last of Brick… for now check out the video I just put up on youtube, and check back soon, as I will have lots of photos and even a couple more videos up for your viewing pleasures…and please, send us your personal photos!

CDM & Other Brick Updates

Brick Updates:

1. Long-time fans of CDM (Create Digital Music), Owen and I are ecstatic about the article they just posted on Brick Table. If you aren’t already frequent readers of CDM, you should really check out their website– its one of our personal favorite places for music and technology information on the internet.
2. Stability! Stability! We are currently working on making the table more stable and robust, both physically and on the software side of things for Yuri’s Night Bay Area.
3. Brainstorming new ways to use the table and interesting new software to make to interface with the table. If you have any ideas, please feel free to email us or post a comment.
4. Website. We are trying to add as much content to the website as possible. We will add be adding more photos and videos as we get our hands on them. We have some interesting demonstrations this week so keep an eye out for more photos soon. For now check out the photos and the youtube video we have up now, and please, please feel free to post comments!

NASA Here We Come! Brick @ Yuri’s Night 2008

Well ladies and gentleman, it is official…Brick is going to be at this years Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008, the so called “Burning Man meets NASA” event sure to make history. For those of you who aren’t aware of Yuri’s night, it is an amazing event put on by NASA bringing together the best in science, technology, art and music.

It will be held on huge air hangers @ NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Ca. There is a great list of music being played including Amon Tobin (which we are super excited about), and Phil Lesh from the Greatful Dead, as well as lots of amazing art and installations.

Owen and I are sincerely honored to be a part of the event, which on April 12th should draw around 8,000 people. We might be showing Weather Report, and/or partnering with some NASA scientists on something completely new and unique for the event. Stay tuned to find out more.

For now check out Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008’s website for more information on the event and how to attend.

First video of Brick on Youtube

The video above is Owen Vallis and I demonstrating Weather Report, our first installation utilizing Brick at Sea and Space Exploration gallery in Los Angeles this past weekend as part of their Sound and Space series this month.

We developed a custom interface that would allow the user to sonify real-time weather data and make music! Heres what it’s doing:

On the screen you see a map of the U.S. showing the current surface temperature (represented by color). As you take the drawing object and draw a path across the map, for example my drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, it triggers sounds that are linked to those geographic locations. The interesting thing is that is also tracking the surface temperature of the areas your a journeying though, and using that data to filter the audio. Once you stop drawing, it will automatically begin looping your path.

At the same time, you can place two other objects on the table and depending on how you rotate them, they will play different sounds (percussion, clicks, pops, field recordings…). Once you find what you like, you stop rotating and they two will automatically begin looping…what you now have is sort of a mini composition. And because the data is being driven by surface temperature, which is updated every hour via the internet, you will constantly be getting new and different results from hour to hour, day to day…month to month…and so forth.

We are currently working on adding more functionality to this idea, and brainstorming new ways to use this amazing technology. Hopefully in the near future we will have it doing full multi-touch finger-tracking to make it an even more hands on experience for the user.