Friday, July 30, 2004

Sony’s Block Jam

This is one of my favorite projects from Sony-Japan which I first saw at SIGGRAPH 2002 and just caught up with again. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the link and information.

http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/IL/projects/blockjam/contents.html

Block Jam is a musical interface controlled by the arrangement of 25 tangible blocks. By arranging the blocks musical phrases and sequences are created, allowing multiple users to play and collaborate. The system takes advantage of both graphical and tangible user interfaces. Each block has a visual display and a combination of a gestural input and a click-able input. Each Block metaphorically contains a sound group that can be chosen via the gestural input, the click-able input changes a block functionally. Thus, musically complex and engaging configurations can be rapidly assembled. The tangible nature of the blocks and the intuitive interface promotes face-to-face collaboration, and the presence of the GUI allows for remote collaboration across a network.