Create Digital Music has a great post on [Luca De Rosso]‘s OTTO. Built as part of his masters’ thesis, it’s a unique tangible music interface. You load a sample into the software which displays it on the instrument surface. The user can then manipulate the sample using various hardware inputs while watching the LED representation. The device uses just one Arduino for the display and inputs. It works with Max/MSP and is designed to give the performer only the information they truly need. You can find more pictures of the device on Flickr and a picture of the guts on CDM. Embedded below is the ‘Getting Started’ video that shows it in use.

Here are two new projects from [Alex Beim] at Tangible Interactions. The video above is the bottle wall with a controllable LED behind each bottle. Embedded below is the 7×5 pixel Rainbow Box. He’s planning on writing a Quartz Composer patch to actively drive the display.

[via Create Digital Motion]

Where’s the Party At is an open source bendable 8-bit sampler kit created by [Todd Bailey]. The initial design started about a year ago when he was instructing circuit benders how to transition to circuit design. He designed the kit to show how simply you could build a sampler. It demonstrates both clear analog and digital design. It’s meant to be a unique instrument though and features a lot of glitchy/quirky characteristics while being fairly reliable. You can read more about the device on his site. It has comprehensive parts and assembly manuals available and the kit is $75.

[via Create Digital Music]

Check out the video above by [Adrien Mondot] for a extensive demonstration of eMotion being used with a Wiimote. eMotion is a physics based visual tool for the Mac. It’s designed to enhance performances by reacting to real world motion. Its grounding in physics makes the resultant motion appear more natural than if they were arbitrarily generated. The video above combines eMotion with the output of Wiimote Whiteboard, a low-cost interactive white board that uses the Wiimote camera plus IR light pens. While the video takes place in a small area, we can see how this could be scaled to a much larger space with IR lights mounted to performers.

[via CDM]

OpenSound Control protocol is an emerging standard for communication between musical programs. It’s meant to replace MIDI. The DSMI, DS Music Interface, team has just added support for OSC. You can now use your DS as generic OSC music controller over WiFi. OSC has TCP/IP support built in, so there is no need to run a host sever to talk to DSMI like you did when they only supported MIDI. We’ve seen OSC used in other projects like the monome. It’s also the basis for the multitouch communication protocol TUIO.

[via CDM]

tbeta is a new tool developed by the NUI Group Community. tbeta acts as an image processing layer to take in image data and output tracking data for multitouch applications. Whether FTIR or DI, scratch built multitouch systems generate IR video streams that need to be processed to find fingertips. tbeta can take this or any arbitrary video stream and run it through a series of filters to generate the touch data. This data is sent as OSC TUIO, a standard protocol for touch events. Along with the camera and input switcher, tbeta also aids in system calibration. I works on Windows, OSX, and Linux. Have a look at the getting started guide for a better idea of how it works.

[via CDM]

Processing, the open source programming language designed for artists and other creative types, finally went 1.0. Processing inspired numerous outpourings of creativity and beauty, from interactive art installations to sound sculptures. Improvements to Processing include OpenGL anti-aliasing, an extensible Tools menu, and the XML library included by default. You can read up on the changes or download Processing and start playing with it yourself.

[via Create Digital Motion]

[via Create Digital Motion]

[photo: nicolasnova]

[Peter Kirn] from Create Digital Music has an article up highlighting many of the great music and visual performance pieces planned for The Last HOPE on Friday night. If you are around New York and not accustomed to hacking conferences, this could be a great excuse to go check it out. Here are some of our favorite projects.

In the field of visuals, [Joshue Ott] and [Ezekiel Honig] are scheduled for an exhibition. [Ott] is best known for authoring superDraw, an amazing app used for generating visuals for music. The above video shows superDraw in action. [Honig] will provide his usual brand of warm and noisy ambient soundscapes.

Representing the 8-bit scene, [Paris] (video above) and [No Carrier] are also scheduled to attend.

[Michael Una] will also be on hand to showcase his live looping and robot assisted performances. The above video shows one of the robots he will be performing with. This robot was built around the Highly Liquid MIDI kit.