Team

Sergi Jordà, Marcos Alonso, Günter Geiger, Martin Kaltenbrunner, (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Pierre-Louis Xech (Microsoft Research Cambridge)

Aim

The MediaTable project aims to design a tangible music browser platform, which integrates into the everyday environment the handling of a digital music collection and its real-time musical manipulation.

Using the reacTable framework the musical practices of the last decade will be translated into the tangible domain: Design, implementation and evaluation of a new “Digital Media Center” inspired from the DJ paradigm, which will allow the browsing, presentation and real-time musical manipulation of a personal musical collection on a table-top interactive display.

In the background of this project lays the idea that the very special, precise and demanding needs of real-time computer music control and interaction, have much to bring to more general areas of Human Computer Interaction, and that the learning resulting from that research will spread beyond its original musical domain. A tangible user interface will allow us, in turn, to reinterpret successful musical models in a context as free as possible of traditional burden, eliminating the ubiquitous dedicated pointing devices, sliders and menus, without mimicking analogue turntables either.
The MediaTable project follows up and extend the ReacTable* research protoype developed at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

In this project we aim at exploring creative experience scenarios, taking a fresh look at the digital music playing experience,  exploring expressiveness & freedom in creative interactions, supporting exploration and collaboration.  we anticipate the outcoming prototype to propose new metaphors and interaction techniques for browsing digital media collections.

Links

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 
The Music Technology Group (MTG)
Sergi Jordà's home Page
The ReacTable* project

Pierre-Louis Xech's home page.