MIT Students' Audiopad Mixes Electronic Music

nicodemus05 writes "Grad students at MIT's Media Lab have come up with an innovative control device called the Audiopad to run their digital music studio. The Audiopad, '...is a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music.' It's practical, but more importantly it looks really, really cool."

Sure

[minghe]

But can I play Chopsticks on it?

I tried it with IE...

[Anonymous Coward]

and the sounds I got were:

Pop, pop, pop-up, pop-up, zoooooom, flash!, pop, vrroooom, crash, thud!

And then:
It appears your application has crashed. Would you like to mail a copy of the dump to Microsoft?

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How long until...

[daveo0331]

Someone gets sued by the RIAA for arranging the objects in their cube the wrong way?

Re:Its practical

[tankdilla]

needless to say it's very cool, just need to integrate it into a table with the projector pointing up onto say a translucent surface rather than down onto a surface

Better yet, make it work in a 3d space, where full body motion translates into music. There are a few actions that would translate into some interesting 'music' i'm sure.

Re:Don't you dare comment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good try but wrong article for that troll. You couldn't wait 24 hours for Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) to open his mouth?

Re:Its practical

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already done this, when we were kids, me an my sis joe, we loosened one screw in mom's bed so we can hear whenever she has a friend over. It worked pretty well, well enough for us to calculate the number of thrusts, the duration, delta T, and so on.

Incredibly, joe now works for NASA.. while I wither away in unemployment (who wants to hire a SCO admin?!)

Sounds great

[arvindn]

...but since I can't access the page, I'll just say that if they can make a similar device to convert the death throes of a webserver into digital music, we could have some real fun during slashdottings :)

Can MIT do the reverse??

[jkrise]

These days, with the DRM and the DMCA, it's tough getting a music file without DRM crap. What I'd like the MIT folks to do is this:

Get some objects on a table to dance, based on the music! And then we can have another Audiopad to capture the music from this dance - non DRM MP3....breakthrough!

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Re:Sounds great

[3.5 stripes]

I'd imagine it'd sound somethng like pac-man dying, or a wind up music box 2 seconds before it's completely static.

Re:Might as well throw away old synthesizers then

[iLEZ]

Just put them in a pile outside my apartment. :o)~

I see a problem

[AndroidCat]

Never mind all the fancy stuff, I think the basic problem is students and fairly clear table space.

Practical

[Anonymous Coward]

It's practical, but more importantly it looks really, really cool.

You work for Microsoft, don't you?

Slashdotpad

[192939495969798999]

Looks like those crafty MIT kids built a device that can slashdot a webpage by tracking moving objects on a table. :)

Re:Theremin

[CausticPuppy]

Actually, if you want to wave your arms around to make music, you can't beat being the conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

This was invented 20 years ago...

[checkyoulater]

As anyone who has seen Revenge of the Nerds knows, Louis [imdb.com] and Gilbert [imdb.com]
invented this thing to help the Tri Lambs win the Greek Games. I would expect everyone on Slashdot to know that one.