Siftables -- a game-changer

[jean_pierre]

cute piece of kit, but i can't get into siftables. the design seems more evolutionary than it is being recognized for, having not moved all that far from the sensetable project for which the research was published in 2001!, follow on project audiopad, later projects loopqoob or even reactable (who's project site seems to be down, you can quickly see it in action on these two youtube videos here and here) which was well received at SONAR a couple years back. so 8 years later, we get what -- a mini LCD block that offers the killer application of a physical digital-magnetic-poetry version of the speak-and-spell and speak-and-math? feels a bit like technology searching for a problem to solve.

yeah, the ted format doesn't let them talk at much depth, the additional videos on project member david merrill's academic project page don't really discuss in any further depth. the team has since left the media lab and formed a company to commercialize the project -- siftables commercial site. i'd have to imagine they aren't showing all their cards until they are ready to go to market, but i do hope they offer something more compelling than what has already seen.

[Corsico]

The beginning of Skynet!!

[steveboyett]

cute piece of kit, but i can't get into siftables. the design seems more evolutionary than it is being recognized for, having not moved all that far from the sensetable project for which the research was published in 2001!, follow on project audiopad, later projects loopqoob or even reactable (who's project site seems to be down, you can quickly see it in action on these two youtube videos here and here) which was well received at SONAR a couple years back. so 8 years later, we get what -- a mini LCD block that offers the killer application of a physical digital-magnetic-poetry version of the speak-and-spell and speak-and-math? feels a bit like technology searching for a problem to solve.

yeah, the ted format doesn't let them talk at much depth, the additional videos on project member david merrill's academic project page don't really discuss in any further depth. the team has since left the media lab and formed a company to commercialize the project -- siftables commercial site. i'd have to imagine they aren't showing all their cards until they are ready to go to market, but i do hope they offer something more compelling than what has already seen.

As I said, I think we'll feel the effect of this technology down the line, not right now. And I think your simplistic reduction of its current ability fails to recognize its enormous potential. Did you watch the whole video? Let's see a Speak & Spell help you set up a Fibonacci series. I had exactly the feeling seeing this that I had on first seeing Ableton Live v1.0 at NAMM -- I couldn't fully wrap my brain around it at the same time I saw a massively flexible and adaptable template for creativity. Anyway, my 2 cents' worth.

[jean_pierre]

yes, i did watch the video as well as read the paper the team published and am familiar with the research of several of related projects. the project is cute, but i think the high innovation and disruptive technology badges being tossed about, are premature at best. perhaps our differences could be better described by an earthquake - i view siftables as an aftershock, not the main shock as it were.

the world we live in seems to now only book over-hyped prize fights that [a] end in the first round [b] end after someone gets their ear bitten off or [c] never happen in the first place as one or more contenders can't make weight. rarely are we treated to the match we had hoped for. everything is hyper-dramatic now, no one just bows out but instead they go down in a fireball the sun could be proud of. user and market expectation can become entirely unmanageable when you are propped up by misappropriated fad, which can easily end in the pear shaped flame-out, disappointment.

[steveboyett]

Well. Time will tell, wonit?

[Fatlimey]

These physically based interfaces always bug me. The first thing the Reacttable and Sitable people do is make a "music" app that plays back prerecorded loops and magically makes it sound interesting. I've never seen one used in any way that can be considered DJ-like.

The problem comes form timing - the latencies on these devices are always fairly loose. On reactable, to start a sound you need to place the object and "turn it up" by physically rotating the object, so there's never any synchronization issues as you always fade in. Effects are applied to sound source by "locality", as you bring objects close to each other they establish connections and the effect is turned on, but you never get to say exactly _when_ the connection is made so applying an effect to a sound source is hard to make musically precise. The sound sources themselves are usually short loops or arpeggiated triggering of noises, handily sidestepping the problems of locating cues in a track or scrolling through large sound files to get to interesting points. Click-to-play and click-to-stop are not enough.

It's points like these that bug me. They never do anything a couple of MIDI NoteOn or CC events can't do, and they always do it with a mushy, imprecise time frame. I remain unimpressed.

[midian]

It's points like these that bug me. They never do anything a couple of MIDI NoteOn or CC events can't do, and they always do it with a mushy, imprecise time frame. I remain unimpressed.

There is no reason you can't link it to DJ software. The main one for this would be the TUIO stuff which is used with reactable, but you can edit to so that it can be used with midi. I've used this tech myself and yes it does have some latency BUT this is all to do with gear, get a decent camera (the PS3 camera is actually fucking good!) and this becomes less of an issue and is definately usable for performance in a DJ set.

Watch that video I posted earlier, it has him using it with DAW software. The realms that are possible with this are pretty amazing.