On a warm January evening this year, a sea of faces looked away from the white waves of the Opera House to the diminutive diva onstage, jumping around with a pre-schooler’s abandon. What set Bjork’s outstanding performance apart from previous shows was intriguing the crowd. People were not wondering wether she would play Hyperballad, but rather what the cool music table thing was, the image of which was projected meters above the adoring audience.

In retrospect I was probably equally mesmerised by the "cool music table" as I was by Bjork. As the electric blue lines flickered across the screen, I was hypnotised by its rhythmic imagery and the apparent ease of its use. Officially known as the ReacTable, this new breed of musical instrument represents the cutting edge of technology combining computers, music and human interaction.

The ReacTable is played by placing various prisms on a flat round surface. Each of these prisms or 'tangibles' have different markings that indicate through their position and proximity to the 'output' centre, what sound the computer should generate. The different tangibles indicate to a computer via a video camera under the table what beat or frequency should be played. Finger movements around the tangible alter the pitch and the tangible’s proximities to one another changes the musical output.

This is a very dry way of explaining the instrument that is best seen in practice to fully appreciate its infinitely variable musicality. It is the perfect combination of a simplistic interface for complicated software that creates a visually and aurally unique result.

The truly awe inspiring element of the ReacTable is the visual feedback projected from beneath the table to indicate to the musician what effect each individual tangible is having on the output sound. The rays, circles and wavelengths transform the sound into a visual equivalent. The simplicity of these visual patterns are deceptively simple. It is this organic imagery that also creates a visual pattern interesting enough to draw attention from Bjork’s spectacular face paint and battle marches.

The ReacTable originated out of a doctoral project from Spain’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Its creators, Sergi Jordà, Marcos Alonso, Martin Kaltenbrunner and Günter Geiger intended the instrument to be played collaboratively and intuitive for new users. This means that there are many opportunities for the instrument in performance and in the visual art world. Already there have been several installations in Europe where the ReacTable has been the driving creative force.

Such a stunning visual and aural instrument is likely to be on many DJ and VJ’s wish lists. A new company has been set up by the design team that hopes to deliver the first commercial ReacTable by the end of this year. However, for those of us unable to afford the pricey high end product, garage technicians may have the answer. Small brothers and sisters of the ReacTable have recently been available on the homemade product goldmine, etsy.com. At last search, Etsy buyers could snap up a nifty little hand held instrument that emits a sound wave and a beat with a frequency determined by the closeness of your finger to a light detector.

The ReacTable and these similar home-made instruments represent a new way of thinking about music production and how humans interact with music. The ReacTable’s embrace of human thought processes is the secret of its success. Human brains are programmed to recognise and interpret patterns, and as such the light show produced by the ReacTable is a much easier way for musicians to understand the composition of the sounds the various tangibles are creating. It is for this reason that this new breed of instrument is so intriguing, for many people the process of making music finally makes sense.

In the middle of a Bjork concert, perhaps that sensation is more comforting than you would imagine.


Image by ex novo. Licenced by Creative Commons.