The Music Technology Group, MTG, part of the Departament of Technology and the Audiovisual Institute of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, specializes in audio processing technologies and their music and multimedia applications. With more than 40 researchers coming from various disciplines, the MTG carries out research and development projects in areas such as audio processing and synthesis; audio identification; audio content analysis, description and transformation; singing voice processing; interactive systems; and software tools.
 
The MTG wants to contribute to the improvement of the technologies of musical interest, carrying out competitive research at the international level and transferring its results to the society. It aims to find a balance between basic and applied research and at the same time to promote interdisciplinary research that incorporates knowledge from both scientific/technological and humanistic/artistic disciplines.
 
The MTG was created in 1994 by its current director, Dr. Xavier Serra, as one of the research groups of the Audiovisual Institute, a centre for interdisciplinary research in the different areas of Digital Media.
 
The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.
 
The instrument was developed by a team of digital luthiers under the direction of Dr. Sergi Jordà. The "Interactive Sonic Systems" team is working in the Music Technology Group within the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. Its main activities concentrate on the design of new musical interfaces, such as tangible music instruments and musical applications for mobile devices.
 
The reactable hardware is based on a translucent round table. A video camera situated beneath, continuously analyzes the table surface, tracking the nature, position and orientation of the objects that are distributed on its surface, representing the components of a classic modular synthesizer. These objects are passive without any sensors or actuators, users interact by moving them, changing their position, their orientation or their faces (in the case of volumetric objects). These actions directly control the topological structure and parameters of the sound synthesizer. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of the state, the activity and the main characteristics of the sounds produced by the audio synthesizer.
 
> www.mtg.upf.edu/reactable
> www.iua.upf.edu/mtg/pages/home
 
Appearances:
> CTM.07 > REACTABLE