The Change Mariner

Music Interface Like Interface in Minority Report

Wired News

A pair of MIT graduate students has developed a futuristic tool for composing live electronic music that is unlike any traditional computer interface.

The Audiopad, developed by James Patten and Ben Recht, is a colorful, dynamic, luminescent interface projected onto a table top. It is reminiscent of the futuristic haptic (touch) interfaces seen in Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movie Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise uses his hands to control his computers.

... The Audiopad is projected on a special table equipped with radio sensors that track the position and movement of half a dozen plastic discs, or "pucks."

Most of the pucks control a series of preprogrammed tracks -- the rhythm, the bass line, the melody and so on.

See the Audio Pad