How long has it been...? I first heard of the Reactable from a YouTube vid back in 2006, which was the first year of my degree.
2007 caught it during Björk's set at Glastonbury Festival.
Then finally got to play on the beast myself at Sonar 2009..
2010 - Reactable Live is for sale.. initially 20 units, selling at a cool €9700.
It looks as though it's similar to the versions I played on at Sonar, and requires a Mac to play, suggesting that there's massive programming potential.
Imagine they'll sell quick, even though they don't ship till June...
This is the beginning of a new wave of professional future-synths.
The difference between reactable and other more 'consumer-friendly' synths, such as Tenori-on and Kaos Pad, is that the Reactable crew havn't rushed to market. The Reactable crew have developed the most kicking product, and built their reputation from that, I doubt when they began there was ever a vision of how many units they can shift, they just wanted to make an awesome synth.
Yamaha and Korg will have to up their game.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Hangul Emoticons
Hangul nicely lends itself to emoticons
ㅓㅂㅏ = funky fish ne?
ㅇ.ㅇ = wide eyed surprise
ㅋ_ㅋ = asian stern
ㅛ_ㅛ = tired/stern/wired
ㅎㅁㅎ = singing
easy to make up, Korean and Japanese are quite inventive with their emoticons... http://koreanslate.com/tag/korean-emoticons
ㅓㅂㅏ = funky fish ne?
ㅇ.ㅇ = wide eyed surprise
ㅋ_ㅋ = asian stern
ㅛ_ㅛ = tired/stern/wired
ㅎㅁㅎ = singing
easy to make up, Korean and Japanese are quite inventive with their emoticons... http://koreanslate.com/tag/korean-emoticons
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Language is design
Saussure says all language is arbitrary... do we agree?? Semiotics is the science..
The idea being that language is made up of signs, which are composed of concepts and sound patterns.
The most obvious example is the concept of a "cat".. An actua l purring cat in no way relates to the word and sound pattern "CAT" which is made up of the letters C-A-T.. to express a cat in all its catness, the word "cat" will only communicate to those who understand the word in english ...
the french word for the concept of a cat is CHAT, german - KATZE, italien - GATTO, greek - γάτα, japanese - 猫 and so on and so on...
None of these actually express the true concept of a cat, the latin & greek alphabet at least, are just arrangements of letters to form sound patterns... the Japanese evolved from pictures but is cryptic without some familiarity to say the least..
Bellow see example with th e french word for tree.... 
We can see a clear division between the word arbor and the actual image of the tree.
Saussures musings on language have profound implications on the way we interact with the world today... The majority of our activities are dependent on communication, language is the crucial mediator of our dialogue of exchange....
Throughout history a number of people have attempted revisions on our language systems, 1443 in Korea, Sejong the Great got all the best scholars and linguists in the country together to devise a new alphabet, which would differentiate Korea from China and be accessible to the common man.
The result was Hangul script, which features characters specifically designed to represent the position of the tounge in the mouth.
e.g.
ㄱ = [k] tongue blocking throat
ㄴ = [n] tongue touching upper jaw
ㅁ = [m] represents shape of the lips
Hangul is praised as being one of the most phonetically logical alphabets used today...
ㄴㅁㄴ
Another example of a re-designed alphabet was attempted by Alexander Melville Bell (father of Graham Bell - inventor of telephone). Bell put together an alphabet called 'Visible Speech' similarly to Hangul it uses a system based on the organs of articulation, and is designed to be intuitive to learn.
Apparently using visible speech it is possible to transcribe a cough, expressive beyond most used alphabets.
So, we've got an idea of how the positioning of the organs of articulation (tongue, lips, teeth) are integrated into script in two examples, what other modern symbols can we find?
Pictograms are the obvious solution, visual communication is an intelligent system to communicate across cultural barriers... Airports and packaging are obvious places where these visual cues are increasingly relied on beyond script.
The closer pictographic images become to truly representing our needs, the closer we get to inventing a different kind of communication...
The phenomenon of the emoticon or smiley, is the last form of visual communication to be eluded to today and possibly the antithesis to semiotics.
While the first record of emoticons is attributed to Anthony Bierce in 'Puck Magazine', 1881, and was a smiling mouth written - \__/
Plato computer systems introduced the first emoticons, :-) to the internet in 1982, claiming to have developed them to an art form by 1976!
We now have a wide range of emoticons which function as posthuman hieroglyphs, these emoticons directly convey feeling and meaning, in a way that scripted language alone does not.
The fact that these are typed in a similar manner to typing in hieroglyphic languages such as scripted Kanji or Pinyin only enhances the universality and fundamental non-arbitrariness of their nature. A direct translation would not be so much the word, happy or sad, but the sound pattern relating to happy or sad, i.e. [sigh of pleasure] or [sob].
Could emoticons be the key to a non-arbitrary alphabet?
the french word for the concept of a cat is CHAT, german - KATZE, italien - GATTO, greek -
None of these actually express the true concept of a cat, the latin & greek alphabet at least, are just arrangements of letters to form sound patterns... the Japanese evolved from pictures but is cryptic without some familiarity to say the least..
We can see a clear division between the word arbor and the actual image of the tree.
Saussures musings on language have profound implications on the way we interact with the world today... The majority of our activities are dependent on communication, language is the crucial mediator of our dialogue of exchange....
Throughout history a number of people have attempted revisions on our language systems, 1443 in Korea, Sejong the Great got all the best scholars and linguists in the country together to devise a new alphabet, which would differentiate Korea from China and be accessible to the common man.
The result was Hangul script, which features characters specifically designed to represent the position of the tounge in the mouth.
e.g.
ㄱ = [k] tongue blocking throat
ㄴ = [n] tongue touching upper jaw
ㅁ = [m] represents shape of the lips
Hangul is praised as being one of the most phonetically logical alphabets used today...
ㄴㅁㄴ
Another example of a re-designed alphabet was attempted by Alexander Melville Bell (father of Graham Bell - inventor of telephone). Bell put together an alphabet called 'Visible Speech' similarly to Hangul it uses a system based on the organs of articulation, and is designed to be intuitive to learn.
Apparently using visible speech it is possible to transcribe a cough, expressive beyond most used alphabets.
So, we've got an idea of how the positioning of the organs of articulation (tongue, lips, teeth) are integrated into script in two examples, what other modern symbols can we find?
Pictograms are the obvious solution, visual communication is an intelligent system to communicate across cultural barriers... Airports and packaging are obvious places where these visual cues are increasingly relied on beyond script.
The closer pictographic images become to truly representing our needs, the closer we get to inventing a different kind of communication...
The phenomenon of the emoticon or smiley, is the last form of visual communication to be eluded to today and possibly the antithesis to semiotics.
While the first record of emoticons is attributed to Anthony Bierce in 'Puck Magazine', 1881, and was a smiling mouth written - \__/
Plato computer systems introduced the first emoticons, :-) to the internet in 1982, claiming to have developed them to an art form by 1976!
We now have a wide range of emoticons which function as posthuman hieroglyphs, these emoticons directly convey feeling and meaning, in a way that scripted language alone does not.
The fact that these are typed in a similar manner to typing in hieroglyphic languages such as scripted Kanji or Pinyin only enhances the universality and fundamental non-arbitrariness of their nature. A direct translation would not be so much the word, happy or sad, but the sound pattern relating to happy or sad, i.e. [sigh of pleasure] or [sob].
Could emoticons be the key to a non-arbitrary alphabet?
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Music + Language = ?
Been a while coming but kick start blog writing...
Fascinating book, "The Singing Neanderthals" by Steven Mithen, suggests that music and language evolved in tandem, filling the void where touch left off. The theory by anthropologists Aiello and Dunbar, suggests that as our ancestors population density increased, it became impossible to bond in the way we had previously, through physical contact. Initially vocal sounds were a replacement for physical touch, the sonic vibrations articulated from the individuals mouths would resonate between each other and create a unison that could imaginably have formed the first choirs.
Language became nessacery to express the specifics relating to the manufacture of tools, as it became essential to pass down knowledge, relating to the creation of objects for survival. Music at this point presumably continued to have use as a social bonding mechanism, and in turn became physically articulated through the creation of the first instruments.
As time passed both music and language have established themselves as institutions in their own right, there is a vast repertoire of music, instruments, written & recorded, and libraries of different languages.
Now then, what is the relationship between music and language?
There is something compelling in this question...
Fascinating book, "The Singing Neanderthals" by Steven Mithen, suggests that music and language evolved in tandem, filling the void where touch left off. The theory by anthropologists Aiello and Dunbar, suggests that as our ancestors population density increased, it became impossible to bond in the way we had previously, through physical contact. Initially vocal sounds were a replacement for physical touch, the sonic vibrations articulated from the individuals mouths would resonate between each other and create a unison that could imaginably have formed the first choirs.
Language became nessacery to express the specifics relating to the manufacture of tools, as it became essential to pass down knowledge, relating to the creation of objects for survival. Music at this point presumably continued to have use as a social bonding mechanism, and in turn became physically articulated through the creation of the first instruments.As time passed both music and language have established themselves as institutions in their own right, there is a vast repertoire of music, instruments, written & recorded, and libraries of different languages.
Now then, what is the relationship between music and language?
There is something compelling in this question...
Thursday, March 4, 2010
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