The Attract-O-Tron by Frederik Kalisch and Steffen Müller are two exceptionally well designed hand-held musical artifacts, which generate sound using electric motors. The GRID table by Tobias Hornberger convinced through its thorough synthesizer and composition concept, which was realized using colored building blocks.
Apart from these two awarded projects we’d like to mention some further brilliant projects, such as the the Air Piano by Omer Yosha, the Squawk controller by Dennis Helfrich as well as the Looplex table interface by Marcus Holzmayr, which even had been realized using our reacTIVision toolkit.

Many thanks to the organizers and jury members of the ICMI workshop: Steffi Beckhaus (Uni Hamburg), Christian Geiger (FH Düsseldorf), Cornelius Pöpel (FH Ansbach), Holger Reckter (HS Harz)

The Reactable with a special “experimenta” design is integrated in the so-called Talentschmieden where the visitors can discover their musical talent and creativity, aside from other skills.

As a collaboration between Reactable Systems S.L. and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) we will show 4 Reactables at the same time. One table will feature the well known tangible Reactable synthesizer, and 3 tables show applications designed and programmed by students of the UPF.

The student projects are SongExplorer by Carles Julia, Punk-o-Table by Dani García Rodríguez, Iván Hernández Gutiérrez & Miguel Ferreiro Novoa and PuckR by Roger Pujol, Pablo Molina, Frederic Font & Francisco García.

The Reactable attracts professionals at the Musikmesse

We are back from the Musikmesse in Frankfurt where we successfully presented the first commercially available version of the Reactable. Many thanks to everyone who supported us! We were overwhelmed by the positive feedback we got from the visitors, and there were several questions we got asked. So we wanted to clarify again what our current and future plans with the Reactable are.

We are currently manufacturing a version of the Reactable for institutional customers on-demand. The Reactable Experience is very robust and heavy and is built to withstand the exposure to hundreds of daily users. Its software focuses on the collaborative aspects of the Reactable. We produce, install and support this version for each customer, therefore the Reactable Experience is not a product you can simply buy in a shop.

At the same time we are working feverishly on another industrial version, which will suit the needs of musicians and DJ’s. This version will be lighter and easier to transport and setup. Its software will be more configurable, in order to fit different music and performance styles. We plan to release this version by the end of this year. The price is not fixed yet, but we are trying our best to make it affordable, although it won’t be a cheap consumer product since it is based on advanced technology.

Finally a plea from our side: Please only order a Reactable Experience if you are interested in that exhibition version. If what you want is the mobile variation for musicians and DJ’s, please be patient. We will announce it through our newsletter and do our best to let you know when it has been released. Until then we are of course available to take orders from customers, such as museums, clubs or educational institutions who should get in touch with us via sales@reactable.com

We hope to see you there!

Download the Press Release

Reactable Systems is the second commercial spin-off of the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, one of the world’s largest and leading research labs in sound and music computing. Reactable Systems’ mission is to redefine conventional Human-Computer Interaction by developing cutting-edge interactive products and solutions with a focus on entertainment, education, the promotion of creativity and the mediation of culture and knowledge, and with a special emphasis on musical creation. The company’s first goal is the commercial launch of the Reactable worldwide.

The Reactable is an electronic musical instrument with a revolutionary interface that turns music into something visible and tangible. Since its initial presentation in 2005, the Reactable has been internationally acclaimed and received many worldwide awards (Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica , two D&AD Yellow Pencil Awards, Rolling Stone Hot Instrument of the Year 2007, MIDEM Hottest Music Biz Start-Up Award). It is already being used by top-end musicians such as Björk, who successfully used it on stage during her last Volta world tour, as well as in several museums and science centres around the world where it is always one of the major visitor attractions. The “Reactable Experience“, the new Reactable version specially designed for public places and institutional customers, such as museums, entertainment centres, schools or universities, is the company’s first product.

The commercial presentation of the Reactable Experience will take place at Frankfurt’s Musikmesse 2009 , from April 1st to 4th. Starting March 30th (30.3), customers will be able to order a Reactable Experience online by visiting www.reactable.com.