Declare dependence!

Recently I went to a demonstration of the Reactable in a bar situated in the centre of Vic. This is a revolutionary new musical instrument, invented by a team leaded by Sergi Jordà. He explained how he came to the idea of the Reactable. It is a table on which you can play with different elements to create different sounds. These computer generated sounds, which before only could be created with a screen and a mouse are now made with physical objects that interact with each other.

This same afternoon I went to a conference of Kevin Kelly from California. He did research to the web. His most recent publication is his book “Out of Control”. In this book he compares the World Wide Web as a huge world wide brain. He compared the functions and capabilities of our brain with that of the World Wide Web. Also he speculated about the possible future trends. He expected more and more dependence of electronic technique. Further more a expansion of this World Wide Brain. Also he talked about a trend of more and more interaction, not only within the information distribution, but also interaction with other physical things. For example the I-pod that communicates with the computer and also with a build-in-chip in shoes of Nike to keep track of information of your running-behavior.

Our brain is capable of link a lot of thinks, so this evening in the bar, when Sergi was performing with his Reactable, I remembered the conference from Kevin Kelly. This was exactly what he was talking about. So, we can ask ourselves, was it really so revolutionary of Sergi Jordà to invent the Reactable? I believe that it can be seen more as a creation of the time we are living in. Electronic interaction of physical things is what is happening right now at the moment and the Reactable is a product of this time.

Bjork was the first big artist who brought the Reactable to the public. In 2007 she performed the song Declare Independence.

Jahfed.com