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January 19, 2005
It's Music. Music is the Metaphor.
A mouse is one finger that can point, and touch. While computers have added orders of magnitude more memory, speed, storage, screen pixels, color, and networking, people are still using one finger. Point. Point. Poke. Poke. Drag. Drop.
More specialized inputs are being invented for video games, but I think musical instruments are the better metaphor for future input devices. Video games are reactive and competitive, and they have a short design history, a few decades, much of it reacting to new technology. Music is collaborative and creative. It is more like work. People have been designing musical instrument interfaces for centuries. Much of that history is a collaboration between craftspeople, musicians and composers. The sophistication of a saxophone or piano interface beats any video game.
Anyway, I saw this wonderful interface and it got me going. This video especially.
Posted by dme at January 19, 2005 10:33 AM
Comments
You should check out the Audiopad from MIT's media lab. http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpatten/audiopad/index.php
I think it's a very cool combination of using an actual physical device (like a knob) to control something with the flexibility of what you are controlling that you get from a computer.
Posted by: Andrew at January 20, 2005 07:12 AM
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