During the afternoon Martin Kaltenbrunner & Ross Bencina presented reacTVision, an open source cross-platform  computer vision framework whose first well known application is reactable, a new astonishing musical instrument.


reacTVision was designed for the rapid development of table-based tangible user interfaces as well as for multi-touch finger tracking. The system can be interfaced to puredata, max, macromedia, processing, and to other lower level programming languages. reacTVision is a standalone application which sends OpenSound Control messages via a UDP network socket to any connected client application. It implements the TUIO protocol, which was specially designed for transmitting the state of tangible objects on a table surface. Alternatively it can also send MIDI messages.

Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen presented CUI (Create USB interface) by Dan Overholt. CUI is similar in approach to the Arduino open source hardware, but is capable of doing true USB HID (Human Interface Device) transfers. Anne-Marie will give a presentation of her project “Vacuole Robes” based on CUI later this week.

Audun Eriksen gave an introduction to Circuit Bending, the creative short-circuiting of low voltage battery-powered electronic audio devices. Reed Gazala, father of this practice, suggested the name ‘circuit bending’ and was the first to publish his notes around the subject and to share his anti-theories. His manual is a fundamental text for those who are interested in learning the subject.