Institut Universitari de l'Audiovisual – Universitat Pompeu Fabra (ES)

Sergi Jordà, Günter Geiger, Marcos Alonso & Martin Kaltenbrunner

(ES)

Reactable

The Reactable is a new electronic musical instrument with a simple and intuitive design, which enables musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a direct, refreshing and unseen way. It uses a so called tangible interface, where the musician controls the system by manipulating tangible objects. The instrument is based on a translucent and luminous round table, and by putting these pucks on the Reactable surface, by turning them and connecting them to each other, performers can combine different elements like synthesizers, effects, sample loops or control elements in order to create a unique and flexible composition. Reactable’s pucks represent the building blocks of electronic music, each one having a different functionality in sound generation or in effect processing, in a way deeply inspired by modular analogue synthesizers such as those developed by Bob Moog in the early 60s.

The Reactable was conceived and developed since 2003 by a research team at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger and Marcos Alonso premiered their creation in a concert in 2005, but the instrument got known to a wider audience when the team released several demonstration videos on YouTube in late 2006. These videos have been watched by more than four million people, including eminent musicians such as Icelandic songstress Björk, who successfully incorporated the Reactable on her last 18-months world tour "Volta". In parallel, during the last two years, the Reactable team has given more than 150 presentations and concerts in 30 countries, turning it into one of the most worldwide acclaimed new musical instruments of the 21st century. Declared the Hot Instrument of the Year by the Rolling Stone Magazine (2007), the Reactable has received many prestigious international awards such as the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Digital Musics (2008), two D&AD Yellow Pencil Awards (2008), the MIDEM Hottest Music Biz Start-Up Award (2008) or the Ciutat de Barcelona (2007). On February 2009, the creators of the Reactable founded the spin-off company Reactable Systems (www.reactable.com).

In collaboration with: Music Technology Group (UPF) and Reactable Systems S.L.

Project location: CCCB - Floor -1
Live Performances: Thursday 18th, Friday 19th and Saturday 20th at 1:30pm, 4:30pm and 6:30pm.

http://www.reactable.com

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