The Reactable : A Collaborative Musical Instrument for Playing and Understanding Music

Abstract

The reactable is a table based, collaborative musical instrument, which employs modern tangible interaction and multi- touch technologies in order to convey a visual appealing and instructional experience for those who play it. The reactable has been conceived by a team of «digital luthiers» at the Music Technology Group, Pompeu Fabra University. It has attained a high degree of recognition, not only throughout the academic community, but also in the general public. It has won several international prices such as the Prix Ars Electronica, The City of Barcelona Multimedia Prize 2007, D&DA award or the Rolling Stone magazine’s Hottest Instrument of the Year 2007, and has been featured in various television shows, nationally and internationally. From the beginning it has attracted the interest of museums and science centers, who want to offer their visitors a new, collaborative, educational and social way of exploring music. This article describes on the one hand the development of the reactable and its technological aspects and on the other hand our experience with the reactable in a museum context and shows additional applications of the technology.