Orchestra Da Camera from Quiet ensemble on Vimeo.

As witnessed by the positive reaction to the YouTube cat videos and the recent Oakland Internet Cat Video Festival clearly felines (as well as canines) have been hogging the popularity polls when it comes to viewer hits of online videos of creatures. But that stronghold by kitties may soon witness some competition if mice videos, like the one above uploaded a couple of months ago by the Rome, Italy based Quiet Ensemble, start to gain in popularity. That video above is the intricate Orchestra Da Camera musical installation that shows the "forty elements of the chamber" - mice running on their wheels with each wheel connected to a carillon.  When the wheel turns (activated by each mouse) it in turn triggers the carillon to begin playing its corresponding musical note. As the Vimeo video description for the video notes, "The great number of carillons and the random actions of the living creatures makes unrecognizable the melodies (lullabies by Brahms, Schubertand Mozart) creating an unexpected musical carpet determined by the mice."

Sun Ra-"Space Is The Place"


The Grateful Dead- "Space/Morning Dew"



David Bowie- "Space Oddity" (OG Version)


Hawkwind-"Space Is Deep"


Helios Creed- "Your Spaceman"


Deep Purple-"Space Truckin'"


A Flock Of Seagulls- "Space Age Love Song"


8 Ball & MJG -"Space Age Pimpin"

Reactable is a new music-making interface coming out of Barcelona that I've been wanting to feature in this blog before I knew I'd be writing it - it was part of my pitch, actually. Now that It's been Boing-Boing-ed I feel I should probably get this post out about it considering it's quite of-the-minute, about which I'll get to later.

Reactable:



While it's been around for a couple of years now, folks are only starting to catch on. Thanks to this past weekend, I'm guessing A LOT more people will be exposed in the near future. This video above is the first exposure I had to the technology, and I was pretty mesmerized. WTF was going on here? One initial observation is that it's like a modular synth that you literally build as you use it, which turned out to be partially correct. The Reactable was developed by Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger, and Marcos Alonso of the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. These demo videos are fairly self-explanatory, especially after multiple viewings, so I don't think that not having a base knowledge of synthesis or electonic music-making is necessarily a hindrance to appreciating or enjoying Reactable.