airsun-LookingOutwards04

Multitouch (2010), designed and made by Amanda Ghassei, is a very elegant, clean designed, and interesting multitouch system. It interacts with fingers. When someone touches the glass surface, lights will be placed on the corresponding plane. Moreover, it will generate different sound effects or music tone when different squared surfaces were selected. The engineer behind this is briefly introduced on Ghassei's website. Multitouch was built based on the open source monome project. In order to generate a thin plane of light on the surface, the engineer uses a technique called Laser Light Plane. The work also uses an Arduino Uno scanner for determining the coordinates of the point(s) of contact. What attracts me the most about the project is the later versions of development. After making the Multitouch interacting with the hand, Ghassei places the work into new context and environment, e.g. before a museum or in nature. By placing them there, she let the context interact with Multitouch. It is really interesting to see the change in natural light and the corresponding subtle music. It challenges our conventional idea towards associating music with a specific setting and a mood. Seeing how technology/algorithm interprets different environment and to find a music tone for them is very fresh and thoughtful.