Gestural Interfaces

The 'Karate Jukebox' project will have users hopping about and using the extremes of their reach and flexibility. These are 'gestures' that are not often found in interfaces in either the artistic or public realms.


However one of the few public application of this, that has seen great success, is with the Nintendo Wii.


Image from Nintendo (http://www.nintendo.com/wii/what)
http://www.nintendo.com/wii/what

The Wii uses a series of positioning sensors to detect a range of movements from its controllers, such as: Tilt, shaking, swinging and so on...

As what is probably obvious, the range of software that could be developed on this platform is huge, and already the Wii has the standard shooting and fighting games, but also unusual golf, bowling and boxing games, as well as a piece of 'fitness' software. All these 'games' adapt the controller and its addons to make the user get more involved in the game in a way they never had before. Some of the different addons for the 'Wiimote' can be found on the Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Remote

The Wii and its interface for users relates to 'Karate Jukebox' because of how the Wii needs users to perform uncommon gestures for users and for this kind of gaming console. Karate Jukebox will be asking the users to do the same because it is not common for musical instruments to be played using the player's furthest stretches or generally moving anything more then their hands.


A more artistic and educational piece of work is a system called PHASE.



Images from ICHIM (http://www.ichim.org)

http://www.ichim.org/ichim05/jahia/Jahia/pid/649.html

http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/phase

The PHASE system generates sounds from how the user interacts with the virtual environment.

The system would change sounds depending on how the user was interacting with the haptic arm, so if a user used brisk and violent moves the sounds generated would also sound violent. A video of PHASE running can be found here.

PHASE is closely related to Karate Jukebox, in that it generates sound based on the user's interaction, and uses an unusual method of 'instrumenting' the sound using the haptic arm.


From the success of the public application of the Wii, there is a good chance to still believe that Karate Jukebox will be a good success at an exhibition because of how unusual the 'instrument' is.