SIFTABLES - A new way for the sound design experience

About the new sound design technlogy:

Siftables Music Sequencer from Jeevan Kalanithi on Vimeo.

Imagine overturning a container of nuts and bolts, then looking through the resulting pile for a particular item. Or spreading photographs out on a tabletop and then beginning to sort them into piles. During these activities we interact with large numbers of small objects at the same time, and they utilize all of our fingers and both hands together. We humans are skilled at using our hands in these ways, and can effortlessly sift and sort - focusing on our higher level goals rather than the items themselves.

Siftables aims to enable people to interact with information and media in physical, natural ways that approach interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives. As an interaction platform, Siftables applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces. Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. Siftables can be used to implement any number of gestural interaction languages and HCI applications.

The Siftables interaction platform is a collaboration with Jeevan Kalanithi, of Taco Lab.

The cats and kittens at the MIT Media Lab are always on some next-level type of wackiness, and the Siftables project doesn't break from that trend. The concept seems simple enough: a collection of small, self-contained input / display devices wirelessly link together to form an independent mini-network, or a control system for a PC. The cubes feature OLED screens, a 3-axis accelerometer, Bluetooth, flash memory, and a haptic actuation driver, and feature additional ports for attaching other devices. The aim is to create a more natural system for handling and displaying data, though we won't be surprised if this is somehow incorporated into an even more realistic version of Call of Duty. Check out the video after the break to see the little guys in action.

The new computing platform is extremely interactive and allows users to manipulate data in a more natural manner. Each "Siftables" unit is in fact a miniature computer that is powered by a 20 MHz AVR processor with ultra-low power requirements.

The computer uses a tiny OLED panel to interact with the human, and an infrared sensor that allows it to communicate with other "Siftables" computers. Each unit also includes Bluetooth radio, rechargeable Li-Polymer batteries, tactile/haptic actuation driver circuits, a 3-axis accelerometer, on-board flash memory, and tiny expansion slots for additional sensors.