Performance Review: Reactable at OFF Festival
I watched a performance/demonstration of the Reactable (a tangible musical instrument interface) at the OFF Festival in New York. The Reactable is becoming quite famous since Björk has taken one of the two existing devices on her recent "Volta" tour, and received lots of attention.
I was interested in seeing how performative the device really is, and whether it lends itself to truly musical creation. In the end, it turns out to be fairly limited, and even experienced musicians tend to use it for certain specialist roles. However, there was an interesting moment of drama at the end that suggested greater possibilities.
The Reactable itself is a table surface that can sense special objects placed on it, display connections between them, and then generate sound. The objects correspond to the typical components of a modular synthesizer: oscillators, filters, sequencers, etc.
Read past the jump for more details, and for the surprise at the end of the performance.
Initially, the presentation was somewhat hamstrung by power and equipment malfunctions. However, the presenters were able to get it working, and decided to perform with it. The results were not impressive: either because of the nature of the device, or the lack of musical school of the presenters, the sound was a bit of a mess. It was obvious that placing objects on the table, and manipulating them, did things. However, it was clear that any rhythmic content was entirely embedded in the sequencer blocks, and was not attributable to anything that the performers were doing. A modular synth generally has a keyboard attached to it, that allows carrying a melody or a rhythm - the Reactable seems to have no way of doing this.
A video of one Björk's performances followed, and this clarified things further. Björk's backup musicians very visibly used the Reactable (an overhead video of it was projected on a giant screen), but they used it as part of a larger ensemble, and for very specific effects. For example, they used it to build sonic textures, and occasionally would use it to build up dramatic crescendos or breakdowns. They were also much more given to lifting the tangible objects off the Reactable surface, causing momentary interruptions in the sound. While the Reactable was a star performer visually, it was very clearly in a supporting role as far as sound production.
However, the presentation at OFF concluded with a really dramatic act that illustrated (perhaps unwittingly) the project's potential in a truly striking way: the presenters pushed all of the modules onto the table surface, creating an explosion of sound. Then, as they removed the modules one-by-one, the melody and rhythm became gradually clearer and simpler, until they ended up with a simple rhythm, which they then halted by sweeping the tabletop clean.
This last act was truly surprising, and different from what is possible with any other kind of instrument. This "subtractive" mode of constructing music from chaos seems interesting and new.
I suspect that that Reactable is a very "deep" instrument, and that it will take a while for its real potential to be understood. It won't make non-musicians into musicians. Like the Moog synthesizer, its full development will be up to experienced performers, not its creators.