In the Mean-Time (Greenwich)

I spent the first week of July at Goldsmiths College at NIME, checking out lots of new interfaces for musical expressions. As our host Atau Tanaka pointed out, it's just as easily new instruments for musical expression - the conference and its participants are well past the point of tinkering or researching techniques. They're making instruments, making noise, and doing things in the intriguing ways that emergent communities do when they grow.

It's a great time to be having the kinds of discussions about the relationship between instruments and performance that occur both in the context of the papers and presentations and performances and also (with considerable passion) in the pubs at the day's end.

Some highlights:

• Hiroshi Ishii from the Tangible Media Group at MIT, exhorted us to consider now insight is instantiated and what we might leave as our legacy.

• Laetitia Sonami gave us one last look at the glove interface.

• Imogen Heap and Kelly Snook prototyped their Mi.Mu glove in Max - it's always personally exciting to see some of the places where Max was, is, or will be.

Project by Christian Faubel