Martin Kaltenbrunner

• Doctor of Engineering
• Professor at University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz

Since its introduction in 2005, the TUIO protocol has been widely employed within a multitude of usage contexts in tangible and multi-touch interaction. While its simple and versatile design still covers the core functionality of interactive tabletop systems, the conceptual and technical developments of the past decade also led to a variety of ad-h...

This article provides an introductory overview to first-time users of the reacTIVision framework - an open-source cross-platform computer-vision framework primarily designed for the construction of table-based tangible user interfaces. The central component of the framework is a standalone application for fast and robust tracking of fiducial marker...

In this article we present Tuio, a simple yet versatile protocol designed specifically to meet the requirements of table-top tangible user interfaces. Inspired by the idea of interconnecting various existing table interfaces such as the reacTable*, being developed in Barcelona and the tDesk from Bielefeld, this protocol defines common properties of...

This article reflects the current state of the reacTable* project, an electronic music instrument with a tangible table-based interface, which is currently under development at the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. In this paper we are focussing on the issue of Dynamic Patching, which is a particular and unique aspect of the so...

The reacTable* is a novel multi-user electro-acoustic musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. In this paper we will focus on the various collaborative as- pects of this new instrument as well as on some of the re- lated technical details such as the networking infrastruc- ture. The instrument can be played both in local and remo...

Pavel Husa ⋆1[0000−0002−7640−586X] , Vojtech Leischner ⋆1[0000−0001−8399−3543] , Martin Kaltenbrunner 2[0000−0001−9304−8991] , and Enrique Tomás 2[0000−0003−1800−8337] Abstract. We present a prototype of a tangible tabletop controller for spatial audio based on physical pendulums. The controller, designed for musicians and sound designers, features...

One particular approach in the context of Animal Computer Interaction (ACI) is auditory enrichment for captive wild animals. Here we describe our research and the methodology used to design musical instruments and interfaces aimed at providing auditory enrichment for grey parrots living in captivity. The paper is divided into three main phases: a p...

Sound Shifting is an artistic research project that focuses on the physical representation of sound - this means the visualization and materialization of invisible phenomena that significantly shape our perception. We present a system that allows the transformation from sound into form in real-time by using a newly developed machine, the Audio Foam...

The use of musical instruments and interfaces that involve animals in the interaction process is an emerging, yet not widespread practice. The projects that have been implemented in this unusual field are raising questions concerning ethical principles, animal-centered design processes, and the possible benefits and risks for the animals involved....

This article discusses the design and implementation of the Tquencer, a tangible musical sequencer device. The tangible interaction paradigm for musical sequencers has been explored previously trough the arrangement of simple tangible tokens within time-based physical constraints. While this initial approach allows for the creation of basic rhythmi...

This cumulative dissertation discusses - by the example of four subsequent publications - the various layers of a tangible interaction framework, which has been developed in conjunction with an electronic musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Based on the experiences that have been collected during the design and implementatio...

This report documents a series of experiments towards the development of acoustically enriched environments through sonic interfaces and musical instruments for grey parrots living in captivity. These investigations intend to lead to a better understanding of how grey parrots perceive, respond to, and generate sound and music through the usage of t...

Almost every visitor brings their own mobile device (e.g., smartphone or tablet) to the museum. Although, many museums include interactive exhibits (e.g., multi-touch tables), the visitors’ own devices are rarely used as part of a device ecology. Currently, there is no suitable infrastructure to seamlessly link different devices in museums. Our app...

Optical sensing technologies are among the most versatile hardware solutions for interactive surfaces, as they are capable of recognizing touch as well as (limited) hover state in addition to printed tokens. One widely used system is the Pixelsense/SUR40, currently one of very few devices which provides these capabilities in the form factor of a re...

Although interactive surfaces have been a constant topic of research during the last decades, there is still little agreement on shared infrastructures for their conception and development. While the mainstream industry has already partially integrated basic multi-touch functionality in most mobile and some desktop platforms, any further attempts o...

TUIO is an open framework that defines a common protocol and API for tangible- and multitouch-surfaces. The protocol is based on Open Sound Control and allows the platform-independent encoding and transmission of an abstract description of interactive surfaces, including touch events and tangible object states. While the original TUIO specification...

Tangible interactions on horizontal surfaces are increasingly relevant for collaborative applications, embodied interaction, musical performance, and interaction with 3D information. This unique studio opportunity introduces approaches to developing applications on four related platforms: the Reactable: a musical tabletop, and its companion fiducia...

This article presents the recent updates and an evaluation of reacTIVision, a computer vision toolkit for fiducial marker tracking and multi-touch interaction. It also discusses the current and future development of the TUIO protocol and framework, which has been primarily designed as an abstraction layer for the description and transmission of poi...

In recent years we have seen a proliferation of musical tables. Believing that this is not just the result of a tabletop trend, in this paper we first discuss several of the reasons for which live music performance and HCI in general, and musical instruments and tabletop interfaces in particular, can lead to a fertile two-way cross-pollination that...

Dreams in High Fidelity is a painting that evolves. It was designed and rendered with the Electric Sheep screen-saver, a cyborg mind composed of 30,000 computers and people mediated by a genetic algorithm. Physically it consists of a small computer ...

This paper describes reacTIVision: a camera based two dimensional fiducial (marker) tracking system developed for the reacTable*, a table based tangible musical instrument. Key features of reacTIVision include: (1) the ability to track a large number of fiducials with faster than real-time performance and (2) fiducial size may be varied depending o...

This paper describes the reacTable*, a novel multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface, which is being developed at the MTG in Barcelona. We first introduce the reacTable* project and some of the concepts behind its design and we then dis-cuss interaction and performance scenarios.

In an interactive system designed to produce music, the sound synthesis engine and the user interface layer are fully integrated, but usually designed in parallel and in a modular way. Decoupling the interface layer from the synthesis engine, not only allows the use of best suited technologies and programming languages for each purpose, but also en...

In this paper we describe object design considerations for the reacTable* project, a novel tangible musical instrument, developed at the Audiovisual Institute at the Universiat Pompeu Fabra. The work presented in this paper is the result of a collaboration with the Palpable Machines Group at Media Lab Europe, which focussed on haptic design aspects...

In this paper we describe object design considerations for the reacTable* project, a novel tangible musical instrument, developed at the Audiovisual Institute at the Universiat Pompeu Fabra. The work presented in this paper is the result of a collaboration with the Palpable Machines Group at Media Lab Europe, which focussed on haptic design aspects...

In this article, a heuristic version of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) named -55 is used for audio retrieval and browsing. 318 , like MDS, maps objects into an Euclidean space, such that similarities are preserved. In addition of being more efficient than MDS it allows query-by-example type of query, which makes it suitable for a content-based retr...

This paper proposes that virtual environments that aim to support mutual presence for distributed work groups should allow for multiple partial presence. The introduction of teleworking, and the massive uptake of mobile phones have addressed a need for people to be virtually present (if not physically present) from many spatial locations. Conventio...

This paper introduces a draft framework for a shared auditory user interface (AUI) environment. Y-Windows, similar to the approach of the X-Windows GUI framework [1] in the Unix world, aims to provide common functionality for the easier development and design of AUIs. This initial publication of these ideas, originally roughly developed within a di...

In this paper we describe "The Public Sound Objects" project and its context. This project, which is currently under development, approaches Internet collaborative music performance, going beyond most common paradigms where the network is mainly used as a channel to provide a connection between performative spaces. The system will provide an on-lin...

0. Abstract This paper describes Marvin, an awareness support agent written in Java. The system provides audio cues, text-to-voice and voice recognition, and currently operates as a bot in ActiveWorlds, an Internet-based, shared 3D virtual environment. The ActiveWorlds space was designed to facilitate chance encounters between members of distribute...

The reacTIVision system is software for tracking specially designed fiducials (markers) in a real-time video stream. ReacTIVision was designed to enable expressive gestural control of musical sound, and can track many markers at a high frame rate. The development of reacTIVision involved not only computer vision algorithms, but also the design of a...

Dieser Aufsatz behandelt das Thema Gegenständliche Musikalische Interaktion und damit ein relativ neuartiges Genre elektronischer Musikinstrumente, das sich im Laufe des letzten Jahrzehnts entwickelt hat. Mit der Übernahme aktueller Paradigmen aus dem Bereich der Mensch-Maschine Interaktion versucht diese neue Art von elektronischen Instrumenten di...