What Is It?
The Space Palette is a musical and graphical instrument that lets you play music and paint visuals simultaneously by waving your hands in the holes of a wood frame. No pre-recorded media, sequences, or loops are used - everything is generated in realtime by your hands. The wood frame is a reference for the player, while the Microsoft Kinect is used to detect the position of whatever hands (or objects) appear in the holes of the frame. The depth of your hands matters as much as their left/right/up/down position - it's like having multiple three-dimensional mouse pads in mid-air. Any number of hands can be used. Musically, the large holes are like piano keyboards (left-to-right) on which you play individual notes, and hand depth controls things like vibrato and filters. Visually, the large holes allow you to paint with graphical shapes (heavily processed by visual effects), and hand depth controls their size. The 12 small holes in the corners of the Space Palette are used to select different sets of sounds and graphics. Each of the 4 large holes plays a different sound and paints a different graphic, simultaneously.The video above shows it at Burning Man 2012, and the picture shows it in a performance at STEIM in Amsterdam. Another recent performance can be found in this open house performance. The oval version first appeared at the Sea of Dreams 2012 New Year's Eve party in San Francisco, and has been enjoyed at a number of events this year. This video of people playing it at Symbiosis is particularly interesting because of the comments that were captured - "crossing that barrier" is such a nice phrase. The older 2011 version of the Space Palette can be seen in this video of people playing with it at Burning Man 2011 and Decompression 2011. Search YouTube for "Space Palette" to find other videos.
Mailing List
If you want to be keep current with Space Palette developments (upcoming showings, software availability, and the possibility of Palettes for sale), sign up for the Space Palette mailing list here.
Details
Technical details about the latest version can be found in these slides from a talk about the Space Palette. My code for visuals and music is now implemented as a FreeFrame 1.5 (OpenGL-based) plugin running inside of Resolume (which I highly recommend). Source code and a Windows executable for the core bit of software (that talks to the Microsoft Kinect, recognizes your hands within an arbitrary flat surface with holes, and sends out TUIO/OSC messages that can drive whatever you want to control) is available here. That version is very old, though - if you're interested in a more recent version of that software, send email to me@timthompson.comGallery
These pictures show the evolution of the Space Palette, beginning with the initial prototypes built with picture frames.
Media Coverage
One of the first was from Mark Mosher's ModulateThis blog. Here's another interview and article about the first version. Mark recently published an update on the most recent version of the Space Palette At Maker Faire 2013, the Space Palette was highlighted in a blog post, and won an Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon.Credits
Many thanks to Fred Lakin for suggestions and sketches that led to the current oval frame design, and many enjoyable discussions about user interfaces and performing visuals. His book Live Graphics Nightly is inspiring and recommended. Thanks to Vivian Wenli Lin for the video recording of my STEIM performance.Contact
My personal site describing other work is timthompson.com. You can send email to me@timthompson.com"Space Palette" is a trademark of Nosuch Media.