Abstract
The Music Table is an augmented reality system for composing music by manipulating objects on a tabletop as a physicalized representation of the music being heard. Educational theory, and the apparent success of related applications in various learning contexts, seems to support this idea. In our experiments with children, all were able to make a musical pattern and made many changes to their pattern over a short period of time. We propose its suitability as an educational tool, particularly in short and intense interactive learning situations such as children's museums. We discuss some future developments of the idea.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Milgram, P., Drascic, D., Trodski, J., Grodski, J., Restogi, A., Zhai, S., Zhou, C.: Merging Real and Virtual Worlds. Imagina '95, Monte Carlo (1995)
Kaufmann, H., Schmalstieg, D.: Construct3D: a virtual reality application for mathematics and geometry education. Edul. Inform. Technol. 5(4), 263–276 (2000)
Billinghurst, M., Kato, H., Poupyrev, I.: The MagicBook: A Transitional AR Interface. Computers and Graphics, pp. 745–753. Elsevier New York (2001)
Woods, E., Billinghurst, M., Looser, J., Aldridge, G., Brown, D., Garrie, B., Nelles, C.: Augmenting the science centre and museum experience. In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Australasia and SouthEast Asia (Graphite 2004), Singapore, 15–18 June, pp. 230–236 ACM Press, New York, (2004)
Paradiso, J., et al.: Musical trinkets: new pieces to play. Conference Abstracts and Applications SIGGRAPH p. 90 (2000)
Patten, J.: Audiopad home page. Available via http://web.media.mit.edu/∼jpatten/newaudiopad.html
Iwai, T.: Composition on the table. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH 99 Electronic Art and Animation Catalog. Los Angeles, CA, ACM Press, New York (1999)
Newton-Dunn, H., Nakano, H., Gibson, J.: Block Jam: a tangible interface for interactive music. In: Proceeding of the NIME-03. Montreal, Canada (2003)
Kaltenbrunner, M., Geiger, G., Jorda, S.: Dynamic patches for live musical performance. In: Proceedings of the four Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 04), Hamamatsu, Japan, Availalbe via http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/reactable/
Poupyrev, I., Berry, R., Kurumisawa, J., Nakao, K., Billinghurst, M., Airola, C., Kato, H., Yonezawa, T., Bald-win, L.: Augmented groove: collaborative jamming in augmented reality. In: Proceedings of the SIGGRAPH'2000 Conference Abstracts and Applications, p. 77. ACM, New York (2000)
Wade, N.: Psychologists in Word and Image, p. 173. MIT Press, Cambridge, UK (1995)
Fröbel, F.: On the Education of Man (Die Menschenerziehung). Keilhau/Leipzig, Wienbrach (1826)
Montessori, M.: Childhood Education. Henry Regency Company, Illinois (1949)
Turkle, S., Papert, S.: Epistemological pluralism: Styles and voices within the computer culture. Signs: J. Women Cult. Soc. 16(1), 128–157 (1990)
Resnick, M.: Technologies for lifelong kindergarten. Edul. Technol. Res. Dev. 46(4) (1998)
Resnick, M., Martin, F., Berg, R., Borovoy, R., Colella, V., Kramer, K., Silverman, B.: Digital manipulatives: new toys to think with. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 281–287. ACM Press, Los Angeles (1998)
Papert, S.: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, p. 28. Basic Books, New York (1980)
Papert, S.: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, p. 125. Basic Books, New York (1980)
Papert, S.: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, p. 64. Basic Books, New York (1980)
Papert, S.: The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer, p. 63. Basic Books, New York (1993)
Kato, H., Billinghurst, M.: Marker tracking and HMD calibration for a video-based augmented reality conferencing system. In: Proceedings of the second International Workshop on Augmented Reality, pp. 85–94. San Francisco, CA (1999)
Pesce, M.: The Playful World—How Technology is Transforming our Imagination, pp. 186–187. Ballantine, NewYork (2000)
Puckette, M.: Pure data. In: Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, International Computer Music Association, San Francisco, pp. 269–272. Available via http://crca.ucsd.edu/∼msp/Publications/icmc96.ps, http://crca.ucsd.edu/∼msp/software.html (1996)
Poupyrev, I., Tan, D.S., Billinghurst, M., Kato, H., Regenbrecht, H., Tetsutani, N.: Developing a generic augmented reality interface. IEEE Comput. 35(3), 44–50 (2002)
Makino, M., Oshima, C., Berry, R., Hikawa, N., Nishimoto, K., Suzuki, M., Hagita, N.: A tangible composition system for prompting children to create music by reflectively manipulating notes. J. Jpn. Soc. Fuzzy Theory Intell. Inform. 17(2), 164–174 (2005)
Touch'n'Music homepage (Japanese), Available via http://www.mis.atr.jp/%7Emao/ac/wwwTM/index.htm
Mills, J.: Knowing the subject versus knowing the child: striking the right balance for children aged 7–11 years. In: Researches in Music Education #9 Dec. 1997 USQ Press, Brisbane (1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Rodney Berry was born in 1963 in Australia. He came to ATR in 1999. He is musician, composer and media artist, he gained a Master of fine arts from the UNSW college of Fine Arts in Sydney in 1999. He is currently completing a Ph.D. at UTS Creativity and Cognition Studios in Sydney while continuing to work at ATR.
Mao Makino was born in Osaka, graduated from School of Literature, Arts and Cultural Studies. She has been a Media Creator at ATR since 1999. Her 3D animations featured in the MIDAS interactive dance system shown at the exhibition “Dream Technologies for the 21st Century” in Tokyo in 2000.
Naoto Hikawa was born in Sendai. He graduated in “Visual concept planning” from Osaka University of the Arts. Since 1998, he has been a media creator with ATR. He was also involved in the production of ATR MIC lab's MIDAS dance system. He is also a VJ at nightclubs in Osaka.
Dr Masami Suzuki was born in Tokyo, Japan. He obtained Master degree from Keio University in 1980, since then has worked for KDD (currently KDDI) telecommunication company. His research area has been spread from natural language processing to creative human interfaces. Currently, he is a chief researcher at ATR Media Information Science Laboratories.
Dr. Naomi Inoue was born in Nara, Japan. He gained Master degree and Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 1984 and 1998, respectively. His research interests are natural language processing, speech recognition and graphics user interface for mobile phones. Currently, he is a group leader at ATR Media Information Science Laboratories.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Berry, R., Makino, M., Hikawa, N. et al. Tunes on the table. Multimedia Systems 11, 280–289 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-005-0008-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-005-0008-7