Be Your Own Björk: Taking the Latest in Music Tech Research Beyond the Lab

Making music with your body as you dance could be just one highlight of your next house party. A consortium of EU-based researchers have partnered with six startups to help bring music-making wearables that are usually confined to the lab to the greater public.

Atau Tanaka, a professor of media computing at Goldsmiths University in London, turns the human body into a music-making medium. He uses biosensor technology to capture muscle data and translate it into electronic music.

Tanaka attaches an electromyogram system (EMG) to a user's arm, which picks up electrical signals from their muscle movements. These signals are digitised and sonified on a computer, allowing the user to produce electronic sounds as he or she moves. The basic idea is that anyone can create a melody just by flexing their muscles.

"The electrodes are attached to the surface of my arm, so that when I grasp my hand into a fist, or when I move my fingers or flex my wrist, I can get a very direct and organic signal, without having to manipulate an object such as a mouse," Tanaka told me. The device works a bit like pop singer Imogen Heap's glove, which makes electronic music as the wearer moves their hand.

Tanaka's already got the tech in his lab, but to make sure it reaches the masses at a cheaper price, he's taking part in the three-year EU funded project Rapid-Mix. The project, which launched in February, partners three European research institutes with four industry partners. It aims to make sure that some of the more futuristic concepts worked on in labs get through to companies so they can produce some user-friendly music tech.

The researchers are primarily focusing on music technology and "embodied interaction", which Tanaka explained is the creation of interfaces that allow people to interact with digital systems using their whole bodies. Common commercial examples include devices such as the Nintendo Wii, which lets people play a game by holding a game controller, and Microsoft Kinect's infrared and depth sensitive cameras, which capture data from your moving body.

As well as Tanaka's biosensing tech, current research involved in Rapid-Mix includes Reactable, a music app and tabletop musical instrument made by Sergi Jordà from the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and used by the likes of Icelandic musician Bjork. The tabletop allows users to move around objects on a touch responsive screen, and generate music as they do so.

According to Tanaka, it's important to make sure this kind of tech both reaches and satisfies the public's expectations. "We've got some cool tech in our labs, but rather than just putting it out there, we want to shape the technology by understanding the users and the companies that might want to use it," he said.

Tanaka explained that sometimes academic science can create cool tech without understanding how it could be applied in the real world. On the other hand, tech companies in the commercial sphere are often driven by strict product development cycles. As well as collaborating with industry partners, the researchers are reaching out to the public directly with events such as a workshop at Barcelona's Music Hack Day next month.

In the long run, Tanaka sees applications for tech developed by Rapid-Mix in everything from gaming and computing to rehabilitation. For example, some students in his own lab are working on developing musical multimedia rehabilitation systems for stroke patients. Existing stroke therapies require patients to engage in repetitive physiotherapy exercises; Tanaka suggested that patients could gain a more positive experience from therapy if they could be given interactive systems that generate sound or interesting graphics.

Ultimately, Rapid-Mix is all about developing musical tech and wearables that put the user first. "We want the human and not the machine to be at the centre," he said. "So our vision with embodied interaction is that we're putting the human body at the centre of an interactive system—we want our technologies to be both useful to humans and human-centered."