RE: MIDIMAN Surface One

["Gary Lehmann" <healthquestrecruiter@earthlink.net>]

Alex Stahl wrote:
I've had a Tactex MTC for a couple years, and agree that it is a 
remarkable technology. <snip>
The "polyphonic" touch sensitivity inherent in the Smart Fabric 
technology is exciting, but it raises some difficult software 
challenges as well. You can track two fingertips as separate 
pointers, but what if the paths cross? It gets kind of messy. I can 
imagine that Midiman chose to impose a template over the surface to 
avoid some of these issues at first.
On the other hand, the raw data from the fabric is almost like a 
video image of the pressure across the entire surface. You get 
pressure values from a grid of a hundred or so "taxels" upwards of 50 
times a second. So you can sense some very subtle shifts of a palm or 
maybe a foot resting on the surface. I haven't explored this approach 
enough yet but feel like it might lead to a radically new kind of 
controller, particularly appropriate for controlling a large number 
of effects, mixing or synthesis parameters simultaneously.

**one word:  cybersuit!
Gary