What If Hardware Could Change Shape?
Exploring the Future of Physical Controls for Music Technology
Musicians love physical controls. Knobs, faders and buttons offer immediate, tactile interaction that touchscreens struggle to replicate. But while our instruments have become increasingly powerful and flexible, their physical interfaces have remained largely unchanged.
What if hardware could be as flexible as the software behind it?
Shape-changing interfaces are an emerging area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, exploring physical surfaces and controls that can dynamically change their form. Imagine a synthesizer whose controls physically adapt to the current preset, or a MIDI controller that transforms its layout to suit different DAWs.
In this talk, we'll introduce the world of shape-changing interfaces, explore state-of-the-art examples from academic research and examine their potential applications for music products. We'll also look at the technologies behind these interfaces, the engineering challenges they present and what it might take to bring them from research labs into the next generation of musical instruments.
Daire O'Neill
Head of Embedded Software
Arturia
Daire O'Neill is the Head of Embedded Software at Arturia. He has spent a large part of his career working in music technology, having previously worked as an engineer for Moog Music and also for 5 years with Vestax in Tokyo. He holds a Masters in Informatics from the University of Grenoble-Alpes and enjoys working at the intersection of embedded systems and human-computer interaction.