I already thought one of their first controllers was a great step in the right direction: beautiful interfaces which leave a lot of options open and actuall thrive on people who find new ways of working with them.
But as I'm in the market for a new midi controller I've noticed that you just don't find that many people who use these design prototypes, so you don't really get a lot of examples in terms of button mapping and stuff like that. And that's kind of confusing if you're not a professional and just occasionally make use of a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation): you've already got so much to think about that experimenting and coming up with a totally new set-up from scratch seems a really intimidating prospect. I'm getting dizzy just thinking of the possibilities with their new tilt-sensitive controller:
monome 64 tilt from stretta on Vimeo.
But then again, it's not always about music is it? You can see new interfaces emerging from everywhere, especially for everyday tasks, and that can make a big difference: everyone with an iPhone will tell you how intuitive it is to magnify stuff, browse through contacts or photos,... And just see how people who never touched a joypad before get along with Nintendo's Wii.
Come to think of it, that's probably how most innovations come to life: develop for a specific audience and then find out how to apply them in an everyday context. And motion based controllers have always featured heavily in staged music...
Comments