Gametrak as Drum Kit: The Maiabeatmachine

Maiabeatmachine
Erik used a clothes horse, a Gametrak and a little bit of software to create a virtual drum kit.

A Gametrak is a game controller which is primarily used for golfing simulations. It consists of a socket to which gloves are attached with small extricable plastic wires. When you wear the gloves, the Gametrak hardware measures the extension of the wires and the angles. That way, the position of the hands in space can be roughly calculated.

A clothes horse is a household article which is primarily used for drying clothes after washing.

At first Erik used the visual programing language vvvv for his drum kit. That is the same development kit which we used for our interactive music video installation. Unfortunately, vvvv gave him some trouble with audio latency, so he recoded it in another environment. The final system uses Pure Data (which is kinda similar to vvvv) and the music software Reason to create the actual sounds.

Here is a short video which demonstrates the drum kit in action:

Here’s Erik’s original article about his creation:
» Maiabeatmachine (German)
» Maiabeatmachine (Babelfished)