Siftables – Beat Rocking Blocks

The miniaturisation of electronics is continuing apace, and it seems that each button we press has more computing power than an entire PC from a few years ago. David Merill has a vision of interactive computing where the building blocks of work and play come together…

Introducing Siftables

Siftables are small block-shaped computers that interact with one another in a physical way, and can be modified/controlled in a very physical way, much as children learn to play with toy blocks.

“Each Siftable has a color OLED screen, four infrared communication modules—one in each direction in the horizontal plane—a 3-axis accelerometer, and a Bluetooth radio… They can talk to each other side-to-side, or to a computer or other Bluetooth-enabled device over the Bluetooth radio. The cases were designed and made by Amit Zoran (MIT Media Lab) and Noah Murphy-Reinhertz (polysaturated.com).”

In the video above, Merrill demonstrates some uses for siftables, including using them as a controller system for music production. This is quite similar to the idea of Audio Cubes – there’s a video of Audio Cubes controlling Ableton Live here.

However, the siftables are clearly a more powerful creation with more potential for expansion, so it will be interesting to see what new sort of performance develops from this new music technology…