I made a simple project about music and hand movements. Project report, source code and execution details are in the project repository. As a result I will just talk a little bit about my personal experience with the project in this short post. But first here is the demo video of it:

I had the chance to play with a Reactable at Copernicus Science Center while visiting Warsaw. Great place by the way. If you have any interest in popular science and end up in Warsaw it is worth visiting.

At the same time I had to come up with a project for my Cognitive Systems course. The only constraint about the project was having some relation to human cognition. After having some experience with a really fun musical device like the Reactable, I wanted to try something similar. I also took this as an opportunity to use my music theory knowledge from a course I took back in Turkey. As a result I wanted to do something with a Leap Motion device and my professor was kind enough to provide me one for the semester.

First steps of the project was really frustrating because I could not get it to work on Windows. Then I tried setting it up in a Linux virtual machine. After a lot of effort the device was working but because of the USB bandwith limitations of the virtual machine it was not working properly. Then I went and downloaded Ubuntu. After that I realized I already had an Ubuntu OS in my computer for a project I was part of last year. Then I spent a few more hours to compile and build everything from scratch again. Finally it worked.

I did a several prototypes for things I did not include in the final project. I also tried doing something using granular synthesis but that proved to be complicated for a new Pure Data user like me. I can say I learned a lot and it felt good to do something coherent after a long period of time without any proper programming projects.

I am also aware that I am not using this blog properly. But hopefully in the next months I will have more time and stuff to write about here. See you on the next post!