The first image shows Pete Rice with a display from his Stretchables program displayed on a monitor, and the second image shows Pete with Josh Strickon and myself interacting with the Stretchables objects using the scanning laser interface
Because all modern electronic music controllers are digital input stations, the mechanics of electronic performance are merging with general research on human computer interfaces. In some cases, both idioms have already blended. Although the mouse is a very limited interface, much simpler than almost any musical instrument, it has become ubiquitous, and with an appropriate software mapping layer, it can produce an interesting musical performance. Examples can be found in Laurie Spiegel's well-known Macintosh program Music Mouse (where complicated musical sound is produced and orchestrated by clicking and dragging a simple mouse) and Pete Rice's Stretchables, a program recently written at the Media Lab that allows a user to perform music by drawing and dragging deformable, elastic objects, with dynamic graphical behavior strongly coupled to the sound produced. This video clip (7.5 MEG MPEG) shows Pete performing music (and interacting with the accompanying graphics) live with his Stretchables program.