PureJoy Project Makes Everyone Musical

You know I've got nothing but love for the MIT Media Lab, especially when their projects involve music or Lego. No building blocks here, but I met David Merrill, a Ph.D. candidate who has taken some old Microsoft SideWinder controllers and a platform of his design called AudioPint to create PureJoy -- an easy-to-learn, easy-to-use interface for taking samples (often someone's voice) and manipulating them in real time, layering them over each other. In a quick demonstration, Merrill created a mini-opus using nothing but his voice and a few deft hand twists. It's like human beatboxing, reloaded.

So, why was Merrill here? It turns out that the AudioPint setup uses Via processors, and Via was showcasing a variety of companies and technologies that use thei chips. While the UMPCs were nice, it's more offbeat projects like these that capture my imagination. Hats off to the company for doing something different.

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