TheBeatbug– evolution of a musical controller
Gil Weinberg · Digital Creativity · 2008
The paper describes the development of a novel handheld musical controller called Beatbug, which was designed to address three main goals – providing rich gestural experience for musicians in different skill levels, exploring novel group interactions in local musical networks and facilitating constructionist-learning activities through hands-on musical interaction. The paper portrays the different approaches that were taken to address these goals over a period of seven years, as well as the educational activities, compositions and performances that were conducted with the controller. The description follows three chronological development phases titled ‘Fireflies’, ‘Nerve’ and ‘iltur’ and addresses the improvements in hardware and software that were made in each phase based on observations and user feedback. The paper concludes with a comparative summary of the three development phases and a final note regarding the controller's future prospects.