By Janet Raloff
From Munich, at the Euroscience Open Forum meeting
Alain Crevoisier had reckoned that it would be easy to turn almost any hard surface into a keyboard, drum head, or other input for a computer-controlled musical instrument. Just place a few sensors somewhere under a tabletop to read sound waves traveling through it. Then, assign spots on the table to correspond with various digital sounds stored in the computer. Begin tapping, and the computer would triangulate the positions of those taps to figure out what sounds to play.