Remembering Seasons Through Colour

Image by Anton Marrast, linking to "Remembering Seasons Through Colour" by Donna Jodhan.

Level Playing Field (London, July 2012)

Level Playing Field is a two day event set up to showcase accessible music performance and technology. It's part of the City of London Festival's Golden Jubilee year, and plans to bring musicians of all abilities together. It runs on the 6th and 7th of July 2012.

Skoogmusic will be there with their latest developments (see the video below) as will Drake Music. Musician Clarence Adoo will be performing using mouth controlled instruments (see his Headspace page). There's mention of Eye-sound and Share Music Sweden. Basically a whole world of accessible music, performance and technology packed into two days.

Click the main picture above to see the time-table for the Level Playing Field event, and for booking details. It looks plenty exciting.

Trabasack Media Mount

When it arrived last week, I didn't know quite what to make of Trabasack's black velcro snake like Media Mount accessory thing. It costs £19.95 plus p&p and attaches to a Trabasack tray and itself as needed. So what's it good for?

Read more at the SpecialEffect Accessible GameBase, and see other mouting solutions at the Accessible Gaming Shop.

MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone

It looks like our 2010 Christmas wish (Number 9 at SpecialEffect) is coming true at last! A truly simple D.I.Y. build your own accessible game controller kit. What massive fun, and such huge potential. 

Here's some MaKey MaKey ideas...Beach ball to play one-switch games, draw your own controls to play Pac-Man (or anything else), Banana piano keyboard, alphabetti-spaghetti keyboard, water bucket Dance Dance Revolution and Play-doh joypads.

What particularly excites me, beyond how this could bring down the cost of accessible controls, is that it acts as a keyboard/mouse. This has me hoping that it will be possible to plug into game consoles too via an Ultimarc iPac interface. And that could change access for some forever in a positive way.

Meanwhile, I may dig out my original 1996 PSone switch interface which used crocodile clips to see if it will work in a similar way whilst waiting impatiently for MaKey MaKey to go into production. Many thanks to Tam Toucan for the link.

iPad (2012) vs. RCA Studio II (1981) head control

Can you spot the difference between the pictures above? Apart from a gap of 30+ years, there's not much is there? That's Apple iPad access for people who want to use head control.

This isn't to knock RJ Cooper's laudable efforts to make the iPad more accessible, but a call to Apple to do something about it. For such a popular device, they seem to have forgotten a significant range of disabled people. 

For a company that prides itself on design excellence, this severe downside of the iOS platform is a poor show. If you feel the same, let Apple know.

Anti-Amazon

The major downside of buying from Amazon in the UK. I'm feeling guilty...

Skoog: Breath Control and Single Sided Play

From the Skoogmusic YouTube Channel: "Keith from skoogmusic sends Clarence Adoo a video message updating him on our prototype breath controller for the skoogmusic software, which allows control of our instrument models. In particular, it allows dynamic, intuitive control over the timbre of our wind instruments."

Really exciting progress at Skoogmusic, and especially so for one-sided playthrough of pre-arranged "skores". This means you can dictate the tempo and expression of a tune using a single pressure point. Can't wait to try this out.