Bert Schiettecatte (born January 1, 1979) is a Belgian entrepreneur who created the

Audiocubes The AudioCubes are a collection of wireless intelligent light emitting objects, capable of detecting each other's location and orientation, and user gestures, and were created by Bert Schiettecatte. They are an electronic musical instrument use ...

Biography

Bert Schiettecatte was born in

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest i ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

. He has an electronic music production background . He holds an MSc in computer science from the

University of Brussels University of Brussels may refer to several institutions in Brussels, Belgium: Current institutions * Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a French-speaking university established as a separate entity in 1970 *Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), a D ...

(VUB) and an MA/MST of Arts in Music, Science and Technology from

CCRMA Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

, a department at Stanford University (

BAEF The Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF) is an educational charity. It supports the exchange of university students, scientists and scholars between the United States and Belgium. The foundation fosters the higher education of deserving ...

grant). While studying at

, Bert Schiettecatte developed a strong interest in hardware engineering, electronics, and human-computer interaction. Together with Eto Otitigbe and Luigi Castelli, Bert Schiettecatte created a customized dance pad and a laser harp (such as the one of

Jean-Michel Jarre Jean-Michel André Jarre (; born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and new-age genres, and is known for organising outdoor spectacles featuring his music, accompani ...

), at

. After taking several research positions, Bert founded his company Percussa in 2004 to develop

tangible user interface A tangible user interface (TUI) is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. The initial name was Graspable User Interface, which is no longer used. The purpose of TUI development i ...

technology for music making. Percussa's first product,

, was launched in January 2007.

Awards

*2009: he received the Qwartz Max Mathews award for the invention of the

*2010: he was invited to give a talk at TEDx Mediterranean in Cannes.

Publications

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schiettecatte, Bert 1979 births Living people Electronics engineers Stanford University alumni Audio engineering