Sergi Jordà

Sergi Jordà (born November 15, 1961) is a Catalan innovator, installation artist, digital musician and Associate Professor at the Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He is best known for directing the team that invented the Reactable. He is also a trained Physicist.

Life and career

Sergi Jordà was born in Madrid, where his father was directing the film ''El Día de los Muertos'' (1961). His father was the award-winning Catalan film director and writer Joaquín Jordà.

Sergi Jordà graduated with a BSc in Fundamental Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona in 1987 while also completing music studies. He was an early adopter of computer programming devoted to live computer music, and one of the pioneers of this field in Spain. During the 1990s he conducted doctorate studies in Artificial Intelligence with the UNED and collaborated with renowned Catalan artists Marcel.lí Antúnez Roca or La Fura dels Baus on award-winning interactive installations (''Joan the Meat Man'' and ''Epizoo'', 1996), multimedia performances (''Afasia'', 2002), and applications for collaborative music creation over the Internet (''FMOL'', 1999–2002).

In 1999 he joined Dr Xavier Serra who was establishing the Music Technology Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Sergi Jordà's doctorate dissertation ''Digital Lutherie'' (Jordà, 2005) at UPF-MTG set the foundations for new kinds of musical computers for performance and improvisation, based on visual feedback and spatial multiplexion. Between 2003 and 2006, together with Günter Geiger, Martin Kaltenbrunner and Marcos Alonso, Sergi Jordà developed the Reactable: an electronic music instrument combining a tangible tabletop interface with principles derived from modular synthesizers such as those developed by Bob Moog in the early 1960s.

The Reactable was popularised by Björk, who incorporated it into her 2007 Volta Tour. It has since been performed extensively and is on display in numerous science and art centres worldwide, including the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Discovery World in Milwaukee, Discovery Place in Charlotte, Montréal Science Centre, Science Centre Singapore, Museo Papalote del Niño in Mexico, Santralistanbul in Turkey, the ZKM in Germany or the INTECH centre in the UK. In October 2010 ''Reactable mobile'' launched for the iPhone and the iPad and within 2 weeks became top music application download in 20 countries.

Awards

Bourges
1998

Ciutat de Barcelona
1999 and 2008


2000


Beijing 2001

Arco Electrónico
1999 and 2001

Europrix
2002
* Hot Instrument of the Year
Rolling Stone Magazine
2007 (for Reactable)

MIDEM Hottest Music Biz Start-Up Award
2008 (for Reactable Systems)
* Yellow Pencil
Product Design/Public Space, D&AD Design Awards
London, 2008 (for Reactable)
* Yellow pencil
Digital Installations, D&AD Design Awards
London, 2008 (for Reactable)
* Golden Nica
Prix Ars Electronica
2008 (for Reactable)

Innova
Barcelona, 2008 (for Reactable Systems)

Selected publications

* Jordà, S. (1991)
A Real-Time MIDI Composer and Interactive Improviser by Means of Feedback Systems
In Proceedings of the 1991 International Computer Music Conference. San Francisco, CA: International Computer Music Association, 463-466.
* Jordà, S. (1996)
EPIZOO: Cruelty and Gratuitousness in Real Virtuality
In Proceedings of 5CYBERCONF, 5th International Conference on Cyberspace, Madrid, Spain.
* Jordà, S. (1999)
Faust Music On Line (FMOL): An approach to Real-time Collective Composition on the Internet
Leonardo Music Journal, 9, 5-12.
* Jordà, S. & Wüst, O. (2001)
FMOL: A System for Collaborative Music Composition Over the Web
In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, 537-542.
* Jordà, S. (2001)
New Musical Interfaces and New Music-making Paradigms
Proceedings of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME 2001.
* Jordà, S. (2002a)
Afasia: the Ultimate Homeric One-man-multimedia-band
In Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-02), Dublin, 132-137.
* Jordà, S. (2002b)
FMOL: Toward User-Friendly, Sophisticated New Musical Instruments
Computer Music Journal, 26(3), 23-39.
* Jordà, S. (2002c)
Improvising with Computers: A personal Survey (1989-2001)
Journal of New Music Research, 31(1), 1-10.
* Jordà, S. (2003a)
Sonigraphical Instruments From FMOL to the reacTable*

* Jordà, S. (2003b)
Interactive music systems for everyone exploring visual feedback as a way for creating more intuitive, efficient and learnable instruments
Proceedings of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME 2003."
* Jordà, S. (2004a)
Digital Instruments and Players Part I - Efficiency and Apprenticeship
Proceedings of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME 2004."
* Jordà, S. (2004b)
Digital Instruments and Players Part II - Diversity, Freedom and Control
International Computer Music Conference."
* Jordà, S. (2005a)
Multi-user Instruments Models, Examples and Promises
Proceedings of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME 2005."
* Jordà, S. (2005b)
Instruments and Players: Some thoughts on digital lutherie
Journal of New Music Research, 33(3), 1-21.
* Jordà, S., Kaltenbrunner, M., Geiger, G. & Bencina, R. (2005c
The reacTable*
Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICM05).
* Bencina, R., Kaltenbrunner, M. & Jordà , S. (2005d
Improved Topological Fiducial Tracking in the reacTIVision System
Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Projector-Camera Systems.
* Jordà, S. & Alonso, M. (2006a)
Mary had a little scoreTable* or the reacTable* goes melodic
In Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on New interfaces For Musical Expression (Paris, France, June 4–08, 2006). New Interfaces For Musical Expression. IRCAM — Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, 208-211.
* Jordà, S., Kaltenbrunner, M., Geiger, G. and Alonso, M. (2006b)
The reacTable: a tangible tabletop musical instrument and collaborative workbench
ACM SIGGRAPH.
* Jordà, S., Geiger, G., Alonso, M. & Kaltenbrunner, M. (2007)
The reacTable: exploring the synergy between live music performance and tabletop tangible interfaces
TEI '07: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction, 139-146.19
* Jordà, S. (2008a)
On stage: the reactable and other musical tangibles go real
Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. 1, Nos. 3/4, pp. 268–287.
* Gallardo, D., Julia, C.F. & Jordà, S. (2008b)
TurTan: A tangible programming language for creative exploration
In 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human Computer Systems, 2008. TABLETOP 2008, pages 89–92.
* Julià, C. F. & Jordà, S. (2009)
Songexplorer: a tabletop application for exploring large collections of songs
Proceedings of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR’09), Kobe, Japan.
* Jordà, S., Julià, C.F. & Gallardo, D. (2010a)
Interactive Surfaces an Tangibles, Crossroads
The ACM Magazine for Students, Vol 16(4), 21-28.
* Jordà, S., Hunter, S., Pla, P., Gallardo, D., Leithinger, D., Kaufman, H., Julià, C.F. & Kaltenbrunner, M. (2010b)
Development strategies for tangible interaction on horizontal surfaces
Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference, TEI’10.
* Gallardo, D. & Jordà, S. (2010c)
Tangible jukebox: back to palpable music
In Proceedings of the Fourth international Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied interaction (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, January 24–27, 2010). TEI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 199-202.

External links

Music Technology Group, UPF

Reactable



Reactable performances and workshops



Soundtoys interview with Sergi Jordà

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Living people
Academic staff of Pompeu Fabra University
1961 births