MORE MULTITOUCH GOODIES FOR DJ'S

No matter how much a DJ may wax poetic about keeping it real with some older technology, the fact is that technology has long been an integral part of DJ culture, and new gadgets are always making their way into the DJ booth. Enter Gergwerks.

What started as a school project for one Gregory Kaufman for the Kansas City Art Institute, Gergwerk, as it is presently called, is turning out to be quite the concept.

Unlike the multi-touch controller we told you about last week, which interacts with already available software such as Traktor via a touch screen monitor, this one is a multi-touch table with a gesture based user interface built in. The DJ would simply need to bring his music and settings in a USB/hard drive, connect to the table, and go to work.

Though Gregory is not a DJ himself (he claims to have known a few in his life), he seems to be familiar enough with the craft to know some key things important to a DJ, such as the feedback one gets from the crowd. In that vein, Gergwerks replaces the knobs and sliders with gestures in hopes it will keep the DJ’s attention away from a screen and more on the crowd. Depending on the amount of fingers used and how you run them along the screen, a DJ can perform various tasks such as raise the volume, change the BPM, set cue points, blend, and more. All the while, the DJ will not have to take his eyes off the crowd any more than they would with current hardware. At least that’s the theory.

The gestures are pretty varied and one can easily imagine a misread causing for example, the volume to spike when the intention was to blend, or who knows what, but you can’t deny Gergwerks looks quite impressive in its current iteration.

Understandably, there will be those who shun the cool smooth surface of a touch screen and prefer the mechanical and tactile feeling of an actual turntable, but you can’t deny the audacity of this concept, actually, who are you kidding, you know you want one.

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CONCEPT

“Real DJ” nightmare or just plain goodness? What do you think?