This Reactable demo video sure looks pretty – but the functionality shown should be familiar to longtime Synthtopia readers. 

I have to ask the same thing I asked about using the iPhone as a Lemur – is this just eye candy?

Reactable is a collaborative electronic musical instrument with a tangible interface based on a table, and inspired by modular synthesizers of the sixties. It was developed by the Music Technology Group at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

Multiple simultaneous users share total control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on the surface of a bright circular table. Manipulating these objects, representatives of the classical components of a modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sound typologies, generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer. There are only 5 reacTable, one of which was sold to Icelandic singer Bjork.