The Kinect game controller has triggered an explosion of hacking, including some interesting Kinect music hacks.

This Kinect theremin, aka Therenect, was developed by Martin Kaltenbrunner, who has previously helped pioneer tangible music interfaces.

Here’s what he has to say about the Kinect theremin:

The Therenect is a virtual Theremin for the Kinect controller. It defines two virtual antenna points, which allow controlling the pitch and volume of a simple oscillator. The distance to these points can be controlled by freely moving the hand in three dimensions or by reshaping the hand, which allows gestures that are quite similar to playing an actual Theremin.

This musical instrument has been developed by Martin Kaltenbrunner at the Interface Culture Lab at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria. The software has been developed using the Open Frameworks and OpenKinect libraries.