We’ve been skeptical about the value of the Microsoft Kinect as a music platform, because of latency and resolution limitations.

Here’s a Kinect music experiment, though, that takes advantage of the Kinect’s strengths, Tension – an interactive spacial sound system.

Here’s the project summary:

A brief video showing Tension. An interactive spatial sound installation for multiple users.

A person enters the space and a generative sound is assigned to that person. The sound pans around in the 6-channel speaker system following the user in the space.

Up to 5 users can use the installation at the same time. Each person modifies the other sounds based on the distance to the other users. The closer you are to other people the more the tension in the sound increases.

The Kinect has been overshadowed as a music platform by other recent new technologies. But the Kinect does offer some unique capabilities, and Tension makes interesting use of them.