Augmenting a rugged standard DJ turntable with a tangible interface for music browsing and playback manipulation

TIMBAP is a new solution for the digital disc jockey (DJ) that provides a rugged tangible interface for music browsing and playback manipulation. Like many others it is based on an acoustic timecode signal recorded to vinyl records. In contrast to existing digital solutions however, it completely releases the DJ from mouse, keyboard and monitor. Instead it relies on physical interaction with the standard club turntable only. The rotation of the turntable serves as a means of scrolling through the music collection automatically. The user stays in control though as this can always be overridden by a manual intervention like holding the record or winding it back. In order to provide goal-oriented search, we also support a direct absolute positioning using the tone arm.