Ben X Tan writes to let us know he’s working with hacks for Microsoft’s Kinect 3D camera system for Xbox to perform MIDI control. Result: depth-sensing, gestural musical manipulations! It’s just a prototype, but since today I cover the larger landscape of what’s happening with Kinect, it’s well worth teasing. From the description:

Coded in C#.net using this: http://codelaboratories.com/nui Very hacky ugly, yucky, alpha prototype, source code available here:

http://benxtan.com/temp/pmidickinect.zip Next project is making a version of pmidic that uses Kinect. Then, you can control Ableton Live or any other MIDI software or hardware with you limbs. Isn’t that amazing!!! If you are interested, you should also check out:

http://pmidic.sourceforge.net/

http://benxtan.com

He tells me, “It’s just proof of concept for now, but want to make something nicer in the long run 🙂 The community on IRC for this stuff is great. Very supportive. I love all the hacking going on at the moment. Especially after watching the Social Network. Very inspiring!”

So, what’s this whole Kinect thing about, why should you care, why might it be useful to artists and musicians and designers generally, and where do you go to find the code? I’ve rounded up various hackers working on the project to answer those questions on Create Digital Motion (in this case, Capture Digital Motion):

Kinect Hacking and Art Round Table: Why it Matters, What You Need to Know