Musical instruments really are a fun playground for interaction design. OWOW makes a set of MIDI controllers that differentiate themselves through unique gestural, embodied interactions. Wave your hand above a distance sensor to trigger a drum, rotate a 3DOF movement sensor to fade effects in and out, or scroll over a drawing to produce notes—some interactions might seem more useful than others, but it is inspiring to see how simple off-the-shelf electronic sensors can give rise to varied bodily interactions.

Since it is not uncommon to see this type of interaction design experimentation in musical instruments, perhaps there's something intrinsic to musical performance that lends itself well to this type of more exploratory, bodily interactions—but I can't quite put my finger on it what exactly that is. Possibly the temporal aspect of music—the interactions themselves are simple enough to perform without thinking, but used over a period of time you can create complex and intriguing patterns (so it is combined interactions taken as a whole that are complex; not the interface). Maybe the fact that music is expressive, and gestural, bodily interactions suit that better than more cognitive-heavy screen-based interactions. I'd be curious to see whether interactions like this can be applied to other domains than music!

As a side note: I saw this product introduced at the Dutch Design Week several years ago—I believe it was part of Pieter-Jan Pieters' graduation project. They seem to have run a successful kickstarter project. I'm delighted to see the project made it to production!