Music

Stout Student Creates Touch Music Program

Ian Jacoby |

Those crazy Stout kids are at it again. Derek Olson, a soon-to-be-graduate from UW-Stout, has created a “Transient Multi-touch Interface” or in plain English, “a sweet computery thing that you can play music on, interact with, and generally look like Tom Cruise from Minority Report.” Olson developed the technology (which lets users use multiple touch points instead of just one or two) for his senior capstone project. Olson’s project recently received a second place award at the ACM/SIGGRAPH conference. I’m not typing out the whole acronym, but rest assured it is a prestigious place where scientists and visionaries get together to make our lives sweeter. Olson will follow up this honor by doing an internship at a Chicago firm where he will be trying to “broadcast graphics in realtime.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but let’s hope he comes back to the Chippewa Valley so he can start work on our Rosie Robots from The Jetsons posthaste.