reactable

I like Björk a lot. She comes from a cool country and I think she makes great music. Because I'm going to see her live coming weekend I watched some live footage on the internet last week.
I was completely blown away by her perfomance of the song Declare Independence on 'Later with Jools Holland'. Not only by the song itself, which is evil punk-rave or something, but also by a crazy instrument called a reactable. Sir Paul who's watching, is also impressed...

What the hell is that thing? Basically it's just a modular synthesizer. But instead of using knobs to change and build up your sound, you have to move objects on a round display which looks like a table. These objects are called tangibles and each represent different modules and functions of a synthesizer. By moving them you create animations on the display, so you can see what you're doing. You can touch these animations to change the sound. The reactable can even recognise wave forms that a player draws on the table.
In other words: you just have to move some cool looking jigsaw puzzle pieces randomly on a futuristic blue table to make these totally weird sounds. As a bonus a synthesizer player no longer looks like a Pet Shop Boy or Rick Wakeman. Instead you become a sexy wizard practicing witchcraft from outer space!
Well, I wish Spider James could acquire such a 'beestig machien', but it's not yet available for normal blokes from dull countries. But we can watch some demonstrations!