Things that don’t work yet
On Roli Blocks, musical technologies, and designing connected objects in general
What is a musical instrument? Roli, a London-based startup, has devised several devices over the last few years that each explore this question. Its reinvention of the keyboard, the Seaboard, caught the imagination when it launched in 2013, while its latest product, the Blocks Lightpad, prompts the same question.
At first glance, it’s an unprepossessing lump, in Kickstarter Black. It’s inert and opaque, though weighted in the hand just-so and with a rubberised silicone ‘give’ to its top, both of which imply some kind of latent potency. But there are no obvious affordances, no immediate agency, nothing you might strum, plonk, thrum or kick. A couple of ports on the sides look USB-ish, but then what object doesn’t have a USB port these days? It’s almost a pocket-sized version of 2001’s monolith. Until you find the power switch, that is, and the surface of the block suddenly glows, pulses and flows in appealing patterns, revealing a pixellated coloured grid, swimming under that opaque rubbery surface.
