The Jamodrum was first conceived while Blaine was on the research staff at Interval Research in 1998. By turning an immersive space inside out, the Jam-O-Drum was designed to support audiovisual collaboration by playing on drum pads embedded in a shared tabletop surface. Using a community drum circle as a metaphor to guide the form and content of the interaction design, players are able to create rhythmical music and effect visual changes on this device. The first Jam-O-Drum is a permanent exhibit at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. The experiences below were developed while Blaine was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center from 2000-2006. Working with her students, a next-generation Jamodrum was developed to measure the velocity and position of player input using four circular disks around each drumpad.

 

a few examples of jamodrum game experiences and prototypes...


CircleMaze

A colorful multiplayer game that encourages team building and collaboration. Players work together to collect all of the game pieces in the middle of the circular maze.

 

MatchNHatch

A four player collaborative game in which the goal is to match at least 3 eggs of the same color before the Evil Weasel steals them.

 

 

DJ SEZ

DJ Sez is inspired by the Dance Dance Revolution interface but uses your hands and body instead of your feet! The DJ gives players cues as icons travel down separate channels indicating the musically rhymed timing of the suggested actions. The game is based upon specific interactions; spinning the turntables disks right and left and hitting the drumpad inputs.

 

 

BounceAbout

A competitive game inspired by Pong with more than one winner possible. Players spin their disks to control paddle movement, change ball color and block other balls from scoring.

 

DeFlex

Up to four players are able to bounce balls against square blocks to clear this futuristic gameboard. Unique graphics, sound effects and artwork make playing this Ricochet-style game loads of fun!

 

The Jamodrum is used to create rapid prototypes of games as part of the Building Virtual Worlds course at the ETC. Here are a few video clips of games the students created in 2 weeks:

 

NEON NIBBLERS

 

JAM-A-SKETCH

 

Short video clips of the above games can be accessed HERE

 

 


 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

© 2006 tina blaine* bean

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