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Two of those artists are Oskar Fischinger and Marcel Duchamp, who are definitely worth to look up if you haven’t heard from them before. Snibbe also mentions the inevitable Steve Jobs, whose spirit seems omnipresent at this year’s conference. Snibbe: ‘When they asked Jobs, how did you become so creative, he answered: Nothing came from myself, it was a process of self-exploration. I dropped out of high school, did some acid, that kind of stuff.’ Snibbe tells the story with pleasure. 

 

In fact, after seeing his presentation, one tends to think that Snibbe nibbled on some LSD somewhere along the way as well. It is a possible explanation for the breathtaking digital worlds Snibbe created in his latest project, the Biophillia app for both iPod and iPhone.

 

‘When the iPad was invented,’ Snibbe explains, ‘we almost got a heart attack because all the work we did in the past, wasn’t for nothing. Until that moment, when people asked me what my profession was, I told them I made useless programs. A real time experience to make music with a Pro Tools interface using a Nintendo controller for instance.’

 

With the iPad, Snibbe has the ultimate tool for his interactive productions, and the Biophillia project is the living proof for that. The app album consists of seven tracks, each individual song being an interactive score. Snibbe shows the possibilities: play with an arpeggiator, a drum machine, a sequencer and lots of other different instruments. In fact, the app is a full musical device, which lets the user create his own music on the spot. ‘We have been living in the ‘pre-recorded era’,’ Snibbe says at the end of his majestic presentation, ‘but that is history now. It is all interactive from now on.’