Percussa (LLC) is a start-up which develops tangible user interface technology for entertainment applications, and is based in Belgium, Europe.
Tangible user interfaces are a new kind of hardware computer input devices that go beyond multi-touch. Multiple objects and their spatial relationships are used to control software instead of a single pointer device like the computer mouse or touch.
Percussa’s first product, AudioCubes, allows people to easily make music and perform live using smart wireless blocks.
Bert Schiettecatte started to develop AudioCubes before founding Percussa in 2004. The AudioCubes were launched in January 2007 at NAMM (Anaheim, US), and are sold online through Percussa’s website.
Bert Schiettecatte, Founder and Director
Bert started playing the piano very early on, started producing electronic music in his teens, financing his hobby with various programming jobs at local web startups. While applying to the University of Brussels (VUB)’s computer science program he got his first record deal, and decided to focus his career on music technology.
After developing open source software for the Mpeg-4 standard, he was invited for an internship in a US startup which was later on acquired by a well known semiconductor company. After his internship he was granted a fellowship of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF), a honorary fellowship of the Fullbright association, and a grant from the Audio Engineering Society (AES), to study at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
While at Stanford Bert started working on human-computer interaction research, computer input device technology and musical applications, building a laser harp with classmates Luigi Castelli and Eto Otitigbe, and collaborating with MIT dance professor Thomas Defrantz. After graduating at Stanford Bert started working on the ideas of the AudioCubes and tangible interface technology in his spare time, while working as a researcher at the universities in Belgium, eventually founding Percussa in 2004 to concentrate full time on AudioCubes and tangible interface technology.
Bert won several awards for AudioCubes, such as the Qwartz award, and was recently invited to give a talk at Tedx Mediteranean in Cannes about musical applications of the AudioCubes and Percussa’s tangible interface technology.
Céline Van Damme, Marketing and Finance
Céline graduated at the University of Brussels (VUB) with a Master’s degree from the Solvay Business School (1999-2004).
After graduating she worked as an analyst in the IT-department of a local construction company, where she was responsible for information organisation issues of the company’s CRM. This triggered her interest in information organisation and retrieval, after which she applied to enter the University of Brussels’ PhD program and started working as a researcher at the MOSI-research group. At the same time she obtained a Master after Master in Business Information Management at the University of Brussels.
During her PhD she worked on analyzing large volumes of data for a major retail chain. In June 2010 she finished her PhD on corporate tags and folksonomies. More specifically, she investigated how corporate tags can be analysed to unlock knowledge in the company.
Celine has been volunteering for Percussa for a while before joining Percussa full time.
