Kano Computing’s Stem Player is likely one of the coolest devices I’ve ever used. It’s a surprisingly tender puck-shaped system that allows you to manipulate elements of songs in actual time simply by swiping up and down. But as a result of the Stem Player was linked closely with Ye, the artist previously generally known as Kanye West who has taken a particularly antisemitic turn, I wasn’t a lot of a fan recently.

Now, Kano is again with its subsequent Stem system, and never solely is it Ye-free, nevertheless it’s a special sort of gadget totally: a video projector known as the Stem Projector. The firm can be teasing some wild future ideas for Stem merchandise, like Stem meals — sure, meals — however we’ll get to that later.

Like the Stem Player, the projector is one other small round puck manufactured from a fleshy-feeling materials, although it’s barely bigger. For controls, it has haptic, touch-sensitive controls in a hoop in addition to six buttons. You’ll have the ability to put your individual content material on its 256GB arduous drive, and you may add further storage due to a microSD card slot. It has a mini-HDMI port, which means you would use it as a projector for one thing like a recreation console, and it helps Wi-Fi and mobile connections.

However, it looks like it gained’t be the brightest projector round. In an interview with The Verge, Kano CEO Alex Klein stated it reaches 300 lumens or 150 ANSI lumens; for comparability, Samsung’s small Freestyle projector was measured at 240 ANSI lumens. So the Stem Projector can be dimmer. But it has an onboard battery that Klein says lasts for 4 to 5 hours at full brightness and steady use, so that you’ll theoretically have the ability to watch a good quantity of content material on a single cost. (That provides it a giant benefit over the Freestyle, which doesn’t have a battery.)

Klein additionally stated that it’ll include some preloaded content material. While he didn’t say precisely what that content material can be, he teased that “we’re working with some of the best directors in the world, as well as some of the most interesting libraries,” like Mubi and The Criterion Collection. The projector can be suitable with Chromecast and AirPlay, which means you possibly can stream content material out of your cellphone.

I haven’t seen or tried the system myself, however in our Google Meet name, Klein confirmed me a couple of movies from his cellphone and talked about the way to use it. It isn’t precisely like your typical projector, so I’ll let his phrases describe it:

When you boot up the projector, you simply get a particular piece of content material. A body from it proper in entrance of you. As you spin the ring, you undergo different content material that’s in there. Some of it has been added by us. Some of it’s algorithmically added. Some of [the content is] stay channels as properly, so we’ve obtained James Terrell-style artworks, wall savers, so like display screen savers in your wall. And you then press the center button, the content material begins to play. If you press it once more, it pauses, and that body turns into the preview of the movie. So it’s a really exploratory [and] ambient manner of having fun with video and films the place you’re getting instantly into it instantly. 

Using machine studying, the projector is meant to tag objects in video saved on the system as a way to view a stream of related clips in what Klein known as “galaxy mode.” As an instance, for those who activate galaxy mode if you’re taking a look at a clip with timber and plans, the system will serve extra content material with timber and vegetation to “create this ambient dream of different versions of the thing that you were looking at from different, incredible pieces of film or films that you’ve added yourself,” Klein stated. The concept sounds considerably much like Sam Barlow’s new game Immortality, which has you discover movie clips by clicking on objects to see a associated object in a special scene.

You can get an concept of how the system works on this advert from Kano:

The larger imaginative and prescient for the projector, just like the Stem Player, is to construct a tool that will get your head out of your cellphone, in response to Klein. “On our phones, we are always looking down. We’re always looking at our hands,” he stated. “With the projector, you’re looking up. You’re looking out. That’s a thing that we want to bring into the world: people looking up and looking out and looking at things together rather than showing things on their little screens.”

We’ll must see if the Stem Projector’s extra novel components make up for what may find yourself being a dim show. The projector will price $600, and Kano can be taking preorders beginning Monday for the primary 1,000 units.

I requested if Ye was part of the undertaking in any respect. Klein instructed me that Ye was not concerned with the projector and that the corporate’s collaboration with the rapper, which included making the Stem Player the unique house of Donda 2, has ended. Ye “clearly saw the new medium of Stem as something innovative and different,” Klein stated. “I think that will always be a beautiful moment. But no active collaboration now in light of very, very awful things that have been said.” Kano nonetheless has “like 5,000” Stem Players in its stock preloaded with Donda 2, however there are “no plans” to place new Ye content material on future units, in response to Klein.

The projector is one of some upcoming releases coming early this yr, Klein stated. Kano can be opening preorders for brand spanking new Stem Players with unique music from Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah. Those will ship in February, and also you’ll have the ability to enroll in a month-to-month subscription that provides you entry to music, mini documentaries, meetups with the rapper, and an unique live performance, Klein stated in an e-mail.

The firm additionally plans to disclose extra merchandise “into January, February and March” as a result of it desires to determine Stem as “a new kind of consumer product idea,” Klein stated. He teased that the corporate is engaged on issues properly outdoors the realm of devices, like boots and the way “we might even do a food product.”

I pushed him on what that would imply. Klein stated Kano has discovered “quite an overlap between many disciplines of design and product development today. Apparel and EVA printing and molding techniques can be applied to the shape and form of physical devices. The intelligence that goes into a Stem Player and the interface and the way in which it responds to your touch and movement could inform how a garment works as well.”

That all means Kano has “this big, pie-in-the-sky dream” the place “we see the potential to unify the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the devices you use, and even the spaces in which you live into a single integrated, designed system,” he stated. He referenced how Apple merchandise work collectively to convey simplicity to “one part” of your life. “Imagine if that unification could expand into the exact size and fit of your clothes, the exact nutritional balance of your food.”

Personally, I’m skeptical that Kano can pull off a unified system in your total life. It’s a a lot smaller firm than the tech giants which have tried (and failed) to tug off one thing comparable, and I’m nonetheless not fairly positive how we get from the Stem Player to Kano-made meals. Apple’s ecosystem works as a result of it’s comprised of a restricted variety of tech devices, however provided that we’ve been ready for years on rumored initiatives like its combined actuality headset and a automobile, even Apple, one of many greatest corporations on the earth, appears to be hitting some limits.

That stated, in talking with Klein, I get the impression he does need to pivot the path of Kano, which began as an organization making instructional computer systems. The Stem Player was a great begin, and the brand new projector appears to be like promising. But I’m simply unsure about Stem meals.