The thesis project by Interactive Design Institute Ivrea laureates Giorgio Olivero and Peggy Thoeny explores design in the realm of social interaction within the context of public space, specifically, a café.

TABLEPORTATION is a local media system designed to fuse mediated and physical space, to experiment and play with social boundaries, to encourage and allow new forms of interplay between people at different tables in the café.

Video cameras monitor the table surfaces, transforming the originally semi-private space into a stage upon which are played out performances of shifting proximities. This unobstusive system ab/uses the technology of surveillance to allow patrons from different tables observe each other, be observed and get in touch.

Interactive light table surfaces enhance, stimulate and provoke self-expression, collective creations and playful communication.

The café becomes a collective playground where the user is participant and producer rather than merely consumer of space and time.

GUI / Graphical User Interface is a re-presentation of the Adobe Photoshop interface within 3-Dimensional space. The illusion is created by using carton, photocopies, glue and sewing thread.

The humorous artwork is made by Joel Swanson who is a digital artist, writer, and researcher investigating the interconnections of literary theory, art, and technology. His work involves the creation of multimedia narratives that exist within digital space (and sometimes within carton space too).

Scrollbars is a series of installations and physical scrollbar-representations created by Dutch artist Jan Robert Leegte.

According to Jan Robert, most of us consider the scrollbar to be a virtual object - but in use it triggers reactions such as frustration, which suggests a subconscious acceptance of the inherent ‘reality’ of these objects.

Jan Robert Leegte has been exploring the sculptural properties of internet browsers and software, such as scrollbars, buttons and table borders since 1997.

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Sonicforms by Chris O’Shea is an open source research platform for developing tangible interfaces for audio visual environments. The aim of the project is to improve this area of musical interaction by creating a community knowledge base and open tools for production. By decentralising the technology and providing an easier entry point, artists and musicians can focus on creating engaging works, rather than starting from the ground up. Sonicforms exists as :

1. a central repository for others to learn how to make their own interfaces and share their experiences.
2. a set of tools and strategies for extending open source software to create these projects.
3. a physical installation that will be exhibited showing other artists creative content through online submission.

link to video demonstration

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Glume is a computationally enhanced translucent modeling medium which offers a generalised modular scalable platform with the physical immediacy of a soft and malleable tangible material.

The Glume system consists of soft and translucent augmented interlocking modules, each embedded with a full spectrum LED, which communicate capacitively to their neighbors to determine a network topology and are responsive to human touch.

We envision Glume as a viable tool for modeling, visualization and simulation of three dimensional data sets in which users construct and manipulate models whose morphology is determined through the distributed system. The Glume system provides a new and novel means for expression and investigation of organic forms and processes not possible with existing materials by relaxing the rigidity of structure in previous solid building block approaches.

by Vincent Leclerc, Amanda Parkes and Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT’s Tangible Media Group

AR-Jig is a handheld tool to modify a curve on a digital 3D model by manipulating physical in-line pins of the tool. Once a user selects a target curve, it sticks to the pins’ heads. The movability of the device allows for flexible access to digital 3D data represented in the AR systems. Then the user can control the digital curve (and the surrounding surface) through physical manipulations. The physical form allows users to modify digital 3D data without going back to desktop systems. In addition, the computer can modify the curve by actuating the pins with motors according to some calculations about the model such as size limitations, element layout conditions, and so on. Haptic feedbacks by the actuated pins convey the computer’s suggestions to the user. AR-Jig allows the user and the computer to find a better curve through tangible collaborations/negotiations. While the physical form is not enough to represent all the digital data, virtual views through HMDs allow the users to perceive all the digital 3D data.

Although the target of AR-Jig is complicated 3D data, the structure is still simple. This simple physicality keeps the merits of tangible user interfaces, which are direct, intuitive, and simultaneous manipulations. The direct hand manipulation of AR-Jig is easy to use with HMDs. The intuitive pin manipulation gives an idea to capture a physical contour by pushing the pins against it. The simultaneous multi-pin manipulation lets users control points on a curve quickly. At the same time, AR-Jig also gives the merits of digital user interfaces because of pin actuation, flexible mapping between physical form and digital data, and AR views. The actuation enables numerical manipulations of the pins by using 10 keys on the device. The flexibility enables multi selection and global control of digital data by the local physical manipulation. AR views support data scale changing so that control resolution can be changed. AR-Jig is an interface between simple physicality and complex digitality as well as between human and computer.

by Mahoro Anabuki, Richard Whitney, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT’s Tangible Media Group

Tangible Disaster Simulation System is a collaborative tool for planning disaster measures based on disaster simulation and evacuation simulation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Built on the Sensetable platform, Tangible-DSS allows multiple users to directly input parameters such as the scale of disasters (ex. Tsunami, earthquake, and fire) and the capacity of a shelter on a projected map. Then, this system simulates and visualises the disaster and the evacuation of people to shelters, under any conditions inputted by users. Tangible-DSS is best suited for use in discussions and collaborative planning scenes, since Sensetable can handle multiple and simultaneous inputs by physical ‘gpuckss’ on the table. Users can effectively examine how much damage from a disaster will be and what kind of measures could prevent the estimated damage.

by Kazue Kobayashi, Shinetsu Tsuchida, Takaharu Omi, Tatsuhito Kakizaki, Takuma Hosokawa, Atsunobu Narita, Mitsunori Hirano, Ichiro Kase, all of NTT Comware, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT’s Tangible Media Group

In the Papalote Museo del Niño (a kids tangible museum in Mexico city), there is a Digital Dome that plays music for your eyes.

Senspectra is a computationally augmented physical modeling toolkit designed for sensing and visualisation of structural strain. The system functions as a distributed sensor network consisting of nodes, embedded with computational capabilities and a full spectrum LED, which communicate to neighbor nodes to determine a network topology through a system of flexible joints. Each joint, while serving as a data and power bus between nodes, also integrates an omnidirectional bend sensing mechanism, which uses a simple optical occlusion technique to sense and communicate mechanical strain between neighboring nodes. Using Senspectra, a user incrementally assembles and refines a physical 3D model of discrete elements with a real-time visualisation of structural strain.

by Vincent Leclerc, Amanda Parkes and Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT’s Tangible Media Group

“Tangible Bits is our vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) which guides our research in the Tangible Media Group. People have developed sophisticated skills for sensing and manipulating our physical environments. However, most of these skills are not employed by traditional GUI (Graphical User Interface). Tangible Bits seeks to build upon these skills by giving physical form to digital information, seamlessly coupling the dual worlds of bits and atoms.”

How could games be controlled by sound and instruments?

David Hindman and Spencer Kiser have created sonictroller, whose goal was “to improve upon our physical interface that allows the user to control a video game with sound”. David worked with Evan Drummond on Modal Kombat, “The First Ever Instrument-Controlled Video Game Battle”

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Aleph is an experimental public display, that is using the spaces, people and objects it faces as a palette to display messages from hidden viewpoints. When looking at a small mirror, it reflects a fraction of the space around us, when looking at a mirror façade, it reflects most things around us, containing segments that are dark or bright, red or green.

But if we build a matrix of small mirrors, which can adjust their tilt according to the site they are facing, we can create a display that uses the ever changing flux of the place to show images from certain points in space. It will not be comprehendable from all viewpoints, just from specific ones, asking visitors to explore the space, or providing surprising flashes in a public setup that can stay around the edge of comprehension.

Project by Adam Somlai-Fischer, 2005

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The Hidden Worlds of Noise and Voice is an interactive audiovisual installation, or, alternatively, an augmented-reality speech-visualisation system.

It has been developed by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman in collaboration with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria.

Its central theme is the magical relationship of speech to the ethereal medium which conveys it.

Participants in Hidden Worlds are able to “see” each others’ voices, which are made visible in the form of animated graphic figurations that appear to emerge from the participants’ mouths while they speak. In the installation, visitors wear special see-through data glasses, which register and superimpose 3D graphics into the real world. When one of the users speaks or sings, colorful abstract forms appear to emerge from his or her mouth. The graphics representing these utterances assume a wide variety of shapes and behaviors that are tightly coupled to the unique qualities of the vocalist’s volume, pitch and timbre.

(via Interactive Architecture)

The system, which is called U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi:The Virtual Humanoid You Can Reach and developed by NTT DoCoMo and Tohoku University, synchronises a humanoid robot and a virtual avatar, allowing users to shake hands with the avatar.

The main objectives of the project are to build digital humans that you can touch and talk with and to turn them into digital media content that can be merged with robotics, mixed reality, computer graphics, or artificial intelligence.

Several technologies are combined to ensure that robot and avatar motions are synchronised during their “physical contacts” with humans: an optical tracker tracks the head movements of the person wearing a head-mounted display; the robot has joint-angle and force-detecting sensors; the avatar uses the robot’s sensor data as its posture control commands.

Thirty years from now, we will be able to buy a sophisticated humanoid robot, overlay the computer graphics of Ichiro, and play baseball with it.

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Space Invaders 2006 is an outdoor video game, developed by Evan Barba and Kuan Huang, that takes advantage of real world architecture spaces and transforms them into a game playground. Basically, the video game is projected onto a building. The player controls an aircraft by moving his/her body in the space to shoot down the invaders before they move off the building.

The invaders come out of the wall cracks and move down to the ground. The player has to move left or right to control the motion of the aircraft. Whenever the player jumps, the aircraft shoots out a bullet.

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With Invisible - The Shadow Chaser, players have to sense and capture “ghosts” with a vacuum cleaner. “Invisible” goblins sneak around, but you can only see their shadows.
The system, developed by the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, allows “hunters” to feel the presence of 3D virtual objects using only indirect information such as the shadows and sounds of goblins instead of direct images.

When the goblins move, players can hear their footsteps. The volume of the sound changes depending on the goblins’ position on the floor. When players capture goblins, they hear the goblins’ scream and vacuuming sounds.

Players can also get a haptic sense of capture. When they catch a goblin, small motors in the hose of the device vibrate sequentially from the nozzle toward the handle. Then a large vibrating motor in the backpack presents a sense that the captured goblin is struggling. At the same time, water is moved from a tank on the ground to another in the backpack, so players feel the weight of the captured goblins.

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Players equipped with a wearable computer, headset and goggles can physically enter a real world game space by choosing to play the role of Pacman or one of the Ghosts.

A central computer system keeps track of all their movements with the aid of GPS receivers and a wireless local area network.

The Human Pacman was developed by Adrian David Cheok and his team at the Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore.

Merging different technologies such as GPS, Bluetooth, virtual reality, wi-fi, infrared and sensing mechanisms, the augmented reality game allows gamers to play in a digitally-enhanced maze-like version of the real world.

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Pac-Manhattan is a large-scale urban game that utilises the New York City grid to recreate the 1980’s video game sensation Pac-Man. This analog version of Pac-man is being developed in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications graduate program, in order to explore what happens when games are removed from their “little world” of tabletops, televisions and computers and placed in the larger “real world” of street corners, and cities.

A player dressed as Pac-man will run around the Washington square park area of Manhattan while attempting to collect all of the virtual “dots” that run the length of the streets. Four players dressed as the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde will attempt to catch Pac-man before all of the dots are collected.

Using cell-phone contact, Wi-Fi internet connections, and custom software designed by the Pac-Manhattan team, Pac-man and the ghosts will be tracked from a central location and their progress will be broadcast over the internet for viewers from around the world.

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CitiTag is a wireless location-based multiplayer game, designed to enhance spontaneous social interaction and novel experiences in city environments by integrating virtual presence with physical. In the first version of CitiTag you roam the city with a GPS- and WiFi-enabled iPaq PocketPC in search for players of the opposite team that you can ‘tag’. You can also get tagged yourself if one of them gets close to you. Then you need to find a friend to free you. Urban space becomes a playground and everyone is a suspect.

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ConQwest is a Big Game in the evolving tradition of B.U.G. (Big Urban Game) and Pac-Manhattan. The gameplay was designed by Frank Lantz, with help from Mattia Romeo. Dennis Crowley designed and built the semacode system, based on Simon Woodside’s original idea and code. The game was conceived of and directed by SS+K, Kevin Slavin, Liz Cioffi and others. The promotional agency AMP was responsible for all the on-site implementation.



Conceived of by Simon Woodside, semacodes are being used for the first time in the U.S. in Conqwest. Semacodes are two-dimensional barcodes that can be scanned and decoded with a cameraphone.

Semacode stickers are placed around the city the morning of the event - some in plain sight (think street signs and store windows), others can only be found by interacting with people.