“>Nanoscape by artists and researchers Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau is an invisible sculpture that can be sensed via touch.

Users wear magnetic ring-interfaces and when moving the hand over the table of the installation, strong magnetic forces, repulsion, attraction and even slight shock can be felt.

Wireless magnetic force-feedback interface allows users to touch invisible nano particles, thus creating an changing invisible sculpture which modifies its shape and properties as users interact with it and with each other.

(via we-make-money-not-art)

Bitfall is an installation by Julius Popp where water is being used to project images taken from the internet. A computer observes various news websites and chooses thereafter the images to be displayed. 128 nozzles are controlled by synchronised magnetic valves, and the water drops falling to the ground shape the images. The visual information is only tangible for a second before the drops merge to become water again.



(via Interactive Architecture)

Sensing GamePad: Electrostatic Potential Sensing for Enhancing Entertainment Oriented Interactions

This project by Dr. Jun Rekimoto, director of Sony’s Interaction Laboratory, introduces a novel way to enhance input devices to sense a user’s foot motion. By measuring the electrostatic potential of a user, this device can sense the user’s footsteps and jumps without requiring any external sensors such as a floor mat or sensors embedded in shoes. We apply this sensing principle to the gamepad to explore a new class of game interactions that combine the player’s physical motion with gamepad manipulations. We are also investigating other possible input devices that can be enhanced by the proposed sensing architecture such as a portable music player that can sense foot motion through the headphone and musical instruments that can be affected by the players’ motion.

X-Ray
This installation by All of Us offers visitors an insight into the artist’s thinking behind the painting ‘A view on the Stour near Deadham’ in a fun and engaging process. By walking in front of the projected painting, the visitor casts a virtual shadow over the image, revealing an x-ray of the painting underneath. By comparing the finished painting and the x-ray, the visitor can see alterations in the work that Constable had made during its development. The project uses video camera tracking to create the x-ray shadow, slowly fading between the images allowing the visitor to notice subtle differences between the two.



Grid
All of Us’ second installation, Grid, illustrates Constable’s process of ‘squaring up’ an image in the journey from early sketches to finished work. A replica sketch of ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ is mounted inside an display case, with thread marking out a grid over image (in a similar technique to Constable). The visitor simply touches the glass above the grid to scale up the corresponding section in the full projected painting. The installation reinforces the traditional techniques used by Constable and emphasizes the meticulous accuracy of scale in both his sketch and the final work.

more

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.

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

(via we-make-money-not-art)

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

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.”