do you ever feel like things are out of control? the virtual reality laboratory at tokyo institute of technology (no acronym) have discovered one reason: tiny ‘brownies’ called kobito are pushing stuff around. you can finally see them at work through the newly developed “kobito window,” a screen that shows them pushing your tea around […]
Category Archives: tangible
dinner demons
Also posted in evil robots, furniture, livingbreathing, possessed products, product design
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lego electronics
bug labs did it! they are making electronic blocks that you can plug together to make any device you want. yesterday they finally released images of their products, which include a docking base, GPS unit, touch LCD screen, camera/webcam and motion detector – all tied together with an open SDK. although not yet available for […]
Also posted in customization, futurecraft, open objects, product design
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voodoo chat
schulze and webb’s availabot is an ambient reminder of whether your friend is logged in to chat. it’s a good idea to take non-essential functions off your computer desktop, but it’s too bad you have to connect the doll via USB and keep it on your physical desktop. i’ve always imagined a set of dolls […]
Also posted in evil robots, livingbreathing, possessed products, surveillance, visualization
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graspable interfaces
jenny chowdhury presented her notorious ‘intimate controllers’ at the siggraph 2007 unravel fashion show. even though the piece is seems meant to help transgress shyness in a twister-like way, she clearly feels that it should only be used ‘by couples already in an intimate relationship.’ from the exhibition catalogue: Intimate Controllers is a platform where […]
Also posted in art, livingbreathing, product design, soft/glowing
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wizard of oz
where i work, at the medialab, we all know this one trick: whereas interactive technology demos break, movies of interactive demos are always reliable. we call this the ‘wizard of oz’ demo, where all of the ‘interaction’ is actually cued by the filmmaker(who usually is also the researcher). chriswoebken took this to an extreme with […]
Also posted in animation, soft/glowing, visualization
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toddler tangibles
for only $30 fisher price sells the easy link internet launch pad, a tangible gateway to the internet that replaces the keyboard with a physical token-based, limited gaming interface to specialized webpages on their home site. for decades now tangible interaction through physical tokens has been proposed as a way to, among other things, make […]
Also posted in marketing, possessed products, product design, surveillance
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audible gravity
long before newton, galileo galilei determined the first laws of physics – including the acceleration of falling objects (the total distance covered, starting from rest, is proportional to the square of the time) and that a mass moves at a constant speend unless acted upon by another (like friction). he performed his experiments by rolling […]
Also posted in exhibit design, perception
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affection matters
holding the hand of a loved one immediately soothes you – one possible reason that married people live longer than singles. even more interesting, touching a stranger doesn’t have such an effect – and the study was blind. can you recognize your loved one’s hands by touch alone?
Also posted in conviviality, human2.0, livingbreathing, perception, soft/glowing
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