HARUO OBA presented “special moments” today at CHI 2008 – two brilliant tangible recording interfaces mapped to physical phenomena. The BOOK RECORDER consists of two clips – one in the shape of an owl and the other in the shape of the moon – placed on the front and back covers of a child’s book. When the book is closed, the owl is in front of the moon and does nothing. But when the book is opened, the owl records audio – such as the sounds of the parent reading the book to their child. Then, the child can replay the parent’s voice by opening the book on a lonely day. The CANDLE RECORDER is a regular candle that would be lit at a dinner table. Once lit, it begins recording the sounds of the dinner party. It records until the candle is blown out. To replay a party, you can turn over the candle and turn its base – now a speaker – to replay the conversations of individual evenings. These spectacular mappings of function to form make ambient audio recording a voluntary, visible and beautiful part of everyday interaction and help make a special statement about capturing our precious moments of interaction with each other.
