Quick and affordable 3D printing technology applied to classic stop-motion opens Dutch science program “Het Klokhuis” (The Apple Core) which is Holland’s oldest youth television show, covering everything from the history of dinosaurs to how an iPhone is made. It is a hybrid of hand crafted frame-by-frame animation and cleanly rendered apples with sprouting science experiments encapsulated like the seed of an idea about to be discovered.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2010/02/08/het-klokhuis/

CSM BAGD, 2007

artofsound - visualising sound using no computer programs or algorithms, markers made from coloured paper, lit with a blacklight and shot with a long exposure on an SLR.

CSM BAGD, 2007

Concept business card - details revealed only when held up to a light source, otherwise appears blank.

Just because it’s cool.

Two doctoral students at the Carnegie Mellon University have developed a screen with three functions: pop-up buttons and keypads can appear and disappear, the user can touch input and the screen can render graphics.

“It is rare to be able to do all three in a single display,” says Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. researcher at the Human Computer Interaction lab at CMU. Harrison, along with Scott Hudson, published a paper last month explaining how the displays would work.

“It is tough to create a physically deformable surface that can still do graphics pretty well,” he says.

It is a “thought provoking” project that plays into the emerging field of dynamic tactile displays, says Johnny Lee, a researcher at Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group, who read Harrison’s paper early on but otherwise not connected with the research. “It’s a really, really interesting and stimulating idea,” he says.

“As humans we are very tactile individuals,” says Lee. “Touch is our primary sense as we navigate the world but touchscreens don’t allow us to use it.”

Despite the popularity of touchscreens, many users still prefer physical buttons. Physical buttons offer a low-attention way of interacting with display. And they are especially useful in situations where users don’t want to completely concentrate on a task on the screen. For instance, in cars, drivers have to take their eyes off the road to change the volume on a radio with a touchscreen. Physical buttons, especially if they could change dynamically depending on task, would let the driver touch something and keep her eyes on the road, says Harrison.

Harrison’s research is sure to gnerate interest among companies ttrying to bring more tactile feedback to touchscreens. Research In Motion attempted to bring the physical feel of clicking on a keypad to its BlackBerry Storm touchscreen. The move fell short of many users’ expectations. But it has left the door open to other attempts that can more successfully mimic the sensation of hitting a real button on a multitouch display.

The latest prototype display uses rear projection for the visual display and infrared lighting and a camera setup behind the display for the multitouch input.

In its simplest form, the prototype involves creating an air chamber by layering several specially-cut pieces of clear acrylic. A thin sheet of translucent latex is draped on top of this to act as a deformable projection surface. The air chamber is then negatively or positively pressurized to create small pop-up buttons that mimic the feel of real physical ones.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/prototype-display-combines-touchscreen-morphing-buttons/#ixzz0eOWAdT3D

Some work I did for the National Maritime Museum - full write up when my new site goes live. www.solarstormwatch.com