industrialism would supersede Art Nouveau with their engineering aesthetics. Only in 1939 would American architect Frank Lloyd Wright challenge the Modernist perspective, coining the term Organic Architecture [ 3] to capture a new philosophy promoting a better balance between human and natural design. His most famous work, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, still stands as one of the great triumphs of American 20th century design. With Fallingwater, Lloyd Wright did not intend to copy nature, like his Art Nouveau predecessors. Instead, he created a perfect harmony between the aesthetics of nature and those of modern architecture. Its concrete cantilevers, suspended over the ever-changing flows and rocky outcroppings of the waterfall over which they were built, allowed Wright to literally balance the planar geometries of modernity with the irregular flows of natural design. Having resided in Tokyo, Lloyd Wright’s aesthetic was perhaps inspired by Japanese design philosophies like wabi-sabi, which emphasize natural imperfection and impermanence over Western controlled planar perfectionism.

 

TANGIBLE AND UBIQUITOUS: EMBEDDING COMPUTERS IN THE NATURAL WORLD

Indeed, what might computers look like if they were designed with a little more wabi-sabi? More curved, like a piece of earthenware, more flexible, like a sheet of Japanese Washi rice paper and more delicate, like handmade knitware? Perhaps a good start would be something like PingPongPlus, one of a string of Tangible User Interfaces designed by Hiroshi Ishii’s research group at the MIT Media Lab in the mid- 1990s. Ishii was one of the first scientists to design computers that were completely integrated into the user’s natural ecology. His goal was to reduce the computer’s heavy demands on limited-capacity focal attention of users, in favor of faster, high-capacity, peripheral channels of perception.

PingPongPlus was a table tennis table featuring a video projection of water, along with a school of fish. Whenever the ping-pong ball hit the table, its position would be sensed using microphones. A hit caused the water projected on the table surface to ripple on the spot, and the virtual fish to scatter. The combined use of projection on a planar surface, with natural objects tracked as input, allowed tangibles to seamlessly integrate computer elements in a physical game, without affecting its speed or physicality. Tangibles allowed for a tighter coupling between input and output, or, as Ishii more aptly put it: between bits and atoms. However, tangibles lacked the ability to display directly onto most input objects (such as the ball), as rigid displays are difficult to integrate into non-planar objects.

They also lacked the ability to track multi-touch coordinates on the surface of such objects. And because their shape was not actuated, consistancy between bits and atoms could not always be maintained. As a consequence, tangible designs focused largely on the use of objects as devices for input.

 

ORGANIC USER INTERFACES: DESIGNING COMPUTERS IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM

Some key developments in computing are now changing this equation. First, advances in flexible input technologies, like Jun Rekimoto’s capacitive SmartSkin, now allow for any surface to sense two-handed, multi-finger touch. Jeff Han’s computer vision multi-touch displays changed the way designers think about the connection between input and output. Tovi Grossman took input into a different dimension altogether. His use of Shape Tape, optical fibers that sense bending, eased 3D drawing through direct representation of shape. Something is different about input today, with Nike marketing shoes with accelerometers that sense the pace for iPod beats. In Italy, Danilo De Rossi is sewing piezoelectric sensors into clothes that monitor vital functions, and keep their wearer healthy. And in 2007, Lite-On designers won the red dot award for their concept jelly input blobjects that can be molded to fit the hand (Figure 2b).

The second development is that of so-called electrophoretic ink (E-Ink for short) at MIT. E-Ink, now a Massachusetts-based company, designs displays that behave much like printed paper. E-Ink displays reflect light directly from their environment, and as such are much more energy efficient than LCDs. E-Ink allowed companies such as Philips to start pondering the design of flexible polymer display substrates. The Philips spin-off Polymer Vision has demonstrated Readius: the first smartphone with a foldable electrophoretic display. Much like a paper scroll, this display can be rolled up into the body of the phone. Last February, Sony unveiled its first full-color flexible Organic LED display, the size of a wristwatch. And at CES 2007 Philips Research introduced Lumalive, a display made of tiny LEDs that are woven into the fabric of clothing.

The most remarkable development, however, is that of shape-changing materials inspired by organic compounds found in plant and animal life. Materials such as shape memory alloys, which mimic the behavior of muscles, are used to create interactive knitware that is responsive to environmental stimuli. Smaller actuators mean computing devices can now be built that adjust their shape according to some computational outcome, or depending on interactions with users. This