Interaction

M.I.T - Assist Sketch Understanding System and Operation

I also discovered a different group doing similar things to this drawing system that used physics ( unfortunately Firefox crashed and i lost the link) but they had developed a handheld display, a little larger than A4 size. On their device, the physics cut in straight away, so as soon as the user had drawn a circle and lifted his pen from the surface, physics took over, and the drawn object fell as if it was a dropped ball, and bounced on the bottom of the screen, knocking over any other drawn objects that were in the way. Instant animations, a great tool for teaching- as in the M.I.T video.



P-Soup is a interactive art java applet, that allows you to 'communicate visually' to other users with patterns, shapes and colours. I'm not sure how much communication you could have with someone, but it's an interesting idea and has some psychedelic coolness to the patterns as they emerge and disolve on screen



A little off topic - i don't know if anyone saw an article in the news recently, about chimps out-performing humans in memory tests.

The numbers 1-9 were briefly displayed on a screen, then the subjects had to recall back in sequential order the numbers by touching the screen. The chimps managed this at lighting speed, while their inadequate human cousins stumbled along making mistakes. Who needs opposable thumbs anyway? Completely bypassing the evolutionary stage of developing rudimentary tools, these chimps have mastered the digital interface with such proficiency, they make us humans look like primitive baboons. Check it out if you didn't see it - there are various videos of it on the BBC website.