HW1-SRay-Final

Introduction

Shape exploration is a process relying on different kinds of tools and media in different stages. Designers use brains for imagining, adopt paper+pen for 2D sketching, and manipulate clay for 3D modeling. The time consumptions of ideation with different media increase, while designers move from abstract to concrete representations. It is believed that reducing the time cost of transiting from one media to another could help to improve the quantity and quality of ideation. Therefore, we propose the idea of Sublimation Ray(S-Ray) which transmits and receives bidirectional signals to and from Radical Atom and to change its phases; Radical Atom is a new kind of computational material proposed by Pro. Hiroshi Ishii of Tangible Media Group in the MIT Media Lab. With the S-Ray, designers can change the Radical Atom from gas to liquid to solid on demand, and this mechanism is believe to speed up and enrich the ideation process.

Reference

Hiroshi Ishii, Dávid Lakatos, Leonardo Bonanni, and Jean-Baptiste Labrune. 2012. Radical atoms: beyond tangible bits, toward transformable materials. interactions 19, 1 (January 2012), 38-51. 

Prototypes