Life is full of moments that come with obvious or subtle expressions of energy. It is common for us as human beings to attach different emotions to such expressions. And yet when we want to capture it and interact with it, we are often constrained to flat, 2D encapsulations of video, audio, or photographic recordings. Moreover, the way we would look back at a memory in this digital age is now often through a screen with hundreds of files digitally stored away, further removing the experience of the event’s emotion. What if we had a way to experience this emotional energy again, and dynamically interact with it in infinitely complex ways? Here we present a concept and prototype that explores a novel physical-visual language of dynamic, emotionally expressive waveforms, designed to transform the way we perceive different forms of energy as we go about our daily lives. With the power of computations hidden within the physical materials used in the interface, we create an interactive form made of Radical Atoms that can take one form of energy and transmute it into a waveform as its output, or Wave Alchemy.

Team

Dan Sawada – Ideation, physical prototyping, programming, interaction design, video production and editing
Anirudh Sharma – Ideation, video production and editing, programming, partial implementation of a concept that was abandoned
Sujoy Kumar Chowdhury – Ideation, physical prototyping, programming, research, video production
Christine Hsieh – Ideation, research, presentation, physical prototyping, video production, interaction design for a concept that was abandoned
Andrea Miller – Ideation, research, presentation, physical prototyping, video production

Final Paper

CHI-extended-abstract_wave FINAL

Final Presentation

Wave Alchemy presentation slides