Inspiration:

Of what would be edge of materiality today are daily phenomenon in nature. Eyes of faunae that’d inspire computer vision, expanding symmetry that’d inspire fabrication and displays that’d draw on biological and natural occurrences. The idea of ethereal displays is based on suspended compounds in air that essentially appear as mists and clouds.

I was inspired to this idea by a drone drawing project that I worked on in the past, where multiple airborne vehicles equipped with ultra-high power LEDs would fly in swarms. A long exposure camera would capture the movements of these vehicles and plot light exposure traces/drawings on the screen. However, I had always been wanting to take the drawing to the physical world where audience is able to witness and interact with the visualizations in real.

Introduction:

Many of the displays have either been restricted to screens as we know them or to narrow spaces in physical in state-of-the-art works. The displays occurring in nature however, are essentially the opposite, transcending even what we can do with large-scale displays and projections.

The idea of ethereal displays is based on releasing high pressure aerosol trails through a flying agent in space, which can remain suspended in air longer than usual smoke or vapor particles. The path traced by a flying agent(s) is the shape attained of the display, not limited to any form or size constraints.

Applications:

Beyond the confines of the present displays, such new in-air suspended displays will provide new aesthetic vocabulary and freedom of expression. Imagine these flying agents creating extensions of objects or even buildings that aren’t even existing yet, helping us see what’s not there in the present. Such displays can not only help in recontextualization of spaces or architectures, but can exercise control over suspended particles to get dynamic spatial forms.

What would of objects look like when they are combined with ethereal objects as extensions! What the would the future look like when scratch or logo could be played in three dimensions in air!

Implementation:

Contrails, or airplane vapor trails are formed by high pressure release of aerosols at a very cold temperature and high altitudes. The emulation of contrails for our displays on ground level would require modification in aerosol composition to hold vapor together and also appear at lesser pressure release than usual.

This idea seems to have been used by a Dutch artist to photograph surreal clouds in indoor environments. The flying agent in our case can of course be a drone carrying an aerosol can triggering release as per the form/shape required.

Skydivers also create trails of their descent by wearing special socks that releases food coloring in the air. Getting the right trails would be about getting the right amount of moisture sticking to the particles to make them heavy, shape them and helping them stay in air.

Curious! This is an interesting idea. Related, but not at all this idea, this is something I was working on before the lab (it now works we just submitted a paper to CHI) http://lukevink.com/projects/914

I was inspired to this idea while reading Doug Bowman’s comprehensive text on the origin and state-of-the-art 3D User Interfaces. Doug Bowman in his text mentions Hinckley’s work on Passive Real-World Interface Props, where a person makes use of physical props to manipulate 3D models on the screen in front of the user. With an almost synonymous dialog happening between the user and the natural world, these graspable passive interface props were found to work to a large extent.

Switching gears a bit to a different context, the state-of-the-art virtual reality head-mounted displays today are able to produce immersive imagery for the users but have an acute problem with providing haptic feedback to the users. At most, these VR headsets seem to stretch to right now are generic remote controllers on user’s hands that can take in navigational input and provide vibration feedback, as a result leading to weak experiences or breaking the immersion altogether. I’d like to propose a pneumatic system that can switch physical prop configurations as per the situational VR context.

Scenario: Consider a user walking in a virtual world has a wrist band on his hands that is imitated physically by the pneumatic system by morphing into a physical wrist band on the user’s hands. As the user approaches a certain location in the virtual world, the context entails a stick/sword for a task, the shape which is then acquired by shifting the air from the wrist-band configuration to the physical stick/sword configuration. As the VR narrative unravels further, the present scene dictates a box to be held by the user and another air-pressure switching takes place to inflate a box configuration for the user to hold physically, and so on.

Such tangible VR props will not only be essential to provide appropriate haptic feedback for VR users but will also be able to take us beyond generic remote controllers or passive interface props for better immersion. The design of the system will also allow to establish correspondence between real and virtual worlds (for better feedback and handling information, external audience or multi-user participation etc.), something that was attested recently by Jaron Leiner of VR fame.

A clever design of the simultaneous context-configuration play can exhibit a lot of versatility in shapes that match and even provide dynamic feedback with texture, pressure constraints etc. for the user.

However, in terms of implementation currently, the type of configurations/shape changes either will have to be quite close to the previous state or the number of different configurations will have to be limited (in the former case, assuming the system works on the principle that the configurations are all bags that have the required shape already and just need to be inflated — so when inactive, the system stores the deflated shapes in a small housing or so)

I feel comfortable when terms such as kinect, projection/computational illumination and augmented reality are buzzing around – can walk and talk this vocabulary and in general have good IxD and fabrication experience. Further information about my past projects, works and contributions can be found at: harpreetsareen.com