What if the material took care of itself?

In photo editors such as Photoshop, there is a tool called the Healing Brush often used to remove blemishes in photos. It takes information from neighboring pixels and applies it to the selection. In a similar sense, parts of the material would change it’s color based on the color of neighboring parts.

This then brings forth more questions to explore, not just for removing stains. What if the material had a pattern that it would conform to (ie. pattern cloning)? How much of the material can be “stained” until the color starts blending in rather than disappearing, or even becomes the new prime color? Could this be used as a form of artistic expression?

Udayan’s comment: There’s a lot of work on done on color-changing materials. Take a look at this work and this. If you can broaden up the applications and think about more concrete scenarios, this could be a really cool project. Also try to bring the human in the loop: meaning that the fabric doing something in response to a human input rather than doing something autonomously.

There are specific stations where people can go and write something short, ie a poem, quote, etc.  People in the same geolocation could go up to these stations to view these writings. The surface is blank at first, but once a person presses their hand into it, a piece of writing from someone else will show up. Since handprint is location-specific, people can get the sense of the local community as each station will be unique to the community around it.

e: rcha@mit.edu