• Tunable Thermal Behavior
• Edible
• Conducts Electricity
• Acoustically Transparent
• Refraction index of water

Hydrogel is 97% water. The process of making Hydrogel included boiling water and then adding a gelling agent that was then put into different shapes and sized containers. The gel would solidify over time (about 5 – 10 minutes) and then you could pick it up from these moulds. We used petridishes, test tubes and ice cube trays. Below are a few pictures of the process.

The Edible Ice Cubes – When these food colored ice-cubes of gel are added to water, the coloring starts to naturally change the color of the drink. We thought about interactions here that could include noticing if someone tampered with your drink or not and notifying the drinker about this.

Based on these initial explorations, we decided to focus our prototypes on the following:

•  Edible Interaction
• Augmented Perception
• Material Logic

The three prototypes/interactions we came up with include:

• Yum! Gelecriticity – an interaction allowing children to create a relationship with food that can interact with them about these applications.
• Open Gela-me – Being able to interact with someone over a meal or conversation through this panel that also seems like a mosiac piece of art.
• I/O Gel – Being able to use the gel to be able to ‘save’ specific properties of foods and being able to experience a variety of tastes and flavors in a gel form. Could this be the future of food?

All videos for these interactions can be found in our presentation here.

Inspiration

In nature, jellyfish do not have brains. They process information via sensitive nerve nets that underlie their epidermis, allowing for full radial sensation. We were inspired by their sensitivity, compositional simplicity, and the many affordances of their radial design.

Like jellyfish, we rely on touch in our natural environments. The skin is the largest organ of the human body, approximately 22 square feet of densely packed receptors. The human hand alone contains approximately 100,000 nerves. Jellyfish is an interface that makes full use of our capacity to sense through touch.

Mechanism

Jellyfish is a proposed dynamic interface that transforms flat, screen-based information into three-dimensional, mutable material, using a programmable topology.

3D Viewer

Place Jellyfish over a GUI, and move it around like a puck. The topology of Jellyfish changes according to the detected screen content, to create correlating textures. The base of the puck is a solid ring, which glides easily on surfaces; the top is a translucent skin, stretched over shape-changing wires, that can bend up to 90 degrees at each node, allowing for the creation of a variety of shapes.

Pressing on a node allows the user to deform the shape, and this input also affects the screen content, allowing for hands-on CAD modeling and other applications.

Applications

Jellyfish can transform any typical GUI interaction into a tangible experience.

Applications include: modeling in CAD software; examining datasets; GIS mapping; game controls, and more. [expand]

Process

Our original brainstorms spanned a variety of possibilities: stress-based tongue interfaces; ants as actuators/fabricators; plant-based interactions and personal growth gardens. We decided to focus on a later idea – a tangible interface puck, loosely inspired by the Microsoft Surface Dial, because it would have a wide range of possible applications for productivity and expression.

Unlike the Dial, our puck would be more than an advanced mouse; it would be a direct and tangible connection to the original content. We were inspired by the Radical Atoms discussion and Bret Victor’s talk about the underutilization of many “modes of understanding,” particularly our capacity for tactile understanding. And to achieve this understanding, we would use programmable matter, in the form of changeable topology.

We decided to look to nature for inspiration as to methods of best realizing our vision, and focused on the jellyfish, which has a simple, radial design that affords fluid and rapid shape-changing. A trip to the New England aquarium provided additional inspiration. 

When designing the interface, we focused on usability: the puck would fit in one’s hand, glide easily over any screen, and would be manipulatable by all fingers. Inspired by the jellyfish’s fluid-filled hood and underlying musculature, we decided to use a rigid structure in the bottom layer, with a gel-filled encasement on top. This would allow for more dramatic shape shifts in the rigid structure, including sharp edges, but would also afford smooth, organic surfaces if needed, by altering the amount of gel present in the topology.

There was a delay in getting the shape-changing wires we hoped to use for the rigid structure, so we used 3D-printed models to represent different topologies that could be rendered. 

The tops can be used interchangeably to snap in the puck. We used gel and a plastic film to create a malleable surface atop the underlying structure.

Once the wires arrived, we tested their performance moving a gel layer. We did not achieve the dynamic node structure desired, but did produce movement in the test layer.

What is Umwelt?

Each functional component of an umwelt has a meaning and so represents the organism’s model of the world. These functional components correspond approximately to perceptual features.It is also the semiotic world of the organism, including all the meaningful aspects of the world for any particular organism, i.e. it can be water, food, shelter, potential threats, or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates and reshapes its own umwelt when it interacts with the world. This is termed a ‘functional circle’. The umwelt theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. Consequently, the umwelten of different organisms differ, which follows from the individuality and uniqueness of the history of every single organism.

Semiosphere

An organism creates and reshapes its own umwelt when it interacts with the world. This is termed a ‘functional circle’. The umwelt theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism.

Consequently, the umwelten of different organisms differ, which follows from the individuality and uniqueness of the history of every single organism. When two umwelten interact, this creates a semiosphere.

What if we could use different programmable material to expand the unwelt of an organism? Further, what if we could have different organisms connect in a semiosphere through a material?

Very powerful idea in expanded Umwelt. But to what end/why would we want to? Obviously it’s cool to experience more, but we also note that an animal’s affordances are perceived using it’s umwelt. Does an expanded umwelt imply expanded “pallet” of affordances available to us? Which are the most compelling? How is it bidirectionally interactive? Are these materials that we perceive directly, that we use as tools to perceive other elements of the world, or wearable materials that expand our senses all the time?

-Dan

Penny: I like the idea of being able to dynamically adjust your perspective, as a kind of empathy machine or tool for connectivity. I would suggest thinking about it it terms of HCI; for instance, what might a computer’s umwelt be like?

Concept:

When we are stressed, our bodies release stress hormones. Popular Science found that “Changes in cortisol and other hormones register in your saliva, indicating not only stress but according to a recent study, possibly also how well you respond to it.” Short term stress can be healthy. Long-term stress is dangerous, always telling our bodies that we are in danger or activating different systems to move constantly is taxing and exhausts out bodies.

I am wondering how we can remind our bodies of some interface what kind of stress we are experiencing. Or, creating a system to help us determine if the stress we are experiencing is healthy or damaging.

How:
(Brainstorm)

Create something of which there are many pieces of input—haptic, heat sensors, perspiration, heart beat and more.

AND

Output would be a scent to help you calm down in some way. Or, react based off of what you determine as feedback. Next, you input your feelings before and after.

OR

Output: Lights to communicate to your brain, if it is good stress or bad stress. And, then cognitively acknowledge your feelings.

There is a wide body of previous work around wearables for biometrics-based mood detection/augmentation/modulation, so be cautious of navigating and positioning within it. Smell is a compelling aspect, if you can clarify the argument it the best sense for modulating stress. Combining many biometric monitors to estimate stress levels -esp. good vs. bad stress – is huge task, probably outside the scope of this class. Is there other data we have access to that could be a proxy for stress level? What feedback does the user give and how is it used?

-Dan

Penny: Think about what it really means to be stressed, what do you do, how do you respond, do you try to hide away from the stress, or do you go for a walk, or do you just ignore it? Have a think about some of these natural responses that people already do when they are stressed, and what we already to to try to ‘de-stress’. Perhaps the answer isn’t creating a technology that is aware of you by monitoring, but something you turn to when you are stressed.

Our generation always have this syndrome with internets and phones. people are so trapped into this 5 inch square pixels, they check it all the time and can’t leave without it. We are so addicted to it, They become part of our body, part of our sense. So here we try to wrap it into our body – transform the information from these digital data into part of ourself.

Very pertenant subject – our preoccupation with digital information. But why would access to even more information through additional senses help the situation? How is it interactive? What form does the final artifact take?

-Dan

Penny: Take a look at this work www.thegreeneyl.com/call-me-choke-me I think its relevant, could be interesting to take a hyper-speculative approach to this idea.

Udayan’s comment:

How is the mapping from information in the digital world to senses making the situation better. I think this is an interesting direction. But if you can answer that question by thinking deeper and coming up with some scenarios it could be cool. For example, instead of having to read and reply texts to loved ones(which takes a finite time), can you make the sensations appear through haptics. There is a lot of work on done these lines, particularly, a simple example of this is the heartbeat functionality on Apple watch. Can you go beyond that?

Similar to umwelt idea – adding senses for unseen phenomina. But what is the advantage? Can we then interact with these waves? Is there bidirectionalaity for receiver + transmitter? What would people use such a device for? What is the best formfactor (wearable, device, exhibet, etc.)?

-Dan

Augmenting a human with additional senses has been a widely investigated topic. Read about Synesthesia and Digital Synesthesia.

See this PhD thesis that looks at some of the things you are talking about. Can you go beyond?

Also these works could be inspirational:

Body Hacking: My Magnetic Implant

FEEL MAGNETIC FIELDS THROUGH MAGNETS IMPLANT

Inflating hands is a project simulating our hands to help people manipulate sensitive or fragile stuff. It would use Pneuduino to inflate or deflate rubber, and change the shape of rubber to a shape shown as our control hands’ gestures. In order to create friction to hold, grab, play with stuff with different shapes and weight, the surface of rubber materials are designed with bubbles. The friction of the rubber could be controlled by inflating or deflating the bubbles on its surface.

I like the idea of friction-changing surfaces as tools for augmenting our manipulation capabilities. But when would we not want maximum friction when picking something up? Are there other material properties that contribute to good manipulators? How is this more than a remote-control soft robot arm? Is there an interaction with the device itself, or does it have any autonomy? Does it have digital affordances like copy/paste/scale/rotate that could be useful for manipulation?

-Dan

I love the idea of insect-based subtractive fabrication. This could make a very cool project if it was designed in a compelling way with a good story. But what is the role of the designer in this process? Do they have feedback or influence in the process? Is it an active creative process? Do they have a relationship with the machine, the ants, or both? Is the machine more than a mediator between human intent and ant execution?

-Dan