Shape-changing materials have been part of sci-fi literature for decades. But if tomorrow we invent them how are we going to use them? Amphorm is a kinetic sculpture that resembles a vase. Since Amphorm is a dual citizen between the digital and the physical world, its shape can be altered both in the physical world through hand gestures and in the digital realms through an iPad app. Through this project we explore how the physical world could be synchronized to the digital world and how tools from both worlds can jointly alter dual-citizens.

FocalSpace is a system for focused collaboration utilizing spatial depth and directional audio. We present a space where participants, tools, and other physical objects within the space are treated as interactive objects that can be detected, selected, and augmented with metadata. Further, we demonstrate several scenarios of interaction as concrete examples. By utilizing diminishing reality to remove unwanted background surroundings through synthetic blur, the system aims to attract participant attention to foreground activity.

The IdeaGarden allows participants of creative activities to collectively capture, select, and share (CCSS) the stories, sketches, and ideas they produce in physical and digital spaces. The iGarden attempts to optimize the CCSS loop and to bring it from hours to seconds in order to turn asynchronous collaborative thought processes into synchronous real-time cognitive flows. The iGarden system is composed of a tangible capturing system including recording devices always "at-hand", of a selection workflow that allows the group to reflect and reduce the complexity of captured data in real-time and of a sharing module that connects socially selected information to the cloud.

Meld provides a new perspective on your social life. By presenting your social graph as a moving picture, Meld breaks free from the text-centric interfaces of today's social networks, offering a fresh, holistic perspective. Unseen trends, before lost in mountains of text, can be better understood, providing an organic and evolving view of your relationships. Meld is a semi-finalist in the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Inspired by the Surrealists' Exquisite Corpse art game, the NeverEnding Drawing project is one of several applications developed on a scalable architecture and platform for collaborative creativity. Users co-create and edit each other's augmented sketchbooks in real time. By tracking individual pages of each live sketchbook, the system loads the appropriate background audiovisual content and enables users to add to it using a variety of real materials and means of mark-making. Users take pictures and record sounds to be sent back and forth between collaborators on the network. Additionally, the live sketchbooks facilitate non-linear, asynchronous access to the evolving, co-created content through their physical editing interface. By using crayons, colored pens, and various tactile and light-diffusing materials, the analog/digital hybrid model of content creation requires no expertise and creates a safe environment for sharing unfinished work with others.

PingPong++ (PingPongPlusPlus) builds on PingPongPlus (1998), a ping pong table that could sense ball hits, and reuse that data to control visualizations projected on the table. We have redesigned the system using open-source hardware and software platforms so that anyone in the world can build their own reactive table. We are exploring ways that people can customize their ping pong game experience. This kiosk allows players to create their own visualizations based on a set of templates. For more control of custom visualizations, we have released a software API based on the popular Processing language to enable users to write their own visualizations. We are always looking for collaborators! Visit pppp.media.mit.edu to learn more.

Human beings have long shaped the physical environment to reflect designs of form and function. As an instrument of control, the human hand remains the most fundamental interface for affecting the material world. In the wake of the digital revolution, this is changing, bringing us to reexamine tangible interfaces. What if we could now dynamically reshape, redesign, and restructure our environment using the functional nature of digital tools? To address this, we present Recompose, a framework allowing direct and gestural manipulation of our physical environment. Recompose complements the highly precise, yet concentrated affordance of direct manipulation with a set of gestures, allowing functional manipulation of an actuated surface.

Rope Revolution is a rope-based gaming system for collaborative play. After identifying popular rope games and activities from around the world, we developed a generalized tangible rope interface that includes a compact motion-sensing and force-feedback module that can be used for a variety of rope-based games, such as rope jumping, kite flying, and horseback riding. Rope Revolution is designed to foster both co-located and remote collaborative experiences by using actual rope to connect players in physical activities across virtual spaces.

T(ether) is a novel spatially aware display that supports intuitive interaction with volumetric data. The display acts as a window affording users a perspective view of three- dimensional data through tracking of head position and orientation. T(ether) creates a 1:1 mapping between real and virtual coordinate space allowing immersive exploration of the joint domain. Our system creates a shared workspace in which co-located or remote users can collaborate in both the real and virtual worlds. The system allows input through capacitive touch on the display and a motion-tracked glove. When placed behind the display, the user’s hand extends into the virtual world, enabling the user to interact with objects directly.