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Transform: Interacting with Dynamic Shape Displays

Our friends at the Tangible Media group have created a wonderful piece, bringing together dynamic displays and projection mapping. Created by Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer and overseen by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, inForm is basically a dynamic pin screen. Thousands of digital pins are actuated by individual motors which are all controlled by a computer. This fusion of art, design and technology can render virtual content physically, and combines projection mapping using a calibrated projector and depth camera.

While inForm made the rounds on the internet a few months ago, the same group has contributed to a follow up effort called Transform. This version features three dynamic shape displays which can all by synchronized or combined together to perform a continuous animation across each display. In the author’s own words:

In the author’s own words:

TRANSFORM fuses technology and design to celebrate its transformation from a piece of still furniture to a dynamic machine driven by the stream of data and energy. TRANSFORM aims to inspire viewers with unexpected transformations, as well as the aesthetics of the complex machine in motion. TRANSFORM was first exhibited in LEXUS DESIGN AMAZING 2014 MILAN in April 2014.

The work is comprised of three dynamic shape displays that move more than one thousand pins up and down in realtime to transform the tabletop into a dynamic tangible display. The kinetic energy of the viewers, captured by a sensor, drives the wave motion represented by the dynamic pins.

The motion design is inspired by the dynamic interactions among wind, water and sand in nature, Escher’s representations of perpetual motion, and the attributes of sand castles built at the seashore. TRANSFORM tells the story of the conflict between nature and machine, and its reconciliation, through the ever-changing tabletop landscape.

Remarkable work.