Glimpses of the future at Siggraph's Emerging Technologies exhibit
It's entirely possible that you've never heard of Siggraph. It's a fairly specialized conference held by the Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques.
What that means is that it's all about cool ways of messing with computers and electronics, and the dedicated Emerging Technologies space is stuffed full of some of the weirdest computer interfaces that we've ever experienced.
See what we mean in the gallery below.
Via Siggraph 2012
All photos by Evan Ackerman for DVICE, on location at SIGGRAPH 2012 in Los Angeles, California.
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1. Botanicus Interacticus Disney Research wired up some plants with electronic sensors that lets them react to touching a prodding with interactive lights and sounds. Useful? Who knows. Trippy? You betcha. Disney Research, via Siggraph
2. ClaytricSurface Think of this as a 3D graphics tablet. There's a tablet underneath with a projector up above, and on top of the tablet is a layer of sand, covered with fabric. You can move the sand around to make shapes, and when you want the shapes to stick, a small pump sucks the air out from underneath the fabric and the sand gets locked into place. ClaytricSurface, via Siggraph
3. SplashDisplay SplashDisplay is a display made of little styrofoam beads with a projector and a Kinect system pointing at it. Via Siggraph
4. SplashDisplay Users can toss styrofoam blocks onto the beads, leaving colorful ripples. Via Siggraph
5. SplashDisplay If you hit a blue dot in the middle, an air jet blows beads up into the air. Whee! Via Siggraph
6. Chilly Chair You know that feeling you get when something creeps you out and all the hairs on your arm stand on end? Well, it works in reverse, too: the crazy looking cuffs on the arms of this chair generate an electric field that forces your arm hair to stand up, and you immediately get freaked out as a result. I tried it. It works. Also, it's called "artificial piloerection." Heh. Via Siggraph
7. Colloidal Display These lovely and fragile little displays are made of soap bubbles. A projector shines an image through them, which lasts until they pop. Via Siggraph
8. Colloidal Display The screen is controlled by ultrasonic sound waves, and as with soap bubbles, objects can pass straight through. Via Siggraph
9. Tensor Display We wrote about this tensor display a while back, but it's impressive to see in person. It's a glasses-free 3D effect, which sort of even comes through in the pic. MIT, via Siggraph
10. Tensor Display The 3D effect comes from mathematically derived stacks of displays, which you can see in this picture from the side. MIT, via Siggraph
11. Tavola Tavola, from Panasonic Silicon Valley, creates an immersive 3D experience by combining head tracking, stereoscopic projection, depth sensing, and 3D audio. Via Siggraph
12. JUKE Cylinder JUKE is a musical instrument that you can play with your hands. By waving your hands around these columns breathing fog, your hands generate sounds of different pitches. Via Siggraph
13. JUKE Cylinder Each fog column outputs a different musical instrument, including pianos, flutes, and guitars. Via Siggraph
14. Revel Put your hand on a metal plate on the wall, and a gentle electric current flows through your body. The current interacts with metallic paint on this painting, creating different textures. Take your hand off the wall, and the painting feels perfectly smooth. Via Siggraph
16. Stuffed Toys Alive Inside them are soft actuators driven by cables and motors from inside the body, so there's nothing hard or rigid in the arms or legs. Via Siggraph
17. PossessedHand This guy isn't point his finger like that because he wants to. He's pointing his finger because I clicked a button on his computer, and that wristband he's wearing electroshocked his finger muscles into movement. Via Siggraph
18. PossessedHand Emi Tamaki from the University of Tokyo shows how PosessedHand can be used to play musical instruments for you with your own hands. Via Siggraph
15. Stuffed Toys Alive Unlike most robots, these robotic teddy bears are soft and cuddly. Via Siggraph
19. Drum On An overhead projector synced to a MIDI track gives visual feedback (and adds some special effects) as you play a drumset. Via Siggraph
20. Virtual Tennis What makes this version of virtual tennis from anything you've played before is the haptic racket, which can render impact forces and twisting torques just like you feel when you hit a real tennis ball. Via Siggraph
21. Combiform Combiform is a sort of cooperative handheld gaming console. It's four pieces, each one of which is worn on the wrist of a different player. Games involve physically disconnecting the controllers and putting them back together either cooperatively or competitively, and it's a lot of fun. Look for it soon on Kickstarter. Combiform, via Siggraph
