Liquids, Smoke, and Soap Bubbles -

Reflections on Materials for Ephemeral User Interfaces

Axel Sylverter

AGIS,

University of Hamburg,

33537 Hamburg, Germany

Tanja Döring, Albrecht Schmidt

Pervasive Computing,

University of Duidburg-Essen,

45117 Essen, Germany

Comments:

Drew’s Blog

Franck’s Blog

Summary:

Introduction:

This article presents an interface based on the creation manipulation, and short life of bubbles. The choice of this implementation encourages the users to interact with a medium that is very fragile, has a short life and exhibits random behavior.

The use of different materials to provoke specific qualities in human computer interaction is the key point explored by this work.

Implementation:

A 20 inch circular pool with an under mounted camera is used on which bubbles are floated. The bubbles can be either clear or smoke filled. The under mounted camera is able to track the diameter and position of the bubbles by the ring that is formed by surface tension between the skin of the bubble and the liquid in the pool. The user can move the bubbles by either blowing or touching them.

The system was used to control the lighting in a room where the size of a bubble was used to control brightness.

Discussion:

An interesting direction to go. The random component of the setup could add interest and a life of its own to the application. The artistic component and soft imprecise nature of bubbles could be a nice contrast to many applications where the interface could provide both control and feedback.