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Six-Forty by Four-Eighty [Objects]

Six-Forty by Four-Eighty is an interactive lighting installation designed to reveal the materiality of computation by recontextualizing the common pixel. Composed of two hundred and twenty magnetic pixel-tiles in a darkened room, Zigelbaum + Coelho have created each pixel able to be touched, moved, and modified.

At the start of the day the pixel-tiles are packed together as a display and by the end of the day they will have migrated across the walls in the room. By transposing the pixel from the confines of the screen and into the physical world, focus is drawn to the materiality of computation itself and new forms for design emerge.

The team have developed a new technology that makes the glass in the pixel-tile sense touch as well as send information through your body when you are touching it. They had to create our own composite glass and case for that. In general, each tile can also receive incoming IR data so you can control it with a remote. They are battery powered and can last for up to two weeks on a single charge if they are constantly on. Holding down on the tile will make it pulse. Touching another tile will let you copy the colour of first tile onto the second one. The pixels can only talk to each other through your body, ie combining for example colours to create new colours or touching two tiles at the same time will copy third colour onto the new tile. They also work with a remote allowing you to cycle through colours from distance.

Materials: Injection Molded ABS/Polycarbonate, Glass, Light Emitting Diodes, Custom Electronics, Microcontroller, Embedded Software, Stainless Steel.

The team are publishing a paper with more detailed technical information at the end of the month so do keep an eye on the project’s website.

Designed by Marcelo Coelho and Jamie Zigelbaum, with the assistance of Joshua Kopin. Made in collaboration with the Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab.

(Thanks Emilio)

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Posted on: 07/01/2011

Posted in: Objects

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    Really stunning, simple yet effectively engaging. Would love to play with it to backup my words ;-)

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    Reminds me of another much more interesting Media Lab project named siftables (now being marketed as: sifteo)

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