Tangible bits: designing the seamless interface between people, bits, and atoms

Where the sea meets the land, life has blossomed into a myriad of unique forms in the turbulence of water, sand, and wind. At another seashore between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we are now acing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenships in the physical and digital worlds. Windows to the digital world are confined to flat square screens and pixels, or "painted bits." Unfortunately, one cannot feel and confirm the virtual existence of this digital information through one's body. Tangible Bits, our vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), seeks to realize seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment by giving physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible. The goal is to blur the boundary between our bodies and cyberspace and to turn the architectural space into an interface between the people, bits, and atoms. In this talk, I will present a variety of tangible user interfaces the Tangible Media Group has designed and presented within the CHI, SIGGRAPH, UIST, CSCW, IDSA, ICSID, ICC, and Ars Electronica communitiesHiroshi Ishii is a tenured Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses upon the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment.At the MIT Media Lab, he founded and directs the Tangible Media Group pursuing a new vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits." His team seeks to change the "painted bits" of GUIs to "tangible bits" by giving physical form to digital information. He also co-directs Things That Think (TTT) Consortium at the MIT Media Lab.Ishii and his students have presented their vision of "Tangible Bits" at a variety of academic, industrial design, and artistic venues (including ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, Industrial Design Society of America, and Ars Electronica), emphasizing that the development of tangible interfaces requires the rigor of both scientific and artistic review. A display of many of the groups projects took place at the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo in summer 2000. A new, two-year-long exhibition "Get in Touch" that features the Tangible Media group's work opened at Ars Electronica Center (Linz, Austria) in September 2001Prior to MIT, from 1988-1994, he led a CSCW research group at the NTT Human Interface Laboratories, where his team invented TeamWorkStation and ClearBoard. In 1993 and 1994, he was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. He received B. E. degree in electronic engineering, M. E. and Ph. D. degrees in computer engineering from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1978, 1980 and 1992, respectively.Home page for Hiroshi Ishii: <http://web.media.mit.edu/~ishii/>.