Category: misc technology



Got this clip last week from the TED feeds of David Merrill from the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab, (though I would have guessed the Tangible Media group) playing with Siftables, and I'll start off by saying I love these little guys. But there are other similar systems with similar form factors, that where precursors to these... and though Siftables are fairly more technically advanced, I think these predecessors are worth a mention...

Firstly there is DataTiles project at the Sony Computer Science Lab by Jun Rekimoto (below) which are described as A Modular Platform for Mixed Physical and Graphical Interactions, that is similar in principle to siftables, though they are much more one to one with regards to the use of each unit. You can read more about these in one of my old posts here.







Then there is another Sony CSL project called Block Jam (images and video below), which is really really similar to these Siftables, in that you can assign various variables as to what each does and controls. Described as Block Jam is A Tangible User Interface that controls a dynamic polyrhythmic sequencer using 26 physical artifacts, these block can essentially be given a set of variables, which they will then cycle through in various non-linear was when they are connected together.



and a vidoe of BlockJam in action





Inevitably, i think Siftables will be an excellent education tool for teaching general mathematics, and linguisitcs (would love to see kanji pairing and korean on these), and if they are in anyway open source, I'm sure they will be modified for all kinds of things from music (which it looks like they are already playing with) to dna sequencing (well maybe not dna sequencing...)

What I do hope for is that they open it up like the monome project, integrate with things like OSC, and offer different sizes, for different needs.