How will user interfaces change when materials become smart? What happens if the property of a material programmatically change from stiff to soft? How will it change our relationship with digital media and the physical world?

MetaSolid is a hypothetical material to illustrate these questions.

What kind of gestures will appear with new materials? How can we mine, manipulate or share existing informations through it?

MetaSolid state between soft and solid on demand to explore the potential of flexible interfaces further, to show interactive and collaborative experiences. How does the interaction with this material look like and how will it change the relationship to our world?

Also in a video sketch potential applications are shown through different silicon rubber prototypes to manipulate existing shapes and to mine hidden informations from our body.

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related literature:

Steimle, J. (2013) Flexpad: Highly Flexible Bending Interactions for Projected Handheld Displays

Hiroshi, I., Tangible Media Group (2012) “Radical Atoms: Beyond Tangible Bits, Toward Transformable Materials”