MIT Lab’s Jamie Zigelbaum, Adam Kumpf, Alejandro Vazquez, and Hiroshi Ishii have come up with one of the most brilliant ideas I have ever seen. It’s one of those things you dream about or see in movies and think this will never exist in real life. Well it’s real alright, it’s called Slurp, and it works like this:
Slurp is tangible interface for manipulating abstract digital information as if it were water. Taking the form of an eyedropper, Slurp can extract (slurp up) and inject (squirt out) pointers to digital objects. We have created Slurp to explore the use of physical metaphor, feedback, and affordances in tangible interface design when working with abstract digital media types. Our goal is to privilege spatial relationships between devices and people while providing new physical manipulation techniques for ubiquitous computing environments.
You’ve got to see it to believe it, so go ahead and watch the too brief a demo in the video above. Do you see that?? You can point an eyedropper at your computer screen, suck up specific data (like a folder), and spit it onto another computer. Sure, it works similarly to transferring files to and from a PC with a USB thumb drive, but where’s the fun and magic in that? And here’s something a USB drive can’t do: suck up an MP3 and spit it into a set of speakers and get instant feedback! It also vibrates and displays light to indicate its current state of use. Are you super interested in learning more about Slurp? Look after the break to watch two more videos; one is another short demonstration and the other is ten minute presentation that details the magical eyedropper. Check out the gallery below for a closer look at it.
