Animated Vines is an interactive paper installation that comes to life in the presence of a viewer. Normally a static wall hanging, as the viewer approaches the vines begin to curl and slither up and down. Each vine is made up of eight units, and each unit actuated to curl using muscle wire sewn directly to the paper. While a single unit can only curl slightly, cascading the units sums the individual movements to create a lifelike dance. The muscle wires’ movements are silent so that the interaction is accompanied only by the sound of gently crackling and creaking paper.

I/O Stickers is an electronics construction kit made up of adhesive sensors and actuators. Users can place these special electronic stickers onto contact points in pre-wired and pre-programmed pages, and the pages will transmit the state of the input (sensor) sticker to a corresponding output (actuator) sticker. Building the electronics is a simple matter of matching the sticker to the correct footprint. Users can design the interaction by choosing the sensor and actuator stickers, and then personalize the interface by decorating over the flat, electronic stickers with their choice of craft materials. I/O Stickers is designed to empower users to create electronics while also leveraging existing skills in craft, resulting in works that are creatively expressive as well as technically sophisticated.

LilyPond is a budding e-textile Web community that fosters creative collaboration through the sharing of personal projects. Home to a growing repository of skill- and project-based tutorials, LilyPond provides support for young adults who want to design and create soft, interactive circuits with the LilyPad Arduino toolkit.

This project is an experiment in material and scale: a life-sized pop-up book that you can open up and step into, made using only cardboard, an X-acto knife, tape, and glue. Inside the book is a kinetic mural of breathing pleated flowers. As you tug on a string of beads leading from one flower, the rest come to life, moving like puppets using a series of strings attached to motors. The mural itself is drawn using conductive fabric and copper tape, which serve as both expressive and functioning traces within the circuit. Electronic components are also openly displayed and emphasized to explain the electronic workings behind the mural.

An electric tambourine that is completely powered by the playing of the instrument. The jingles of the tambourine are lined with piezoelectric elements, which generate voltage when impacted. This voltage is then harvested to turn on LED lights on the tambourine. The harder the tambourine rattles, the greater the voltage generated by the piezoelectric elements and thus the brighter the light. Yellow LED lights on the jingles light up when the corresponding piezo is rattled. If the tambourine is played with enough force, blue and red LED lights on the band also light up. Thus, the player can both hear and see the music generated by this instrument.

TeleScrapbook and TelePostcard are pairs of wirelessly connected electronic scrapbooks and electronic greeting cards, respectively. These electronic pages use I/O Stickers–adhesive electronic sensors and actuators–to allow users to design their own interfaces for remote communication. This project combines the creative affordances of traditional paper craft with electronic interactivity and long-distance communication. The simple, low-bandwidth connections made from these sensors and actuators leave room for users to design not only the look and function of the pages, but also the signification of the connections. By attaching I/O Stickers to these special books and greeting cards, users can invent ways to communicate with long-distance loved ones with personalized messages that are also connected in real time.