aireForm is a dress of many forms that fluidly morph from one to another, animated by air, reflecting the shifting of our own personas. Pneumatic pillows transform the shape of sections of the dress, revealing new forms and evoking classic feminine silhouettes, from sleek to supple to striking.

Collaborating and media creation are difficult tasks, both for people and for network architectures. CoCam is a self-organizing network for real-time camera image collaboration. Like with all camera apps, just point and shoot; CoCam then automatically joins other media creators into a network of collaborators. Network discovery, creation, grouping, joining, and leaving is done automatically in the background, letting users focus on participation in an event. We use local P2P middleware and a 3G negotiation service to create these networks for real-time media sharing. CoCam also provides multiple views that make the media experience more exciting–such as appearing to be in multiple places at the same time. The media is immediately distributed and replicated in multiple peers; thus if a camera phone is confiscated or lost, other users have copies of the images.

CoSync builds the ability to create and act jointly into mobile devices. This mirrors the way we as a society act both individually and in concert. CoSync device ecology combines multiple stand-alone devices and controls them opportunistically as if they are one distributed, or diffuse, device at the user’s fingertips. CoSync includes a programming interface that allows time-synchronized coordination at a granularity that will permit watching a movie on one device and hearing the sound from another. The open API encourages an ever-growing set of such finely coordinated applications.

"Encephalodome" (working title) is an art+science game under development for the dome projection (planetarium) setting of the Lower Eastside Girls Club. Players will wear inexpensive Electroencephalography (EEG) devices to both control and contribute to the game. They can expressively explore science through activities like concentrating, meditating, closing their eyes, and moving their bodies. By fusing many kinds of science data sets into a vast spatial experience, “Encephalodome” will engage players in natural beauty beyond the scales of human perception. "Encephalodome" gameplay focuses on ocean acidification: increased pollution is changing the pH of the oceans, thus affecting the growth of sea vertebrates and shellfish. "Encephalodome" will invite its users to interactively role-play prototypical sea organisms like coral, plankton, jellyfish, and lobster through decades of increased carbon emissions.

MindRider is a helmet that translates electroencephalogram (EEG) feedback into an embedded LED display. For the wearer, green lights indicate a focused, active mental state, while red lights indicate drowsiness, anxiety, and other states not conducive to operating a bike or vehicle. Flashing red lights indicate extreme anxiety (panic). As many people return to cycling as a primary means of transportation, MindRider can support safety by adding visibility and increased awareness to the cyclist/motorist interaction process. In future versions, MindRider may be outfitted with an expanded set of EEG contacts, GPS radio, non-helmet wearable visualization, and other features to increase the cyclist's awareness of self and environment. These features may also allow for hands-free control of cycle function. A networked set of MindRiders may be useful for urban planning and emergency response situations.

Functionally, television content delivery has remained largely unchanged since the introduction of television networks. NeXtream explores an experience where the role of the corporate network is replaced by a social network. User interests, communities, and peers are leveraged to determine television content, combining sequences of short videos to create a set of channels customized to each user. This project creates an interface to explore television socially, connecting a user with a community through content, with varying levels of interactivity: from passively consuming a series, to actively crafting one's own television and social experience.

When an environmental crisis strikes, the most important element to saving lives is information. Information regarding water depths, spread of oil, fault lines, burn scars, and elevation are all crucial in the face of disaster. Much of this information is publicly available as infrared satellite data. However, with today’s technology, this data is difficult to obtain, and even more difficult to interpret. Open Infrared, or OpenIR, is an ICT (information communication technology) offering geo-located infrared satellite data as on-demand map layers and translating the data so that anyone can understand it easily. OpenIR will be pilot tested in Indonesia, where ecological and economic vulnerability is apparent from frequent seismic activity and limited supporting infrastructure. The OpenIR team will explore how increased accessibility to environmental information can help infrastructure-challenged regions to deal with environmental crises of many kinds.

ShAir is a platform for mobile devices on which users can share their resources (such as data, storage, connections, and computation) wirelessly in the background, without the need for Internet connections or user interventions.

Our smartphones take active attention while we use them to navigate streets, find restaurants, meet friends, and remind us of tasks. SuperShoes allows us to access this information in a physical ambient form through a foot interface. SuperShoes takes us to our destination; senses interesting people, places, and events in our proximity; and notifies us about tasks, all while we immerse ourselves in the environment. We explore a physical language of interaction afforded by the foot through various tactile senses. By weaving digital bits into the shoes, SuperShoes liberates information from the confines of screens and onto the body.

This project builds a social, place-based information window into the Media Lab using 30 touch-sensitive screens strategically placed throughout the physical complex and at sponsor sites. The idea is get people to talk among themselves about the work that they jointly explore in a public place. We present Lab projects as dynamically connected sets of "charms" that visitors can save, trade, and explore. The GI demonstrates a framework for an open, integrated IT system and shows new uses for it.

The vast amounts of user-generated content on the Web produce information overload as frequently as they provide enlightenment. Twitter Weather reduces large quantities of text into meaningful data by gauging its emotional content. This Website visualizes the prevailing mood about top Twitter topics by rendering a weather-report-style display. Comment Weather is its counterpart for article comments, allowing users to gauge sentiment without leaving the page. Supporting Twitter Weather is a user-trained Web service that aggregates and visualizes attitudes on a topic.