For the most recent version of this project, please visit the link below.

Brightness is a word I use to characterize how well the representation of something actually represents that thing, across senses. For example, the image of this pipe looks like a pipe, but it fails to smell, feel, taste, and sound like a pipe. It is not what it pretends to be, therefore it fails to be bright. 

A “Bright Interface” 1) communicates richly, and 2) is as close to true interaction as possible. Human-human interaction is the truest form of interaction, which has been hardwired into our brains allowing data to be transmitted across senses and levels of consciousness. While fantastically nuanced, human-human interaction is only effective when the subject matter is discretely interspecies. Outside of these scenarios, materials play much better messengers (a photo of a blue sky is more effective than a human telling you how blue the sky is). Materials can do this better because they communicate through multiple sensory channels to connect to the information via the materials experience. 

My goal is to extract the powerful artifacts of human-human interaction and combine them with the power of the materials experience to create interfaces that are brighter than previously possible. 

By doing this, the fluency of our interspecies communication will be expanded to the material world that surrounds us.

Virtual and Physical, Discrete and Subjective

DefeXtiles is an attempt to couple between digital bits and the materials experience. 

Combining the qualities of textiles with the affordances of 3D Printing.  While this work is a focus on the materiality of human-material interaction, future work will further explore the interaction design of high-fidelity materiality.