“Shade Pixel” by Kim and Lee

As a result of the rapid increase in the number of information sources, humans interact with numerous visual displays every day. However, the excessive use of traditional light emissive displays leads to unwanted visual noise. Therefore, intended or not, people are exposed to visual noise in their everyday environments. Ambient displays are one form of solution to mitigate this problem. Ambient displays embedded in everyday objects or in the environment deliver peripheral information in subtle ways that do not divert the focus of users’ attention. On the other hand, designers are concentrating on developing displays that provide new and enjoyable user experiences. Their approaches include aesthetics in data visualization, the exploration of interesting materials and movement of physical pixels in ways that are not considered in typical displays. Physical displays or materialized pixels, such as mechanical mirrors [Rozin 2007], as well as those known as Eavesdripping [Pohflepp 2005], the PingPongPixel [Breejen et al. 2005] are good examples.

1. Rozin, D. 2007. Mechanical mirrors, http://www.smoothware.com danny/
2. Pohflepp, S. 2006. Eavesdripping: Water as Physical Display. In ACM SIGGRAPH, Sketches SIGGRAPH 2006, vol. 109
3. Breejen, D. J., Deenstra, M. 2006. The PingPongPixel. Ars Electronica 2006, http://www.tupajumi.com/pingpongpixel