[Tanqexe]

Johns Hopkins University Digital Media Center is handing out an annual research grant to develop some form of project that intermixes art and technology. I was thinking of proposing a tangible user interface system that could emphasize the needs of artists. For example, the current, mainstream setup for the digital painter involves hooking up a peripheral (data tablet) to the computer, and then work is done through a graphical user interface (the graphical setup via the computer monitor). A tangible user interface could drastically simplify complex interfaces using a physical representative model, like a node of toolboxes and palettes, to facilitate work in virtual space.

The key to a tangible user interface, according to an MIT interactive media paper, are:

Physical representations are computationally coupled to underlying digital information (model).
Physical representations embody mechanisms for interactive control.
Physical representations are perceptually coupled to actively mediated digital representations.
Physical state of tangibles embodies key aspects of the digital state of a system.

That's just one idea for tangible user interfaces, but I'd like some input from the artists here, since the potential audience is the guys who're in the industry.

[nickej]

Hi-By tangible interface, do you mean haptic feedback? I've used the Phantom/Ghost system for virtual sculpting and found it to be very intuitive and helpful for 3D work. I'm not certain how much tangible feedback would help with painting, though. Strangely enough, I've found that attempts to make digital painting more like "the real thing" kinda miss the point. The Cintiq tablet from Wacom, for instance, while technologically very cool, just allows you to once again cover what you're working on with your hand--a real step backward.
As for what would make me a happy camper computer-graphically, I'd have to say a 400 dpi 27 inch monitor. Seriously. One of the major drawbacks to working digitally is that there's no way to easily judge the quality of your edges in the context of the entire picture. If you zoom out to see the whole thing, soft edges vanish in the dot-pitch. I'm convinced that this is the main reason that so many digital paintings look either all hard or all "doughy", even ones done by serious pros....
Nick J.
_________________
Nick Jainschigg
www.nickjainschigg.org

[AliasMoze]

Forgive what is undoubtedly ignorance and simple thinkin' on my part, but one advancement I think is brilliant is the mouse-gestures in Opera. You draw a shape while holding down a button to close windows, open links in new windows, and what-not. I'd love to see the same controls in graphics programs. I could hide all the palettes and switch tools using gestures; that'd be convenient.