In 2004 I created this completely magical interactive experience called The Butterfly Garden for the Submerge exhibition. Its a memorable interactive illusion that puts digital butterflies all around you. Born in the palm of your hand, the interactive creatures flutter from flower to flower, until they eventually fly off into the ether.

People of all ages can interact with the artificially intelligent 3D butterflies by placing their hands above one of sixteen flowers, growing new and different butterflies in their palms. Entire groups of people can interact with the garden at any time. Just make sure you are gentle and calm though. Just like real butterflies, if you make sudden movements you may scare them away.

I have worked on several different versions of the beautiful butterfly garden.The very first was for the Submerge exhibition in Bristol, surrounding the main entrance with two sets of flowers planted on real grass turf. More recently the piece has been recreated for a Bridal show in Plymouth and a Literary festival in Cornwall.

How does it work?

Hidden into every sunflower is a tiny sensor that can detect the movement of your hand, and the distance and position of your hand. As you hold your hand out gently, the intelligent butterflies sense your position, and fly towards you. If you spend enough time playing, you can be surrounded by beautiful creatures.

How was this made?

I had been working with sensors and a computer control system that I wired and designed myself during my time on my degree. The sensors were really delicate and super-sensitive, so I had to find the perfect use for them. I wanted to create an interaction that was light and delicate and delightful. Luckily, Submerge approached me and asked me to create something along the theme of ‘organic/synthetic’ and the ideas just went together beautifully.

Thanks to Submerge

The Question Table was a prototype design that I created, along with Mike Cobb, as a test to see how information could be saved to your skin.

Based on similar technology that I developed in the Butterfly Garden project, the Question Table was an entirely new concept.

The big idea

The ultimate aim is to allow people of different ages and with different interests experience a museum exhibit in a totally new and interesting way. At the start of your museum visit, you would be given a small personal armband. Each armband containing its own unique RFID chip. The RFID chip would save all your personal preferences on it, so as you approached another interactive experience throughout the museum the information presented to you would be able to change and adapt, based on your chosen options.

Choose your own path

At the start of any museum experience could be 3 different question tables, set at different heights, so that children could select a lower table, with child friendly topics, and adults could try a larger table with more advanced, challenging topics.

The table used special infra-red motion sensors that allow you to physically “scoop up” a question, and drag it off the table. Each circular table had an overspill projection, so that the data you selected would be projected onto your skin.

Around the edge of the table would be a wide range of RFID readers, that would then save the data to your bracelet.

If you were to approach another table, or another side of the table, your data would be loaded off of your bracelet onto your skin, and you could throw it around and manipulate it on the question table.

Cost

This cutting edge and unusual technology is actually very cost effective to implement. The RFID bracelets are cheap enough to be able to be used as a replacement to traditional printed tickets. The benefits are huge too. Each visitor gets their own personalised learning experience, so no two visits are the same, encouraging repeat visits. Also, custom settings can be saved onto the bracelet, so that, for example, teachers could check just how long their students were using each exhibit in a museum, allowing them to review any areas that may have been missed on a school trip.

From dream to reality

The question table is a great example of some of the prototype technology I helped to deign, that went from a dreamsheet concept to full scale mockup. Hopefully you will see this in a museum of the future!

Hyperfabric is one of my all time favourite inventions. I created it as a beautiful art installation that would allow people to go beyond the screen, with a new tactile interface. I came up with the name “Hyperfabric” because I wanted to suggest that new things could be combined in interesting ways. Hyperfabric  is a touchable, pushable, movable, malleable interface that uses a very thin film to simulate an immersive user interface.

You can press, grab, twist, punch and play with the screen. It can even support your full bodyweight. The Hyperfabric screen is specially designed to communicate with a computer to generate interactive computer graphics, in realtime.

Pushing through the image

I created digital images that are projected onto the film that react to touch and pushing, so it feels like you’re actually pushing through the image.

I created a 7 foot high Hyperfabric installation for the Artytechs parlour this summer at the Port Eliot literature festival. Taking place in a hidden dungeon underneath the stately home, where visitors had the chance to come face to face with the magical and mysterious interactions.

How does Hyperfabric work?

The design of hyperfabric is actually very clever. The strong rubbery surface is stretched over a doorway that leads to a hidden room, in fact an underground dungeon of sorts. Hidden in the room is a projector, for the images, and a specially modified camera. Infra-red light is shone across the surface of the hyperfabric, so that the camera can see exactly what parts of the hyperfabric are being touched, and how hard they are being pressed. By measuring how the light is reflected, special computer software that I wrote can instantly detect peoples presence.

This hyperfabric of course has “multi touch” capability, but it also has a magic power to it as well.

Hyperfabric works with aura?

During the installation, guests would be invited down to the underground dungeon, and would place their hands on the hyperfabric surface. One girl touched it, and yellow sparks shot out from her fingers. She then told me that she “charged up her aura” and the next time she touched it, red and blue sparkles dripped from her fingers instead.

I love it that Hyperfabric is able to create a totally new way of interacting. There is no keyboard and no mouse, no instructions, just emotions. Currently we change graphics by clicking a mouse, but here, guests were able to change graphics by charging their aura!