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!