Kind of cool!January 24, 2006 10:46 pm
MIT Media Lab’s I/O Brush is a digital art tool which allows the exploration of colors, textures and movements found in everyday objects. What makes the I/O Brush unique is that the objects are not only sampled for color and texture but also motion over time, thus allowing the user to experiment with dynamic textures.
Most drawing tools/pens we use today allow only a one-way flow of ink, and we are oblivious to how the content of the tool came to exist inside. What if we could not only have control over the outflow of the ink, but also have influence on what goes inside? Indeed, old fountain pens served as both tools to pick up and release the ink, and paintbrushes still preserve that function. We bring back this tradition of a drawing tool as both an input and output device, but instead of picking up the liquid ink, I/O Brush lifts up and captures photons.
The brush houses a small video camera in its tip with a ring of white LEDs around it. Force sensors embedded inside of the brush measure the pressure applied to the bristles. When the brush touches a surface the lights around the camera illuminate the surface to be captured while the system grabs the frames from the camera and stores them.
The most fascinating aspect of the I/O Brush is it allows for artistic expression with materials that would be unavailable for use as an artistic medium. For example, the camera built in to the brush allows the user to capture the visual dynamics of a fluid, for example, a glass of sparkling water. If you were to apply sparkling water to a canvas the bubbles would be short lived but with the I/O Brush a its life is no longer would no longer be limited to limited to a fixed moment in time.
(We’ve mirrored the Quicktime movie of the I/O Brush in action via New England Indies for your viewing pleasure.)
[ from MEMAP.ORG ]
