Hiroshi Ishii (computer scientist)

"The focus of my research is on how humans can interface with computers in a more engaging and inspiring way. You can’t grab pixels on a computer screen with your hands or have your body physically interact with a digital presentation because pixels are intangible."

"The work of my group at MIT focuses on how to make bits tangible. Our work includes something called Radical Atoms, a computationally transformable and reconfigurable material that is bidirectionally coupled with an underlying digital model (bits) so that dynamic changes in physical form can be reflected in digital states in real-time and vice versa."

"The applications we are developing focus on matter and hacking Radical Atoms to enable changes in the physical world. To simplify, today, there are two materials used for design frozen atoms and intangible pixels."

"Our vision is that Radical Atoms will serve as third materials dynamic, physical, and computational materials that transform and change properties driven by digital data and computation that can do all sorts of crazy stuff."

"My Radical Atoms vision was selected as the overarching theme of Ars Electronica Festival 2016 with the subtitle The Alchemists of our Time. We are determined to become the alchemists of today. The future we are designing will enable objects such as a bed, a couch, or car seats to change shape dynamically. If, for example, you are sitting on a couch and your spouse joins you, the couch could automatically extend its shape to make room for a couple."