Feb 25 2009
MIT student shows new interactive blocks for manipulating digital information
You may have seen MIT student, David Merrill demonstrate his realtime music mixing technology, PureJoy, a couple of years ago at Lunch at Piero’s http://lunchat.com/events/2007/01/15/mit-media-lab-new-music-performance-technology/ Just recently David 
brought his interface expertise to the TED Conference where he showed the audience a new way of interacting with data that goes way beyond mice and keyboards. The interface – called Siftables – consists of interactive blocks that are aware of each other and in the TED demos are used for digital color mixing, mathematical equations and even storytelling.
Watch this video about Siftables then let your imagination go wild. One of the things I love about this video is that once again it showed how children embrace new technologies fearlessly. If you want to find out more about David Merrill and take a look at his research, be prepared to indulge yourself on David’s site where you’ll find photos of his projects and start pondering how you will be interacting with music, art and data in the future.
