Papers
	CHI 98 Conference on Human Factors in Computing systems Los Angeles, California USA 18-23 April 1998 1998 ACM 117kb Illuminating Light: An Optical Design Tool with a Luminous-Tangible Interface John Underkoffler and Hiroshi Ishii Tangible Media Group MIT Media Laboratory 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA {jh, ishii}@media.mit.edu ABSTRACT We describe a novel system for rapid prototyping of laserbased optical and holographic layouts. Users of this optical prototyping tool called the Illuminating Light system move physical representations of various optical elements about a workspace, while the system tracks these components and projects back onto the workspace surface the simulated propagation of laser light through the evolving layout. This application is built atop the Luminous Room infrastructure, an aggregate of interlinked, computer-controlled projector-camera units called I/O Bulbs. Philosophically, the work embodies the emerging ideas of the Luminous Room and builds on the notions of ‘graspable media' We briefly introduce the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room concepts and discuss their current implementations. After an overview of the optical domain that the Illuminating Light system is designed to address, we present the overall system design and implementation, including that of an intermediary toolkit called voodoo which provides a general facility for object identication and tracking.