I/O Bulb and Luminous RoomJohn Underkoffler, Daniel Chak, Gustavo Santos, and Professor Hiroshi Ishii / 1998
The I/O Bulb and the Luminous Room are the two central ideas in a project whose goal is the pervasive transformation of architectural space, so that every
surface is rendered capable of displaying and collecting visual information.
An I/O Bulb is the conceptual evolution of the ordinary lightbulb: one which not
only projects high resolution information but also simultaneously collects live
video of the region it’s projecting onto.
A Luminous Room is the structure that results from seeding an enclosed space with
a multiplicity of coordinated I/O Bulbs÷enough, specifically, so that every location
is treated by at least one I/O Bulb.
Two large applications have been built to demonstrate the capabilities
of the I/O Bulb: “Illuminating Light” is a general-purpose optics simulator, in
which models of lasers, mirrors, lenses, and so on come to life, apparently projecting,
reflecting, and refracting beams of light; while “Urp” is an urban planning workbench
in which simple architectural models cast accurate shadows, pedestrian-level wind
patterns can be observed and tested for different arrangements of buildings, inter-structure
distances are automatically calculated and displayed around the models, reflections
off the surfaces of glass buildings onto surrounding terrain made visible, etc.
Video: Urp
High Resolution
MPEG [352x240]
High Resolution
RealVideo [360x240]
Low Resolution
RealVideo [240x160]
Video: Illuminating Light
High
Resolution MPEG [352x240]
High
Resolution RealVideo [360x240]
Low Resolution
RealVideo [240x160]
Video: Distributed Illuminating Light
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Resolution MPEG [352x240]