Tangible Media Group

The Furp (“Future of Urban Planning”) project exists as a first step toward
disseminating the work undertaken in the Luminous Room project into the world
at large. Specifically, we are engaged in a collaboration with MIT’s Department
of Urban Studies; the first effort has been to develop a customized version of
the Urp system (see Luminous Room) for use in a live
classroom setting (Professor Eran Ben-Joseph’s 11-304J:Site
and Urban Systems Planning). The system has recently made its in-class debut,
and is now undergoing intensive week-by-week modifications and refinements in
response to what’s being learned about its real-world useability and about requirements
for additional, unforseen features & functionality.

Our short-term goal is to transform Urp from its state as a (successful) proof-of-concept
system into a tool convenient and facile enough to permit ongoing & casual
use in a classroom context. Longer-term concerns include extrapolation from these
class-centered experiments to a better understanding of which modalities &
contexts are susceptible (and which are not) to the luminous- tangible interaction
techniquues that underlie our Luminous Room work.