Towards Radical Atoms — Form-giving to transformable materials

Form, as the externalization of an idea has been present in our civilization for several millennia. Humans have used their hands and tools to directly manipulate and alter/deform the shape of physical materials. Concurrently, we have been inventing tools in the digital domains that allow us to freely manipulate digital information. The next step in the evolution of form-giving is toward shape-changing materials, with tight coupling between their shape and an underlying digital model. In this paper we compare approaches for interaction design of these shape-shafting entities that we call Radical Atoms. We use three projects to elaborate on appropriate interaction techniques for both the physical and the virtual domains.