Beyond words

In August of 1961, fabled mathematicians Edward O. Thorp and Claude Shannon, of MIT, walked into a Las Vegas casino. They intended to try their luck at roulette, a game in which players bet on where a whirling ball will land after falling from an outer stationary track onto an inner spinning wheel. But they weren´t typical gamblers. To explore more diverse types of virtual touch, Harrison does what he calls “time-machine research.” In a bright, airy laboratory that he has adorned with obsolete PCs and hand-welded sculptures made of discarded cameras and cellphones, he and his students build prototypes of possible future interfaces by hacking or cobbling together existing technologies. From a table cluttered with to-go cups, cables, laptops, watch parts, and mannequin hands, he produces an iPad.