Growing up in Japan, Hiroshi Ishii was captivated by the sound and feel of his mother’s abacus. The abacus was a computational device, but to the young boy it was so much more: musical instrument, toy train, even back scratcher. Years later, in 1995, it was one of the inspirations for Ishii’s new Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory. As a specialist in human-computer interactions, Ishii wanted to find new ways for people to interact with computers.

It began with a vision of “Tangible Bits” and the invention of the “Tangible User Interface.” Instead of moving a mouse or typing on a keyboard to change things on a screen, users could manipulate physical objects (like those abacus beads) to control the underlying computer program. Around 2012, Ishii introduced a more ambitious vision: “Radical Atoms.” This design philosophy focused on creating transformable materials that allow any object to display, embody, and respond to digital information.

Over 30 years, the Tangible Media Group has built dozens of captivating and beautiful works to demonstrate these ideas. This experimental display of three iconic works—SandScape, inFORM, and TRANSFORM—is part of the MIT Museum’s ongoing efforts to collect the physical machines as well as preserve the user experience of, in Ishii’s words, making atoms dance.

“One of my dreams is to make atoms dance.”
- Hiroshi Ishii

Radical Atoms Exhibition 2024
Acknowledgements

SandScape, 2003
Ben Piper, Yao Wang, Carlo Ratti, Assaf Biderman, Eran Ben-Jospeh, Hiroshi Ishii

SandScape, MIT Museum 2022, Inauguration Version
Ken Nakagaki, Keru Wang (NYU), Jonathan Williams, Paula Aguilera, Hiroshi Ishii

inFORM, 2013-14
Daniel Leithinger, Sean Follmer, Alex Olwal, Philipp Schoessler, Jared Counts, Ken Nakagaki, David Doan, Akimitsu Hogge, Basheer Tome, Hiroshi Ishii

TRANSFORM, 2014
Hiroshi Ishii, Daniel Leithinger, Sean Follmer, Amit Zoran, Philipp Schoessler, Jared Counts, Dan Levine, Luke Vink, Ken Nakagaki, Xiao Xiao

MIT Museum Exhibition, 2024 (Reconstruction Team)
Paula Aguilera, Jonathan Williams, Daniel Levine, Lauren Platt, Amy Oh, Marissa Liu, Jessica Guo, Amos Batalden, Liam May, Charley Reischer, Alisa Ishii, Hiroshi Ishii

To learn more about the Tangible Media Group see tangible.media.edu

Tangible Media Group
MIT Media Laboratory, 1995 to present

The Tangible Media Group imagines and creates a world in which digital information is embodied into the physical world we live in. The group’s original vision of “Tangible Bits” aimed to allow users the ability to manipulate ordinary physical objects to access digital information. SandScape is an example of a new Tangible User Interface with beads and blocks instead of mouse and keyboard.

Observing student work over many years, Ishii developed a bolder vision of “Radical Atoms.” inFORM is part of a group of research projects that inspired this new vision. TRANSFORM represents the pioneering work that launched this new phase of research. The goal was to invent materials that could change form and reconfigure themselves just as pixels can on a screen.

One crucial element to this work is Ishii’s embrace of art. In his Radical Atoms design philosophy, it is essential that students learn to be “artistic and analytic, poetic and pragmatic.”

SandScape
Tangible Bits
Yao Wang, Assaf Biderman, Ben Piper, Carlo Ratti, Hiroshi Ishii
2003 (first iteration)
2022 (iteration on display)

SandScape allows you to manipulate landscapes and see the results of those manipulations projected onto the surface. It is a tangible user interface that goes beyond simply entering data into a computer. The physical movement of your hands as they alter the shapes and elevations of the beads is the input for rendering computational simulations. SandScape couples our natural desire and innate ability to manipulate physical forms with the power of computational analysis to help us understand the effects in real time.

Originally developed in 2003 as a joint project of the Tangible Media Group in the MIT Media Lab and the Senseable City Lab in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, SandScape has become a popular exhibit with adults and children alike.

inFORM
Radical Atoms
Daniel Leithinger, Sean Follmer, Hiroshi Ishii
2013 (first iteration)
2025 (iteration on display)

inFORM pushes the boundaries of what it means to interact with digital information in a tangible way. It takes content and motion that would otherwise exist solely on a screen, and physically renders it in 3D, bringing it into the real world and allowing us to interact with it in real time. This “dynamic shape display” could offer urban planners the means to physically share 3D designs, medical teams the ability to physically experiment with surgical simulations, or even allow remote participants in a video conference to feel physically present.

inFORM demonstrates “telepresence,” the ability of a user to manipulate remote physical objects.

TRANSFORM
Radical Atoms
Hiroshi Ishii, Daniel Leithinger, Sean Follmer, Amit Zoran, Philipp Schoessler
2014 (first iteration)
2025 (iteration on display)

TRANSFORM quite literally transforms a piece of static furniture into a dynamic machine that is driven by, and responsive to, the user’s interactions with it. It is made of three “dynamic shape displays” that collectively control the motion of more than one thousand pins. TRANSFORM’s sensor detects the motion of the user and drives the pins up and down in a dynamic wave motion. This work was inspired by the interplay of wind, water, and sand in nature, as well as the potential for collaboration between nature and machines.