LUMEN, a research project by Ivan Poupyrev and Tatsushi Nashida from Sony CSL, is a display that presents images and physical, moving shapes, both controlled independently.

A custom-made Smart Skin sensor was built into the surface of the Lumen to recognize shapes and fingers. It can also feel the user’s motions. It calculates the distance between the hand and the surface by using capacitive sensing and a mesh-shaped antenna made of simple copper wire.

Users can play directly with Lumen by moving their hands over its surface. When they run their fingers over the “smart-skin” surface containing motion sensors, a series of illuminated cylinders rise and fall accordingly.

Lumen delivers slow, organic animations, creating calm, emotionally pleasing shape and image displays for future living environments.

Wanted to blog it ever since i saw a video of it at this year’s Ars Electronica but Retto was faster than me.