The Khronos Projector allows people to visualize movie content in a new way. By actually touching and deforming the screen, the user can send portions of the image forward or backward in time.

During a Khronos projection, viewers cannot change the nature of the pre-recorded events, only the perspective, only the way their temporal relationship is perceived. Spectators of fixed movie content double as directors of a personalized post-production process.

By touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate “islands of time” as well as “temporal waves” are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that “cuts” the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie.

Authors: Alvaro Cassinelli and Masatoshi Ishikawa at the University of Tokyo.

Pretty impressive videos aquarium, scream, hand.