Aegis is the name given to an innovative range of physically reconfigurable 3D screens, where the screen surface itself physically moves, producing precise and high-speed deformation across a "fluid" surface. It is enabled by a high-speed information bus that we have called *Hyposurface* technology.

Aegis Hyposurface effectively links information systems with physical form to produce dynamically variable, tactile "informatic" surfaces. Information translates into form. Most effectively it allows interactive systems to be physically articulate in their capacity for spatial reconfiguration. Aegis Hyposurface is then a latent surface, its "pixels" given vectorial potential: a scriptual surface become spatial and dynamic!

Such info/form device addresses the fundamental notion of "media", since it is the moment at which a surface becomes articulate – that its mute materiality differentiates with/in itself – that notions of pattern, decoration or writing emerge. Aegis opens a digital horizon that extends back to the very origins of "writing". As a dynamically reconfigurable surface, Aegis then operates from the most prosaic architectural register to that of the most sophisticated screen: activity (sound, movement, etc) registers directly as/in form!
The Aegis Hyposurface is a device whose surface topology is infinitely variable, allowing a continual emergence and dissipation of dynamic 3D motif (as rhythm, graphism or alphabetism). It releases the surface of inscription from 2 to 3 dimensions, but also acts as a temporal medium, Aegis as a now evolutive multi-dimensional medium. It ranges in its effect from hieroglyphics – a decorative/signifying 3D inscription – to nanotechnics – a premonition of reconfigurable form. Most compelling is that Aegis communicates viscerally, alternating between a bass architectonic registration (sensed bodily), and a semoitic digital "sea" (registered cerebrally): the virtual given mass!

Developed as a series of evolving prototypes, Aegis links a powerful generative computer to a vast matrix of actuators via a high-performance information bus. Prototype VI attains high-speed fluidity, deploying 1000 pneumatic actuators at frequencies of up to 3Hz, information fed at 0.01sec. It deploys sophisticated 3D patterning-in-time, running text, graphics or video images in relief, using a generative algorithmic program.

As a digital matrix, the Hyposurface is inherently interactive: any digital input can be linked to any digital output - to surface effect. It allows interactivity with dancers’ or with musicians’ (movement and sound interactivity), video- and sound-recognition systems offering a programmed responsiveness. But as a now dynamic medium it also allows direct DJ/VJ operation, a form of visual musical instrument that fulfills the dream of Archimboldo who developed a "colour piano" back in the Renaissance or Brewster’s delerious prophesy of the effect of the kaleidoscope on the kinetic arts.