http://www-hiel.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/~hide/

The sense of touch is one of our most primal and direct modes of contact with the world. Even minute surfaces can give rise to elaborate worlds of imagery in our mind, a process in which tactile stimuli encounter emotional values, and the tangible meets up with what is difficult to grasp.

With our fingertips, we can feel even the finest irregularities on a surface—even those smaller than a fifth of a millimeter. The tiny grooves in our skin play a part in this; they amplify the vibrations produced when we rub our fingers over a surface, whereby the frequency of the vibration corresponds to how quickly we stroke the surface. “Touch the small world” is based on this phenomenon.

This new interface uses vibrations applied to the user’s fingertips to produce the illusion of a surface texture. This makes it possible, for example, to “touch-read” an image in a picture frame. Sensors register the position of the fingers; a four-prong piezo transformer delivers a vibration with pinpoint accuracy.

Hideyuki Ando was awarded an Honorary Mention in the 2009 Prix Ars Electronica’s Interactive Art category (together with Yasushi Noguchi) for “Watch me.”