The Familiar Space——Tangible Art Installation Composed of Cubes

Keyword: Tangible Interaction, Embedded system
In Minecraft, a magnificent world is formed by cubes of different materials. We believe that even when stripped of complex appearances, objects’ inherent textures and sounds can still create narratives, leading viewers back to familiar spaces in their memories.

Our interactive device, The Familiar Space, utilizes a semi-enclosed interactive space created by tangible physical cube blocks. Through the design and fabrication of surface textures on these basic elements, we create narrative scenes and ambiance. Sound serves as the primary information channel in this artwork. By touching each cube, they emit different sounds. By assembling these basic units into an array of sounds, we delve into the expression of information in the dimensions of sound’s time and space. The sequential triggering of the sound array forms the narration of story fragments.

To achieve a complete presentation, we incorporated small microcontrollers into each cube and implemented interactive input feedback through Bluetooth communication on the user’s mobile app. For each cube, we designed three scenes: grass, cotton, and reinforced concrete, corresponding to the themes of nature, home, and city, respectively.