By Daniela Castleberg

PneUI is a project that came out of the Tangible Media Group at MIT that researches ways to create wearable technology enabled by pneumatics and shape changing objects.

What feature of the work could we specifically evolve into a technique for wearable kinetic sculpture or costume? 

Most of their designs rely on multi-layered materials that inflate in a specific way to achieve a certain shape; through this method we could create a kinetic sculpture that changes shape with varying inflation.

What details of the artist or concept are not immediately apparent and how do they inform the work?

The main principle behind some of the shape changes rely on the static nature of one of the layered materials, and the elasticity of the other. If the static material cannot change it’s length, then by injecting air into the space between layers, the shape changes to satisfy the constraints.

Image to show how the shape change can be accomplished

Are there closely related works?

There are some closely related works that also rely on pneumatics on changing the shape of an object that have also come out of the Tangible Media Group at MIT such as aeroMorph.

Video:

PneUI demo video

Additional links:

Website: https://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/pneui/

Published Paper: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/92276