Wave by Michel Boot from denmark

The idea behind “Wave” is to let the user create a certain ambience in the room and thereby let the user enjoy different kinds of senses. The focus is on touch, taste, vision and smell.

The user will use touch to interact with “Wave”. Depending on the way the user touches the surface an certain output will be shown. The user can smoothly wave over the surface or poke the surface as can be seen in the images. The user has the option to touch the texture that will be generated by “Wave” as feedback on the interaction of the user.
The user will experience taste by seeing the texture. As somebody will see a certain texture, this texture will get translated to a taste experience on the tongue. Pallasmaa writes about this in his book The eye of the skin.
Vision is the seeing of the texture as mentioned earlier. There is an extra feature of colour that will fill the room with colour. This will be experienced by the eyes.
As last “Wave” will also give a scent as feedback on the interaction of the user. The scent will fill the room.

A possible user scenario could be: On a cold dark winter day the user comes home from work. Gently touching upon the surface of “Wave” the use is able to create a more welcoming ambience in the room. As “Wave” will fill the room with warm colours, shows a smooth texture and create a soft scent. This ambience can be related to a nice summer day or cosy fireplace that will help the user forget the cold dark winter day.

The texture on the surface can be created by pins hidden underneath the fabric. The pins can feel the movement of the hand and provide feedback for that movement. The pins can extend and thereby pushing the fabric upwards and create certain textures and movements. The fabric needs to be stretchable to let the pins create the texture.