An Interactive Table With An Elastic Touchscreen Surface

As part of this year’s Esquire apartment, Hush Studios built a table that responds visually and sonically to touch.

Every year, Esquire magazine enlists a scad of designers (and corporate sponsors) to transform prized pieces of real estate into surreally decadent playhouses for the über rich. This year’s site: Brooklyn’s most expensive digs, the $23.5 million penthouse of Dumbo’s ClockTower Building, which Esquire converted into the ultimate bachelor pad, replete with a tequila bar. The standout piece in the capacious crib is a dynamic, interactive table in the “study” (surely, no work, as you and I would define it, is likely to happen here) that is part instrument, part light installation.

The entire desk is based on the experience of driving an Acura (the room’s sponsor): The base, composed of Corian ribs, was designed by Third Eye Studios’ Marc Thorpe to resemble the contours of a vehicle, and Hush Studios‘ spandex surface projects information about the flow of power through a car’s drive-train system. An overhead projector illuminates the Lycra scrim with a pattern resembling streaming water, which the viewer can redirect by pushing down on the screen.

According to Thorpe:

By touching the table’s surface and depressing the nylon surface, you send and receive energy between your touch points. At the same time, each touch of the table creates a sound. Multiple touches create multiple, mixed sounds in real-time. Many of the sounds utilize audio signatures from Acura technology like those found in the navigation system and the audio system interfaces.

Source: Co.Design