Smart surfaces
For us Northerners, few things feel as good as the first days of spring when the Sun shines from a cloudless sky after several months of near-constant gray. You close your eyes and just stand there, present in that moment, facing the blazing light in what feels almost like a religious experience. You will still be able to see the light through your closed eyelids, feel its warmth on your skin even when the freezing air bites your nose and cheeks. Light very literally gives us life.
Presence or absence of light triggers emotions, sometimes even strong ones: if a power cut during a storm plunges your entire environment into pitch black night, it may trigger one of our most primal fears: you may feel as if you are not alone in the dark. Simple lights can also make you acutely aware of the passage of time when you are already running late. Seconds ticking by feel like hours when you bathe in the red, commanding glow of a traffic light, waiting for the red to be replaced with permissive, positive green.
Light can also be sensed through patterns. We have conditioned ourselves to interact with technology mainly through light, so seeing certain patterns of light will have you looking for a place to recharge or refuel your vehicle. We spend much, if not most of our days looking at patterns of small lights, making them change, processing them, feeling the messages they convey. The patterns form words, numbers, and pictures, or they may convey entire ideas – touch here to activate autopilot for the 60 monotonous miles of highway ahead. Patterns are not limited to just geometry, but can also include time: the right mixes of warm and cool white light will help you wake up in the morning, keep you active during the day and make sure you wind down for the night.
Very few stop to think what happens deeper than the surface of these lights. What drives the patterns, what makes them change.
The underlying technology is fundamentally very simple: flow of electrical current through specifically engineered materials releases light, which can then be confined, filtered, shaped, given meaning in a multitude of ways. Cut the flow of current and the light turns off. We can play with slowness of our biological senses and the blazing speed of electrical switches, rapidly blinking the lights and creating illusions of movement or even life.
At TactoTek, we are taking light further. We’re bringing comforting, informative, mood-setting, living light to places that have previously been idle, dormant, even boring.
The power of IMSE technology lies in bringing many disciplines of engineering together: shaping natural, purposeful geometries in all three dimensions. Weaving patterns of power, communication, color, and texture into them.
Crafting and drawing layers, rearranging memory banks, finally fusing everything together into sleek, seamless structures unparalleled in form and function. Plug in a connector, switch on the power and experience light in away you did not think was even possible.
Let. Light. Live.
