Hydraulikos: ice, water, and steam as user-interfaces

In 2001 the term "Natural User Interface" (NUI) was coined to denote the use of wearable computing or of physical matter (solids, liquids, and gases) as direct user interfaces for metaphor-free computing ["Intelligent Image Processing", S. Mann, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001]. An example of NUI is the idioscope, a highly expressive musical instrument based on continuous ("undigital") scratch input ["Natural Interfaces for Musical Expression...", S. Mann, in Proc. NIME 2007, Jun6--10, New York, NY, USA.]. Human beings are "cyborgs" in the sense that we usually experience nature indirectly, through technologies like shoes, clothing, or smartphones. In fact we're often forbidden from interacting directly with the world around us, e.g. simply removing our shoes to feel the earth beneath our feet is likely to have us stopped by police or security guards. Natural User-Interfaces challenge this layer of indirection, and use direct physical contact with multisensory primordial input devices such as solids, liquids, and gases. H2O (dihydrogen monoxide) is the only chemical substance that we commonly and directly experience in all three of these states-of-matter. Thus H2O is a natural choice for a natural user-interface. H2O is not the same thing as water: it is more general than water in the sense that it can also exist as ice or steam. We explore ice and steam as primordial natural user interfaces. Our ultimate goal is the creation of a centre for Cyborg-Environment Interaction (CEI) as a research trajectory exploring the relationship between nature and technology. Presently, we will celebrate the solid and gaseous states of H2O through ice mallets and steam pipes, in a performance entitled "Sublime Sublimation".