IF YOU want to know how much e-mail you鈥檝e got, just glance at the
masterpiece hanging by your window. Curtains that resemble a Piet Mondrian
painting are ideal for displaying digital information, the conference heard.
鈥淭his is a whole new concept in interior design,鈥� says Lars Erik Holmquist of
PLAY Interactive Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden, who designed the curtains with
Tobias Skog. 鈥淵ou can hang something in your living room which is a combination
of decoration and information.鈥�
One look at your curtains could give you the weather report, tell you the
state of your e-mail inbox, or even how many lagers are left in the fridge.
Photosensitive threads that change colour under ultraviolet light are woven
into the curtains, creating blocks of different colours in different parts of
the fabric. By controlling the focus of the ultraviolet light shining on the
fabric, a computer can display information by changing the size of the
blocks.
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Holmquist says his works combine information display with good taste. One
curtain features a design in which the red, yellow and blue blocks represent
different e-mail users. The size of the blocks indicates how much e-mail has
been received. Another shows the weather鈥攖he colours show if the weather
is hot, rainy or overcast. Mondrian died in 1944, well before computers took
off, never mind graphical displays.
