Movie table: tangible interaction with movies

Video is nowadays largely used and becoming more and more pervasive in everyday life. With the propagation of digital cameras, high bandwidth Internet connections and video sharing websites, it is very easy to access digital video in private and public scenarios, but not always in the most convenient or natural way. People have developed sophisticated skills for sensing and manipulating their physical environments and objects, most of which are not employed in interaction with the digital world today [2]. Tangible User Interfaces are built upon those skills by giving physical forms to digital information. They use physical spaces, surfaces and objects either to control and represent digital information, through individual and collaborative interfaces, allowing computer mediated interactions in physical locations and social contexts where a traditional computer may be difficult or unnatural to use. The adoption and development of tangible media is complemented by the vision of Ambient Intelligence, foreseeing that technology will seamlessly merge into people's everyday activities and environments [6]. As such, designers are faced with the challenge to create a seamless extension of the physical affordance of the objects into digital domain and build natural and intuitive interfaces that fit these new usage contexts.