The screen in front of you right now undoubtedly renders this story in vibrant color, with sharp text and bright images. Today's digital displays are by any standard the best ever. And yet David Edwards finds them boring. "It used to be screens were much more interesting than they are now," he says.
To his mind, the CRT displays and other relatively primitive technologies of the not-to-distant-past provided a far more novel, even engaging, experience. With picture-perfect LED and OLED screens everywhere these days, people notice them less. "Our eyes kind of wander," Edwards says.
Edwards, a Harvard University biomedical engineer and serial inventor, believes his Atom Screen will change how people look at screens---literally and figuratively. He designed the low-resolution display to elicit an emotion, not achieve precision. To that end, everything seen on it takes on a hazy, painterly effect. "The concept here is a screen that would do for digital projection what impressionism did for visual art," he says. "We want to create a much more meaningful, if abstract, visual image."
He worked with the French studio Millimetre to create the screen for an exhibition at Le Laboratoire, the gallery-meets-science lab he runs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The display, which measures 6.5 by 10 feet, provides the backdrop for "Life in Picoseconds," a video of an unfolding protein molecule created by Harvard biochemist Charles Reilly.
The Atom Screen is one of a handful of concepts advancing screen technology. The Ariana by Razer immerses gamers in a virtual world by projecting the scene onto walls. Tanvas and Bosche developed monitors that feature haptic feedback to simulate texture. Edwards' screen seems almost low-tech in comparison, yet the underlying technology remains delightfully nerdy. The screen uses two panes of translucent plastic about an inch apart and filled with about five quarts of polystyrene beads suspended in air like the balls in a lotto machine. The beads act like pixels---when light hits them, they reflect it with an almost holographic dimensionality.
The beads move in swarms, “almost like a ballet,” says Laurent Milon, a designer with Millimeter. He directs them using an app that controls 70 small fans that line the perimeter of the screen. Each blows a precise stream of ionized air, and the beads either float through the air or stick to the electrostatic panels.
You might not consider the Atom Screen a screen. You can't watch Legion or read this story on it. But it captures the imagination, and evokes emotion in a way conventional screens do not. Edwards mentions a tree, and how your Retina display doesn't convey the shimmering of its leaves in a breeze. The Atom Screen can. He believes his screen will foster new video experiences in gaming, advertising, and art. He and Milon must refine the design, improve their control of the polystyrene beads, and perhaps replace the beads with another substrate entirely. But for now, he remains less concerned with commercial utility than with crafting a delightful new experience that offers something the screen in your hand right now cannot.
