Conceptual laptops provide play, pleasure and pain

A recent project among digital media students at the Berlin University of the Arts asked to develop an analog extention of a laptop that considers its physical properties as well as computational power.

"... devices, together with their software, are nevertheless often designed without much consideration of the physicality of the laptop and its usage situation. The computer is an abstract source of energy, computation and screenspace to many such devices. The challege of this short project was to rethink the laptop as a physical object with extended functionality, and cherish these qualities in a novel and refreshing way."

A few notably refreshing ways:

i-sleep: An inflatable pillow rests above the laptop, connected to the computer fan for warming. Music begins playing automatically when you close the laptop and an adjustable "waking tone" can be set for when you'd like to wake up.

Finger Trap: Literally a finger trap created for unwanted trackpad trespassers.

The Digital Marionette: "The idea was to extend the laptop with a pair of strings to use it as a digital marionette. The application i wrote reads out the Powerbook´s motion sensor´s position data and then uses it, to move the marionette. If you tilt the notebook to the left, the marionette on the screen reacts to gravity and also swings in this direction."

via: wmmna