HIROSHI ISHII, Founder Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab, on The Zen of HCI

06.15.08 | Category: Interaction Design, Simplicity, Video

Hiroshi Ishii, Founder Tangible Media Group MIT

ValleyZen’s Bill and Drue spoke with Prof. Hiroshi Ishii after his Stanford lecture for Prof. Terry Winograd’s CS Human-Computer Interaction Seminar. Ishii granted ValleyZen an exciting satori-inducing interview at Drue’s studio. Watch the video here or embedded below.

Japanese Zen aesthetics are interwoven in all of Prof. Ishii’s technological creations and projects. In the video check out Prof Ishii on:

  • The Zen of Human Computer Interaction
  • Emptiness and imagination
  • Negative Space and “Ghostly Presence”
  • Essence of Japanese Art
  • Importance of leaving space
  • The “What drives creation?” pyramid
  • Drue’s “Around the World” Enso
  • Blurring Boundaries between our bodies and cyberspace

Drue Kataoka, Hiroshi Ishii and Bill Fenwick

Professor Hiroshi Ishii is reconciling our dual citizenship in the worlds of bits and atoms. The founder of the Tangible Media Group and professor of Media Arts & Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory is transforming “painted bits” of GUIs to “tangible bits” by giving tangible physical form to digital information and computation. This is no easy task, but no one could be more suited for this demanding work than Ishii. He is an ambassador between physical and digital worlds continually traveling back and forth to create bridges of meaning, beauty and functionality.

Bill Fenwick and Drue Kataoka
Bill Fenwick & Drue Kataoka

3 Comments so far

  1. Vlasta Diamant

    Hi Drue,

    A beautiful interview which brings my mind back into the art realm from the ‘body realm’ of the recent past (surgery). But as your interview highlighted, body and art is a symbiosis. Body receives and emanates impulses… body as an infinite, complex instrument, playing for us and guiding us if we stop to listen, create an empty space for its music.

    Thank you!

  2. sandra

    mmm…this interview opened my mind. The artist/creator as infinite because the vision continues long after the artist is gone is a powerful thought…

    Thank you ever continuing universe…

  3. Mark Evans

    Creation:”never ending gesture of body” Professor Ishii said it perfectly, “nothing lasts longer than art”

    What a peaceful way to end my work day; a wonderful reminder to slow down, breathe and use all your senses to enjoy the wonders of our world.

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