This article was taken from the November 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

This kinetic sculpture bridges the physical and digital. "The prototype is a vase than can change shape -- it has little joints that adjust their width," David Lakatos, a member of the MIT media Lab's Tangible Media group, says. "And once they change width, you can start creating contours -- you can re-form it, in both the physical and the digital worlds."

In the physical world, a sensor above the vase recognises gestures and creates a 3D model, allowing you to shape it as you would clay. In the digital world, an iPad app allows Lakatos to alter the sculpture's properties wherever he happens to be. "With the app, you can be extremely precise about how the form will change," he says. "But, ultimately, sculptors look at something, carve away at it, then look at it again. You need the 3D feeling to do that."

Lakatos plans to build a series of the sculptures, which he sees as a natural next step in UI design: "We already live in a world of shape-shifting interfaces: a door that opens for you -- that's a shape-changing interface on an architectural scale, because it creates a door where there wasn't one before."